MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter / Spring 2018

WINTER/SPRING 2018 MLCM 73 Coast Mountains, May 2017 Martina Three days. Three, goddamn days stuck in this unending storm on a lonely pass, essentially right on the border of BC and Alaska. For three days, the view has alternated between the inside of the tent, the inside of the cook shelter, and the gloomy white tempest outside of both. We need visibility to move on and we don’t have it. Over 200 millimetres of precipitation have dropped in some form or other over the preceding days. Sometimes snow, sometimes rain. Sleet, graupel, hail, take your pick; it piles up around us creating extreme avalanche hazard and masking crevasses. We’re so close now, just a month away from Skagway and the completion of a dream which had finally started to feel achievable. Now I feel anxious, trapped and cagey, stuck in this lonesome spot. My thoughts drift to the true start of this journey. Me, sitting in an airport on my way to Colorado to work, while my mum and sister canoed in the Arctic. I remember realizing I’d never done anything truly difficult in my life, never had to fight for my freedom or push myself beyond comfort. That moment, feeling something missing, I wondered, Could I accomplish something remarkable? Could I ski tour from Squamish, BC to Skagway, Alaska? Would Mum join me? A month later she says yes without a moment’s hesitation. Czechoslovakia, 1988 Tania I went back. I forgot to bring the box of photos from my childhood, so I returned to find them – to Czechoslovakia. I don’t remember how I got back, but I found the box and now I’m at the airport in Prague ready to board a plane to my new home, in Vancouver, Canada. That’s when I see them, the Státní bezpe č nost communist police. There are three of them and they spot me just as I notice them from the corner of my eye. Instantly, they are running straight for me. I’m filled with paralyzing, uncontrollable panic. Why in hell did I come back here?! For some stupid photos? What was I thinking?! I’m confused and terrified and panicked, with only one thought; RUN ! It’s like running through syrup, slow motion and clumsy. They catch me in an instant and throw me into a van. I’m a mess, sobbing and pleading with them to let me go, I need to get on the plane, I need to get back to my family! A hard man with cold eyes and an even colder voice tells me I’m not getting on that plane. I’m going to jail and I will never, ever see my children and husband again… … I wake, screaming in my bed in Vancouver, the second time that week. My husband Hak and every refugee I know who escaped the Iron Curtain has these night terrors, these horrible recurring dreams always with the same theme: suddenly back in Czechoslovakia searching for something silly like a book, or photo, or trinket. Always, we are caught by the authorities and told we will be trapped forever, separated from our families and the new lives we fought so hard to build. For Hak and I, these nightmares continue consistently until 1989, when coinciding with the collapse of communism in Czechoslovakia, they stop abruptly, forever. Never stop never stopping.Tania plods on with 70+ pounds on her back as spring comes to the mountains.