MOUNTAIN LIFE - Coast Mountains | Winter / Spring 2018

WINTER/SPRING 2018 MLCM 77 LEGEND SEARCHING FOR XWECHTÁAL RE-FREEING A BIG WALL CLASSIC – SQUAMISH'S INFAMOUS "BLACK DYKE" words :: Christopher Elliott photography :: Alex Ratson Viewed from the base of the Stawamus Chief, The Black Dyke — a basalt streak which splits the mountain’s sweep of granite greys — seems foreign, out-of-place. On either side, the granite which flanks the Dyke is countertop smooth, but the basalt itself, to the touch and to the eye, is variegated and friable — dark and loose and wet, as it slices through a series of roofs on its path for the summit. While ostensibly a geological quirk — the legacy of a spurt of basaltic magma obtruding along a vertical fracture in the mountain — Black Dyke has another, mythological origin that reaches back to the earliest histories of Squamish First Nations. It begins with Sínulhkay ̓ , the two-headed sea serpent, explains Alice Guss, a Squamish Nation storyteller and educator. Per the local oral traditions, the tales told about Sínulhkay ̓ (pronounced “See-nool-kay”), have varied across the generations. One version has Sínulhkay ̓ as a creation deity — analogous to the serpent-creators of Sumerian or Australian Aboriginal mythology — a powerful being who carved out the known valleys of the world with the weight of his slithering. Another story imagines Sínulhkay ̓ as a primordial aggressor, an elemental monster who terrorized the earliest ancestors of the Squamish people. Alice Guss’ Sínulhkay ̓ story envisions the two-headed serpent as a little bit of both — a monster and a creator — and her story also describes the origins of The Black Dyke. In earlier times, Alice narrates, Sínulhkay ̓ menaced the inhabitants of the village of St’a7mes by hiding in wet, watery places — hypnotizing then devouring the locals whole. As the body count rose, Xwechtáal (Swetch-eh-tall), a young warrior, was called forth by the village chief to protect his people. Victory over the serpent however, would not be a labourless feat. Every time Xwechtáal would get near Sínulhkay ̓ , he would become sick — intoxicated by the serpent’s supernatural. Only through a ritual of daily bathing and self-purification, could Xwechtáal even approach Sínulhkay ̓ . Kumari "Koo" Berry enjoys the Howe Sound views.