Morning Glory

Across the great divide, light snow falling, trees like cloaked phantoms, their snowy forms stark against the dark shadow of mountains beyond. We ski up the fire road, the crisp air tightening our faces and making our noses red.

Ours is not an alpine start, far from it. It’s 4pm before we begin, and after six when we reach Lake O’hara. Above, the fabled ramparts of Wiwaxy Peak jut like limestone gendarmes into the milky sky. It’s dusk when we reach the Elizabeth Parker Hut. Perched on the edge of a snow hummocked meadow, the hut is backed against the dark, protective shapes of Odaray Mountain and Mount Shaffer.

Jenn beams. This is her element. Winter, snow, mountains. To see her so happy is my heart’s delight.

Its been ten years since I stayed at this magical hut in these marvellous mountains. There is a fire warming the century old logs when we enter, people I know from my days in Canmore up for the night with two young kids. We stow our gear in the smaller cabin, light a fire and heat the place up as we prepare diner and curl up on the benches, reading, drinking wine from a box.


The morning is grey, but not the kind of grey you get on the coast. Mountains stand in dark contrast to the mottled sky, their faces are dark and comforting against the gently falling snow. Jenn’s enthusiasm and her love of these ranges is contagious. I didn’t believe, when I moved from the Rockies three years ago, that I would miss winter. But its hard to not fall back in love with a season that brings such delight to the woman you will spend the rest of your life with.

We ski through the woods, watch lichen sway in the breeze like a summer dress, inviting; see the tracks of rabbit, tracks of squirrel, and here, a set of tracks that merge with our trail. Bobcat? More likely lynx. We ski along beside them for a while, delighted with the living forest around us.

Then down a slope and into an open meadow beneath the implacable face of Cathedral Mountain. Pan flat spots on the otherwise undulating landscape tell us where the Morning Glory Lakes are beneath the snow.

Jenn drops to the ground and makes a snow angel.

The wind pushes us down the valley but we stop again amid the soft, naked forms of Lyell’s Larch. There is a moment amid the snow and mountains and the Morning Glory Lakes where all my life seems to fold into a singular burst of joy and light, and then there is an affirmation that life really is pure love, that the energy that conspired to create this mountain, that ocean, this man, this woman, this precious moment in time is just a way of saying that all of this is love made visible.

And that this is forever.

We ski back down the creek, and take a trail through a tangle of Engleman spruce and subalpine fir, and catch the lynx tracks again. We have a late lunch in the hut, and by 4pm are skiing back down the fire road, faster now as we glide down the valley. Fairer now that our souls are entwined.