Eight hours later from leaving our small town of Herbert
we arrived at the base camp of Blue Brana, situated in the Rocky Mountains at
the foot of Mt Armstrong. There we lived in small cabins which were basically
sheds with prison type bunks inside.
Upon arriving in the evening we immediately carried out a
night hike up to Cougar Ridge, a small mountain which took half an hour each
way up and down. This was cool but there were strong winds and we couldn’t see
a thing so it made it a bit less exciting. On the way down we had the chance to
slide down half the mountain which was fun taking people out.
On the first full day we hiked up into a mountain range
with snow shoes. Snow shoes were essential as it allowed us to walk easily over
powder and not sink knee deep after every step. We did a 17km loop reaching the
summit of one of the mountains experiencing high winds when on the ridge up to
70km/h. Towards the top it was cool as we had to take off our snowshoes and
physically climb up the last 100m on rock to the summit. The weather was
amazing with clear blue skies and everyone’s spirits were high.
The second day was the first day of our snow camping
experience. We hiked 9km climbing 5000ft up to where we found a small flat area
within the forest to camp for the night. We chopped down trees for fire and
used the stars as a blanket as we did not use any tents or roofs, just some
tarp as a windbreaker and the fire to keep us warm. The morning after we broke
camp and hiked another 4k uphill to the boarder of BC which was so sick as
trudging up we experienced blizzard type weather and everyone was feeling
drained in motivation and blistered up, however as we got to the border the
clouds cleared, the sun was out and I for one felt determined to carry on and
complete our hike. We were actually the first team to hike to BC as previously
it hasn’t been reachable. It was then a nice descent of 13km down to where our
cars were, which was great to take some snaps, although my shoulders and knees
hurt a lot (poor me).
Day five was a slightly more relaxed day getting up at a
later time of 8 o’clock compared to the 6:30 usual start. I lead worship for
the first time on soul edge and Seb lead a talk speaking about Peter and
identity. After this it was a good time for solitude and finding a quiet space
around base camp with some spectacular views. In the late afternoon we went up
to Cougar Ridge again but took another route and scrambled up. This was a great
opportunity to exercise my previous bouldering experience and see for miles
around the mountain range. That evening we had some great food and a chance for
us to relax and drop knives from a height on ourselves to see if it hurt...
Our last day in K country we were meant to get up early,
hike up to Cougar Ridge and watch the sun rise. However the leader’s alarms
failed to go off and we woke up to the sun shining bright through our windows
which sucked a bit. Because of that we packed up early, the other guys did a
naked lap of the cabin in waist deep snow and we travelled the 8 hour journey
back to Herbert.
During my time in K
country I prayed for strength and determination many times, and God gave me the
energy to carry on when i had nothing in the tank. Leading worship also gave me
the drive to step out in confidence and start my leading experiences, so a
pretty decent fun-filled week.
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