Ottawan among those to follow in century-old footsteps
Documentary takes a modern look at mountaineer Conrad Kain’s 1916 ascent of Bugaboo Spire in B.C.
A century ago, before wealthy adventurers raced to summits of the highest peaks on all seven continents and 600 people a year trudged to the top of Mount Everest, there were climbers like Conrad Kain.
Kain came to Canada from his native Austria in 1909 to work as a mountain guide and is credited with 60 first ascents in the Canadian Rockies and B.C.’s Purcell Range.
Last year, an expedition that included Ottawa photographer and alpinist Ivan Petrov celebrated the centennial of Kain’s legendary August 1916 ascent of B.C.’s Bugaboo Spire by recreating the climb using period equipment and clothing. The team lugged canvas tents to their base camp, slept in wool blankets and even dined on beans, goat stew and pheasant as their predecessors would have done.
Members of the team reached the 3,200-metre peak on the afternoon of July 14, 2016.
A documentary of the Hobnails and Hemp Rope expedition is being shown Thursday night at the ByTowne Cinema, with introductory remarks and a Q&A by the expedition’s leader, Bryan Thompson and filmmaker Greg Gransden. Thompson climbed in historic gear along with climbers Robert Le Blanc, Gary Reiss and Natalia Danalachi, while Petrov and Gransden documented the journey. The party was supported by climbers David Ray and Josée Duckett. Financially, the expedition was supported by the Alpine Club of Canada, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, BC Parks and Eagle Brand.
Petrov, 31, spoke about the expedition to the Citizen’s Blair Crawford.
Q How did the project come about?
A The idea came about in Bryan’s head. He, like myself, is interested in the history of mountaineering. Like myself, he’s not a very technical climber, but he enjoys being in the mountains and out-of-doors. He got the idea of re-enacting an old climb as opposed to going up an unclimbed mountain. There are lots and lots of people who are trying to compete — doing ultra-marathons and speed feats, trying to be superhuman almost. He thought it would be interesting to try to go back in time and relive an experience to see what it was like to do a mountain ascent 100 years ago. We thought doing it on the 100th anniversary of the 1916 ascent would be interesting.
Q Canvas tents and hobnail boots aren’t the sort of things you can find at Mountain Equipment Co-op. Where did you get the gear?
A Canvas tents are easy to find. Some people have kept them. You can find old hobnail boots, but we didn’t want to rely on old boots that might fail on the mountain, so we had to order four pairs of custom boots from a bootmaker in New Zealand. He recreated, as close as he could, the boots that Conrad Kain and his party would have worn. Each pair cost about $600. It was a bit of logistical exercise to get them in time so we could break them in and get used to climbing in them.
Q What’s it like to climb in hobnails instead of modern mountaineering boots?
A They actually performed really well. Because of the metal, they hold really well on snow. On rock, not so much. They kind of feel like skates at times, especially
if there was some morning frost or some lichen. You have to be quite careful.
Q Were there other problems using the period gear?
A We tried to come as close to the equipment and clothing as they would have had 100 years ago. We had four mountaineering axes from approximately that time that were also tricky. That essential piece of equipment that would stop you if you were to fall on a snow slope, some of it looked very flimsy, especially the one Bryan was using. He wasn’t sure it would have helped him if he fell. Another one that was used to try to stop a fall actually broke in half.
We had the hemp ropes. Most of our clothing was wool, which is what they would have worn. It actually performed quite well, even in damp conditions.
Q Did you reach the summit?
A We made two attempts to climb to the summit. The first, we had to turn back because of the weather, but on the second try, two of our members — Rob and Natalia — got to the summit. But they had to take off their hobnail boots for the last technical stretch ... both of them are a bit more experienced climbers, so they were more comfortable with the more technical parts of the climb.
Q You were climbing a challenging route and responsible for shooting pictures and video. Was it hard to do both?
A That was quite a challenge. I hadn’t done a project of that scale before. But at the same time, it was interesting. If I had an interesting still shot that I thought would make a good video, I could do both. I had that additional creative freedom.
Even just climbing the mountain without having to photograph anything would be at the limit of my ability . ... Another interesting thing is, Greg and I tried to be on opposite ends of the climbing party. Sometimes we had to hide from each other to be out of each other’s shots. On a narrow mountain path or slope, that’s not always easy to do!
Q Having climbed the peak, what do you think of Conrad Kain’s accomplishment?
A It was almost an impossible feat what they achieved. Even now, with modern equipment and gear, it’s still considered a fairly challenging climb. And back then, they couldn’t see what was around the corner. They didn’t know the route. They didn’t even know if they’d be able to descend from the summit.