Page 8 - 2016 AMA Spring

6 ARMY MOUNTAINEER
Dawn to Dusk
to Dawn
Nick Bullock
In 2013 I was invited to the Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival and I was sat talking to Steve Swenson, an American climber with more experience in the mountains than almost anyone I know. A group of us from the festival ate in a restaurant in the centre of Banff. Steve leaned conspiratori- ally closer, his black hair, sharp eyes and slim athletic frame belied his years. “Don’t believe a word Slawinski says, he’s the biggest sandbagger in Canada.” Outside, the wind scythed the street. Snow scuffed the road.
A few days after talking to Steve, I was sitting, totally worn-out, in a large brown leather chair in the Canadian Alpine Club in Canmore, I stare at the sparkling snow weighing the branches of pine and hiding the bands of strata on the Three Sisters. Three Coyotes – puffed, grey, red and black, slink past the window. They miss nothing. They see everything. Life is a hunt. Later that evening I sit and watch a pine martin, with his arched back and thick jumper bounce across the wooden patio.
The Maul had been recommended by Ian Welsted. Ian climbs with Raphael Slawinski, and some of Raphael’s craftiness was obviously rubbing off. When I spoke to Raphael – my sandbagging and understated friend – he did say, “Oh yes, The Maul, it’s so good I’ve done it twice.”
A freight train trundles the tracks, row after row of old hoppers dragged behind tractors. Some of the hoppers are new and painted, but most are old and rusty.
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