E-mail A Friend Tell a friend about the information found on this page by sending them an e-mail.   Your Name: Your E-mail:   Type an e-mail address, then click add: Add a Personal Message: (Optional)

September/October 2001 issue	In this issue Table of Contents Editor’s Notebook Feature: Backcountry beat The Inside Story Reverberations À la carte

Backcountry beat |  Names |  Stories |  Timeline |  High points  |  Avalanche hazards  |  Glaciers  |  Digital maps

A few minutes drive up the Rock Lake trunk road, warden Gordon Antoniuk tells me I have nothing to worry about. We are moments away from mounting up for a five-day patrol of the rugged, remote North Boundary Trail in the northwestern part of Jasper National Park. Most folks follow this aptly named trail to hike to Mount Robson, which is outside the park’s northwestern boundary and is, at 3,954 metres, the highest mountain in the Canadian Rockies.

It took me four hours to drive from Edmonton to Jasper, and I’ve been riding for the past hour in Antoniuk’s truck, hauling three horses in a trailer from the warden station at Pocahontas to the end of the road: our saddle-up point at Rock Lake, from which we’ll cross into the park’s northern reaches.

Antoniuk is a tall, slender man who has kept pretty much to himself since we set off. A 29-year veteran of the National Park Service, he makes it clear in a quiet sort of way that he isn’t entirely happy about having an outsider along.

When I press him about the risks, Antoniuk says he can’t recall anyone ever getting seriously hurt, save for a few wardens and packers who nearly drowned crossing streams or those who were bucked off their horses, bruised up and taken out by helicopter to recover in hospital or at home. Then there was the incident earlier in the spring when a young backcountry warden lost a horse while crossing a swollen river. And just a week before this trip, Antoniuk was brought in to remove the carcass of an outfitter’s pack horse that had been kicked in the head by another horse walking ahead of it.

For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.

Ed Struzik is a writer and photographer based in Edmonton.

top