The KID Municipal Office, located at the Kananaskis Emergency Services Centre, carries out the functions of financial administration, assessment, taxation, licensing and other activities. There is one full-time Administrator, two full-time Municipal Advisors, as well as a Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) who is also the Manager - Kananaskis Emergency Services with Alberta, Environment and Parks. Alberta, Environment and Parks provides a number of employees who perform contributed services that aid the KID in providing integral municipal services.

 

I have had my fair share of near misses in K-Country. I once narrowly missed getting zapped by lighting on a mountaintop. I once was crossing a scree slope and the whole slope started sliding downhill, while microwave- and toaster-sized boulders rolled past me. But the worst was an incident in 2007 that forever changed how I hike and the equipment I carry.

It was a blistering hot July 28th, forecast to hit 33° in Calgary. For various reasons, we had planned to hike up Threepoint Creek past the Hog’s Back to the Allsmoke Gorge overlook, the “Grand Canyon of Kananaskis”. The hike’s changed a bit since then; there has been much logging in the area, and sections of the Hog's Back trail were rebuilt from the 2005 flood, but you can read about the route in Gillean Daffern’s 4th Edition, Volume 4, Page 204. I took the two photos on page 207 on this fateful day. The total distance we did that day was 21.2 km, with 660 m of height gain.

The day started early with a 5 km walk (at 25° or more) along a old fire road to the Hog’s Back junction, but there, we hit problem #1: closure tape, pictured at right. The 2005 flood had washed out a section of trail and created several ugly crossings of Threepoint Creek. Despite knowing this, we wanted to do that part to get to the Hog’s Back overlook, so ignored the tape. Wading the creek three times at 29° was quite nice; nearly sliding down a 20 m undercut bank and over a cliff wasn’t so much fun. The closure tape also meant that no trail crew had tidied up the copious deadfall, blown down in a 2006 windstorm. The Hog’s Back trails section was hot and hard work.

The grunt up the steep 250 m hill from the creek to the Hog’s Back overlook (shown at left) was hotter still, in the blazing sun and no wind, resulting in numerous water stops. However, we got to the top in good time, and continued through more deadfall to the Allsmoke Canyon overlook, pictured at the top of the article. We arrived after 3 hrs 40 minutes of hiking plus 45 min for a lunch stop along the way. The thermometer I had said it was 33° as we sat on the sunny hillside, without a speck of wind, admiring the view.

At that point, we discovered we had finished virtually all of our water.

I thought we were carrying enough; about 1.5 litres per person, plus lunch drinks. But at those temps and for that adventure, that wasn’t nearly enough; bad planning on my part. And we were only at the halfway mark of the hike, with over 300 m to descend, 12 km to hike and at least 3.5 hrs still to go.

We headed back to the car using the easier fire road the whole way – all downhill, almost all shaded and no deadfall. At least 7 creeks crossed over or under the road (one is pictured at right), but this section of K-Country had free-range cattle (at least 2 of the bigger creeks had cow pies in them), plus the road was an active horse trail, and had loads of "used horse food" all over it. In addition, the fire road we were on marks the southern end of the Maclean Creek off-highway vehicle area, and not only gets OHV use, but also has trails that parallel the fire road just uphill, too. The water was tempting, but we chose not to drink it. All we were willing to use the water for was to cool off, which did help.

It hit 35° on the way back. Within 90 minutes, both of us were showing early signs of dehydration and heat exhaustion, which just got worse as the day progressed. By the end, we got dizzy, got headaches, got blurry or tunnel vision, became hugely tired, couldn’t think properly, had difficulty standing after sitting for breaks, and by the end, we could barely put together a coherent sentence. I randomly collapsed and fell down on several occasions, cutting great gashes in my legs in the process. When I could figure out how to use it, and could focus on it, I was checking my GPS to see how far we had to go, but couldn’t remember what I was seeing long enough to tell my hiking partner what it said. At the trail intersection with the Hog’s Back closure tape, we had trouble figuring out which way to go to get back to the car. What normally would have taken around 3 hours took more than 4, which of course made things worse still.

I barely remember the last 3 km, which between stumbling and falling and being confused and tired and feeling nauseous and unable to see clearly or communicate, took over an hour – despite being a road going gently downhill. I do remember seeing my car and breaking out into a run for the last 200 m; I knew that in the car was a full, 1 litre water bottle.

The car was sitting in the sun all day. The water was probably 130°, but I didn’t care. I could have drunk the whole thing, but knew my partner needed some as badly as I did. But that little water barely helped. I struggled to get my pack off, and to figure out how to drive the car. We knew what the problem was, so decided to head for the nearest water: the town of Millerville.

In 2007, there was an Esso station in Millerville and not much else; we pulled in at 5:15 PM on a Saturday, only to find it closing. We begged, and the guy let us fill all our bottles (4 litres) from a rusty tap in the service bays as the station had been shut down, but that’s all we could do; he’d closed his register and couldn’t sell us anything. The tap water was warm and tasted like iron, but we drank it all, finishing it in the 12 km of driving to Turner Valley. There, we pulled into a convenience store and each bought two, 2-litre bottles of cold water. These were finished before Okotoks. We stopped again, again each buying two, 2-litre bottles. We got back home to Calgary with about a litre left.

Total water consumed at the end of the day: 10 litres each.

What I Learned
I think had we had to go another 3 km at the end of that day, it would have been a rescue by Public Safety – had we been found, which I doubt would have happened soon. No one knew where we were, and we had passed no one all day. That wasn't unique to that day, but it sure would have turned our rotten situation to a disaster.

It’s possibly good that the first bunch of water we drank was warm. Everything I have since learned says that drinking cold water in our condition would have almost certainly induced vomiting and made our problem far worse.

We passed 7 streams, and Threepoint Creek was nearby at the end. Should we have broken down and drank from the streams along the way? Maybe. I got giardia doing that when I was in my teens in Ontario, so I’m a bit biased against doing that. The fluid loss that results from bad water – diarrhea, nausea, vomiting – could have taken our dire situation and made it terminal. However, most water borne baddies – not all – take several hours to show up. Had we drank bad water at 1 PM, and it was contaminated with e-Coli or worse, the symptom onset timing could have matched the end of our day when more fluid loss would possibly have killed us

A better solution? Ever since that day, I’ve carried a 0.5 micron filter straw, which enables me to drink up to 75 litres from any water source, even if it has cow pies in it. It may not taste good, but I know there will be no nasties from the water getting to me. You can see from the photo that even though I have had it since 2007, all it has done is live in the bottom of my pack – all 15 grams of it.

But I’m a bigger believer in prevention. Ever since that day, people laugh at me for how much water I carry, and I don’t care. I plan my day to arrive at a trail’s end with water left over. I even add an extra litre or two if the adventure is bigger. And I still have an extra litre in my car waiting for the end of the day, only now it starts the day as ice (and when things work right, there’s ice left at the end). These days I shudder when I see folks carrying no backpack and a 500 ml bottle of water to climb Grotto Mountain.

I also make it a policy not to do big adventures over 30°. I was recently reading an article about desert and high temperature hiking, and it said water needs at 37° are double those of 26°. Have a peek here for more info. The mountains aren’t going anywhere; I can make that climb another day.

As a pilot, we did training to learn our individual reactions resulting from hypoxia at high altitude. On the bright side, this day was training about how dehydration affects me personally. I know the symptoms (I knew them then), and can now tell pretty quickly if it’s time to drink fluids, how long I can last without them – and I carry stuff so I don’t have to worry about it anyway. I learned the hard way.

Take it from someone who has been there: dehydration is not fun. Learn from my mistakes and never let it happen to you.

---

Did you have a trail experience in Kananaskis that taught you something the hard way? Why not share it with other Friends members. Send a note to info@kananaskis.org