Corrals, Campfires, and Cowboy Coffee

by Jamie Ross

In mid-May, 1983, I stepped off a train in Banff, Alberta, after a three-day cross-country journey. Dragging along a duffel filled with horse gear and tatty clothes, I strolled into town in search of work. I planned to reward myself for my recently earned university degree with a summer of adventure in this beautiful mountain town, not knowing then that one season would turn into ten years spent working as a cowboy, wrangler and mountain guide.

These are stories from those years - guiding backcountry pack trips in Banff National Park through the 1980s and 1990s - long before cell phones found their way into saddlebags and “wilderness experiences” came with waivers three pages long.

This was a time when summers didn’t begin with a calendar date. They began when the snow melted from mountain passes, and the first string of horses trotted out of the downtown stable, leather creaking and packs swaying. We would ride out under the Banff skies, the peaks still streaked with snow, the rivers loud with meltwater. The pack string followed the line of riders like a slow, clanking freight train of canvas, alfalfa cubes, oats, frying pans, and everything else required to convince people they were “roughing it.”

By the time we reached the camp in the Cascade Valley, the day had usually delivered something worth remembering; a spooked horse, a city slicker discovering muscles they didn’t know existed, rain rolling in sideways, or that quiet moment when the mountains went gold and even the most talkative guest fell silent.

From rail corrals thick with dust and opinionated geldings, to canvas camps tucked beneath glacier-cut peaks, life was measured in hoofbeats, weather shifts, and the strength of the morning coffee. Summers were blistered, smoky, hilarious, exhausting, and perfect in a way I didn’t fully understand at the time. We were young enough to think it would always be that way. The horses were mostly dependable, honest, and sure-footed, the trails were familiar, and the mountain passes and valleys felt like they belonged just to us.

Guests arrived from cities around the world eager, nervous, and often unaware of what a week in the mountains would demand of them. Horses tested patience, storms rolled in uninvited, the coffee boiled black over open fires, and somewhere between the trails and the campfire stories that grew taller as the fire burned lower, we found grit we didn’t know we had.

These are stories of callused hands, stubborn horses, thundering storms, grumpy grizzlies, and the kind of laughter that only comes after nearly everything goes wrong.

For the guides who could saddle horses and pack mules in the dark.

For the wranglers who learned patience from stubborn geldings. For the guests who showed up nervous and left changed. And for the mountains that watched all of it without comment.

With humour, humility, and a deep affection for both the animals and the landscape, Corrals, Campfires and Cowboy Coffee captures a time when guiding was equal parts hard work, chaos, and quiet responsibility. It’s a portrait of a vanished era in the Canadian Rockies, when the trails were familiar, the days were long, and the mountains felt both immense and personal.

Pull up a stump. The coffee’s on. The mountains are waiting.