OUTFITTERS’ OFF-SEASON ADVENTURES

Off-Season Adventures

Hunting guides with Compass Mountain Outfitters check on a snow-laden cabin during a 50-mile circuit to resupply several camps along the Canadian company’s ”guideline” in northern British Columbia.

Off-Season Adventures

Even in the dead of winter, 'the mountains are calling' for three off-duty backcountry hunting guides – though it's not all fun and games.

STORY AND PHOTOS BY CASSIDY CARON

As another busy hunting season winds down, the last clients leave and camps are winterized, inevitably, burnout strikes. Even the toughest and most committed guides find themselves succumbing to the creature comforts of civilization.

The aftermath of months of living off-grid involves shameless weeks of binging on fast food and swallowing copious amounts of beer. It’s living in pajamas and spending a shocking number of hours streaming all the shows missed.

Even so, the draw of the wilderness is a steady hum in the background. The ability to make a living guide-outfitting is not so much a career choice as a lifestyle one. After swearing that you are due a solid rest – one that borders on hibernation – a week into that rest, the stirring is back. It is as if your soul contains something metallic and the mountains themselves are magnetic. They are drawing you back to them, to the place where you belong.

Winter in the northern Rocky Mountains is peaceful and beautiful, yet can also be unbelievably deadly for the unprepared or unlucky.

With good conditions for riding their snowmachines, the guides can access camps in the farthest reaches of their territory, places that otherwise would take days upon days to reach by horse during warmer, drier times of year. WINTER IN CANADA'S Northern Rockies is aggressive and unrelenting. Much of the region averages 6 to 10 feet of snow. Temperatures can range from 0 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. Winds roar through peaks nonstop and blizzards roll in fast. They can dump 3 feet of snow overnight.

There is a grave awareness of being on your own, of walking the knifeedge of fate. If you get yourself into trouble, help is a long way off and will only reach you if the weather permits. Mistakes or mechanical failures can turn deadly in the amount of time it takes to draw a single breath.

And yet, despite that – or maybe even enhanced because of it – there is an exhilaration in the magic and beauty of the mountains in winter. There are layers of silence and solitude. The virgin snow can be so deep that it smooths out complicated terrain and makes it appear featureless. The unmarred white is so perfect and glittery it almost seems edible, like endless mounds of sugar-

After 10 hours of snowmobiling to their first cabin, the crew needed to shovel several feet of snow off the roof lest the structure collapse due to the weight. dusted whipped cream.

There is much to learn from spending time in the wilderness in the heart of winter. You are forced to pay close attention to weather and snow conditions. You are navigating without technology, and that makes you better able to see the stories the snow is telling about animal habits and patterns.

If the snow conditions are cooperative, it creates perfect opportunities to access remote camps in the farthest reaches of the guide territory. At all other times of the year, it would involve multiple days of horseback riding to get to them.

Still, it is no easy task breaking a mountain trail through deep, deep powder with a snowmachine. Most of the time, you have no idea what lies beneath. Getting stuck is inevitable – and a complete nightmare. It can take hours to dig out of it. At all times, you carry an awareness that you are completely at the mercy of mechanical parts working flawlessly.

IN THE WINTER of 2022, my partners and I did a 50-mile circuit to check on and resupply several camps throughout the guideline. Our route took us through complete wilderness. To reach the first camp, we battled for 10 hours, driving sleds through headhigh snow. We dug stuck machines out of snow coffins. Wet and cold, we endlessly repacked loaded skimmers, and tinkered with mechanical glitches.

Thankfully, the cabin was exactly how we had left it, with no sleeping grizzlies needing to be evicted. Not so thankfully, there was so much snow on the roof that it was compressing the small structure to the point that we could barely open the door.

After the arduous day, we had to shovel massive amounts of snow off the roof. Despite the inconvenience, we knew it was a stroke of luck that we had arrived when we did. If it had warmed up before we arrived, it would have increased the weight of the snow on the roof. We might have had a pile of matchsticks instead of a cabin!

The following day we made our way to the next camp. None of us had ever sledded there before and it

Nearly to their second camp after hours of hard sledding, the guides decided to hit the “easy” button and ride a frozen river the rest of the way. That didn’t work out so well for Tom Sallows, whose snowmobile broke through the ice and had to be rescued.

was even harder than the trip on the previous day. The terrain was guarded by impassable canyons and steep gullies. We had to traverse ridges that the wind had swept clean of snow. There were places on the rivers with dangerous open water despite months of freezing temperatures.

With exhaustion setting in, and only a few miles shy of the camp, we made a decision to take the “easy” way, and ride the river rather than fight our way through more forest. Tom Sallows, co-owner of Compass Mountain, and a very experienced trapper and sledder, led the way.

AS TOM CARVED a path along the icy surface of the river, the cloud of powder being thrown high by the wide track of his heavy Skandic abruptly halted. The ice had given way and the sled slammed into a black hole of open water. Tom was thrown clear. He was unhurt, but the massive 650-pound snowmobile bobbed ominously in the churning river.

We were able to wrestle the machine to the edge of the broken ice, aware that if anyone slipped into the hole they would likely get dragged under, never to be seen again. The ever-present danger of living in the mountains trains you to make fast yet calculated decisions to get yourself out of a bind rather than panic.

We cut branches, jamming them in the hole to prop the snowmobile out of the water, and rigged a strap through the front skis. Then we were able to pull it with a second Ski-Doo, hoping against hope that the second one didn’t go through the ice as well. With all hands on deck, we balanced precariously on the cracking edge of the hole and, through desperate pushing and pulling, persuaded the machine back onto the solid surface.

Though everyone was soaked, our clothing quickly becoming stiff as it froze, by the time we arrived at the camp after dark, spirits were high. A catastrophe averted will do that! A roaring fire in the old wood stove quickly ate away the stale chill inside the cabin. A few good nips of whiskey warmed our insides as we thawed out and enjoyed the camaraderie of reliving the exciting events of another challenging day.

It wasn’t, however, the end of Tom’s troubles. The next morning, only a few miles past the hole that almost claimed his sled, his tie rod went. With one ski flopping uselessly in all directions, his big sled was impossible to steer.

With the ingenuity of people who have learned to rely on themselves in the most challenging of circumstances, Tom came up with a classic bush fix. He cut a sapling and jammed it through both skis to keep them straight. This

With an assist from branches jammed underneath it and the pulling power of a second snowmobile, the stuck Ski-Doo was extricated from the frigid river, though the crew’s problems with the vehicles were far from over.

Compass Mountain Outfitter owners Cass Caron, Sallows and Brett Waller pose during their winter mission checking on the company’s hunting cabins in northern BC.

Thirty miles from the truck, a classic bush fix was required to deal with a broken tie rod – a sapling jammed through both skis. It made for slow going but ultimately a safe return from the backcountry. gave him a small degree of control. It made for slow, painful going on an already difficult trail, but he was able to limp the sled out of the bush.

Tom is an avid trapper and spends much of the winter on his line alone, establishing trails through chestdeep snow in pursuit of lynx, martin, wolverine, squirrels, ermine and wolves. He once had a 330 Conibear trap slam shut on his hand while he was miles away from his cabin. Feeling the cold steel of a device designed to instantly dispatch wolves and wolverines squeezing the circulation out of his wrist, Tom staggered back to his snowmobile. He was able to miraculously get the trap open with a rope and his other hand. Disaster narrowly avoided, it was back to trapping business as usual.

WHETHER IT IS trapping, predator hunting or stocking hunting camps, the winter never turns out to be “down time” for those of us in the outfitting world of northern Canada. By the time the snow softens and the air warms, that all-too-familiar exhaustion is back. It’s time for another bout of binging, beer, pajamas and live-streaming.

And then strength returns, and my spirit rises to a new hunting season and all the new adventures it will hold.

This is my lifestyle choice: wilderness, adventures, dangers, selfreliance, ingenuity, survival. I have the great privilege of experiencing the rarest of things. If I time-traveled back 100 years, I would find very few differences between my experience and the experience of those who have been called before me. This way of experiencing life feels as if it is shrinking, disappearing year by year, bit by bit, regulation by regulation. Being the one in these modern times to bear the torch, to keep alive and honor the old ways, is something beyond special.

The mountains are calling. 

Editor’s note: Cassidy Caron is the owner of Compass Mountain Outfitters. For more information, visit compassmountainoutfitters.com.

A cozy, glowing cabin makes for a welcome shelter after a long day of breaking trail with snowmobiles in the Canadian wilderness.