The Storm

By James Ross

Before the mountain passes were clear of snow, we couldn’t begin our backcountry rides within Banff National Park until early July. In the meantime, the outfit ran spring rides in the Alberta foothills, somewhere east of Lake Minnewanka.

While other guides led shorter trail rides around the townsite, got the horses fit and ready for summer, or organized the equipment and tents for our backcountry camps, I was often sent out as a second guide to Spring Camp.

The head guide for these June trips was either Rick Smith, a Saskatchewan ranch hand, or Hugh Simon, an ex-RCMP officer turned minstrel-guide. I learned a great deal from both men. Rick taught me the value of an easy-going approach to guests and their needs, along with a considerable amount about horses. Hugh favoured something closer to boot camp when dealing with dudes, but balanced it with music, humour and an entertaining presence around the evening campfire.

A cook from another outfit operating a few kilometres from our Spring Camp had finished her stint with a group of dudes. She had cleaned up after breakfast, tidied the kitchen and tent accommodations, and locked away the food in animal-proof boxes. With her work done, she saddled her horse and set off, hoping to pass her group during their lunch break and reach the trailhead ahead of them. She had earned a couple of well-deserved days off.

As she trotted down the trail, she noticed flashes of light to the west and heard thunder rumbling among the distant mountain peaks. A storm was brewing. The sky darkened, and a curtain of rain began sweeping towards her. Ominous clouds and a sudden wind spilled over the ragged mountain skyline and raced across the rolling grasslands. Thunder boomed and echoed while forked lightning stabbed at the hills, briefly illuminating the darkening sky.

The cook hurried on, keeping her nervous saddle horse moving ahead of the approaching storm.

When she failed to appear at the trailhead ahead of the returning riders, her guide grew concerned. He bade farewell to his group, waved as the transport vans pulled away, unsaddled and corralled his string of horses, then swung back onto his own mount and headed down the trail towards camp. A nagging apprehension had settled over him.

I knew the guide, Stewart. On his days off, he occasionally rode into our camp for a morning coffee and a chat, or dropped by in the evening hoping for a nip of whiskey and a little gossip. He had mentioned his new cook, a woman from Eastern Canada. I had the impression he might have taken a shine to her.

As Stewart rode back down the trail, he could still see the angry storm, now settled to the south. He hoped the cook had changed her mind about leaving when she saw the weather. But he remained uneasy.

Then his horse began to snort and blow, its head turning this way and that. Without warning, it stopped dead in a sliding halt. When Stewart urged it forward, the horse shied sideways, then spun around in an attempt to retreat.

Stewart looked down into a wet coulee and saw the cook and her horse lying on their sides. Lightning had struck her in the back, blown a hole through the saddle’s bucking roll, then travelled through the horse’s right shoulder and leg.

The cook was still seated in the saddle, her feet in the stirrups and the reins in her hands. But the horse beneath her lay dead on its side, as though horse and rider were a child’s toy abandoned in the prairie grass.

We were out on a day ride from our own Spring Camp that afternoon and had seen the storm coming. We decided to cut our ride short and return to camp. Some guests were pleased; it meant a little extra time for their weary backsides to recover. Others protested. It was only a bit of rain, after all.

When news of the tragedy reached us, we were shocked. We seldom dwelt on it, but we all understood the dangers inherent in the wonderful outdoor life we had chosen. In the isolation of the backcountry, small mistakes could have serious consequences, and disaster was never far away.

Two weeks later, Hugh and I led a string of riders along that same trail. As we approached the coulee, our horses began to snort and prance, reluctant to carry on. Somehow, they seemed to sense the death that had visited the place, as though the accident had left something behind that only they could smell.

A thunderstorm rolling down a valley towards a group of riders was never a welcome sight. Sitting on a horse, with metal shoes beneath my feet, was not where I wanted to be when lightning began striking the surrounding hills. But mountain storms were a fact of life.

Sometimes we would push on ahead of an approaching storm, hoping the peaks would snag the clouds and slow the tempest. At other times, we would dismount, pull on our slickers and huddle in a grove of trees, crouching beneath whatever shelter we could find while holding the rope halters of our jittery horses. We would wait there until the worst of the weather had passed.

The story of the cook from the foothills camp was never far from my mind. Especially when thunder rumbled down a valley, lightning illuminated the mountain peaks, and water poured off the brim of my hat and streamed down my oilskin slicker.