July 2013 – A Fool Grows Wise

Roger Deakin’s original Waterlog was a diary of wild swims strictly taking place within the borders of the United Kingdom. To go swimming abroad is a more common thing; after all, and many people who wouldn’t dream of leaping in an English lake will plunge quite happily into a European one. This swim, no matter how far-flung it was, was spectacular enough to demand an entry of its own.

Lake Louise, Canada

Lake Louise, in the Canadian Rockies, was made world famous by the arrival of the Canadian Pacific railroad, which drew up at its doorstep. The magnificent art deco Chateau Lake Louise Hotel was built on the lakeshore for overnighting passengers. Looking out of the windows, they would see the azure-blue waters of the glacial lake framed on each side by the jagged peaks of Mount Whyte and Fairview Mountain, while lowering at the end of the lake and the plain that follows, the glaciers hung preciptiously on the sheer side of Mount Victoria, seeming both precarious and immeasurably powerful. This was also the view from my bedroom.

Thanks to a generous cousin, working in a hotel chain with very generous friends and family rates, I was booked for the night in one of the world’s most iconic hotels. No sooner had I thrown down my backpack and tested the bed, indeed, when room service came by with two of my favourite beers, courtesy of my cousin’s opposite number in Lake Louise. My parents had a bottle of white wine, my uncle a bottle of red, and we all met one of the hotel rooms a little later, to have a refreshing mid-afternoon drink and to plan how to make best use of our time. We only had three and a half hours until dinner, and had to leave for the airport early next morning. I decided to see as much as I could as fast as I could, travelling fast and light. Duly, I set off towards Lake Louise via a steep forest track, jogging through a light shower in t-shirt and shorts and relying purely on exertion to keep me warm. I was carrying only my room key, a towel, a swimming costume (in case the opportunity presented itself) and my iPod, shielded from the rain by a plastic bags that originally belonged to the in-room ice bucket. When I needed water, I drank from the glacial streams.

Alternating between jogging and power walking, I managed to cover twenty kilometres in three and a half hours, taking in both Mirror Lake and Lake Agnes, and the summit of the Big Beehive, the first mountain in the long chain stretching down the north side of Lake Louise. Coming down the mountain, there was just time for a detour to take in the Plain of Six Glaciers, which offered a spectacular panorama of many mountains that had been obscured behind each other from the lake’s end, including the terrifyingly vertiginous Mitre. I returned along the river, and the shores of Lake Louise, arriving exhausted just in time for tea.

Next morning I woke up early to find that every muscle in my legs had stiffened into rigidity, and I was moving like a man of eighty. With nothing but a long car journey and a long flight ahead of me, this was something that would obviously get worse before it got better. There was one thing I could do to limber myself up though – the one thing I hadn’t found time for during yesterday’s walk, the one part of the Lake Louise experience still unfulfilled. I rolled out of bed, and pulled on my swimming trunks.

Even at half past six, the occasional guest could be seen wandering by the shoreline, or sipping coffee on the steps. A couple of canoes were out as well. Even before this minimal audience, I was too nervous to walk straight out of the hotel and leap into the lake, which was right by its doorstep. What if I chickened out while everyone was watching? Instead, I walked a little way around the lake, to where a set of steps descended into the water and a stand of pines hid me from direct view of the hotel.

The lake bottom was a series of rounded boulders, and I was so absorbed in trying to keep my footing on them that I was in up to my waist before I’d really had a chance to take stock. From there, I took a moment to gaze out across the lake’s surface and up, to the incredible mountains beyond, before I took a deep breath and threw myself forward into a brisk breast stroke.

The water was cold enough to numb me instantly, but unlike the sea off Scotland in April, it didn’t give me instant pins and needles. The surprise how buoyant it was. I had an unusual sense of its physical presence all around me, and a confused notion of its being both a friend and an enemy at once, as it simultaneously held me up and snatched my body heat from me.

I managed twenty strokes out from shore and paused to tread water, the mountains yet more sublime and mighty from my shrunken perspective. There’s something about swimming that reduces us in nature’s scale. Birds that would have flapped away in fright ignore a head bobbing by, and the swans and the fishes cruise smoothly on without even deigning to notice us as we bob by. This sensation can often be peaceful, or even spiritual, but out here in the strange, pale blue waters, under the shadow of Fairview mountain, it was distinctly unnerving. I was chilled by more than the cold when I turned out and struck for the shoreline.

My sense of awful sublimity was dispelled, though, by the wonderful sensation of emerging from the water into the sudden warmth of the air, and the vigourous buffeting of the plush hotel-room towel. It was fun too, to exchange knowing grins with those passers-by who were amused with my bravery or foolhardiness. My favourites were the three middle-aged men, lined up on the steps of the hotel like a Greek chorus, or the old men of the village in Asterix in Corsica.

‘You’ve got more balls than I have.’ said one of them. ‘Now go back and get them!’

Not many adventure sports begin by punting down the Isis on a sunny afternoon. To our left, a posse of medical students were drifting by on a relaxed revision cruise, testing each other’s gynaecological knowledge with the aid of various textbooks. No dirty joke here – this was what they were actually doing. To our right, there was nothing but green fields, cows, and the occasional jogger – that portion of Oxford that I only ever seem to see from the river.

We, the relics of a garden party for my sister’s 21st birthday, were in two groups. In my punt was Tom Codrington, who had the build I normally associate with a racing biker, but who turned out to be a rock climber – and a dab hand with the punting pole. His girlfriend Tabitha was with us. In the second, much rowdier punt were my sister Jessamy, her boyfriend Steve, and a smattering of friends from Oxford and Winchester. They had all the left over food from the garden party, some of which they would thoughtfully toss our way whenever the punts bumped together.

So far, there was nothing to separate us from the dozens of other luncheon parties on the river, save perhaps for the coils of climbing rope, carabiners, and tangled harnesses in the till of the punt. That, and the energetic way in which, when the punt came to a low-lying bridge, the occupants would swarm up over the side of it and drop back down into place, while the punt glided smoothly on beneath.

After about half an hour’s lazy cruising, we came to a taller bridge. It was a gorgeous twenty foot arch that crossed the river in a single span, simple, functional, yet still of a piece with Oxford’s greater architectural glories. Here we moored down stream, gathered up the rope and harness, and set to work getting the whole thing set up.

Bridge swinging, in its commercial form, is an alternative to bungee jumping where people swing to-and-fro like a pendulum instead of bouncing up and down like a yo-yo. Large sums of money are paid to do this. In its amateur form, I found, you fix a rope to the railings of the bridge, cross to the the far side, and then swing the other end underneath, high enough so someone on the other side of the bridge can catch it. This is a complex activity which requires timing, foreshortening, and good reflexes on the part of the person in charge of catching the rope. Tom Codrington proved to be expert at this, as well. When that’s done, all you need is someone foolhardy enough to climb into a fluffy, tatty climbing harness, long since discarded from actual climbing duties, clip themselves to the far end of the rope and leap over the railings. My sister went first, and I was close behind.

It was a nervous business, actually, since I had got to get as low as possible to be sure of a good swing, feet pressed flat to the stone and fingers gripping the railings for dear life, while the people on the other end of the bridge took in the tension until this new umbilical was stretched almost horizontal under the bottom of the bridge, taught as a guitar string. Then all I had to do was let go.

Three or four wild, whooping arcs ensued, as I swung crazily between the bridge and the water: then, at the apex of the upswing, Tom Codrington slacked his hold and I crashed into the silver-green Isis, surfacing seconds later, gasping for breath and wiping the water from my eyes. I trod water for a minute while I fumbled with the carabiner’s screw-lock, detached from the rope, and struck out for shore.

Except for Jess’s boyfriend Steve, who was too cool for it, we all took a turn. The girls shrieked, the boys whooped – even the most timorous went, after a false start or two. I went three more times, with varying degrees of disaster – the first time I leaned too far back and inverted, swinging around upside-down like a bungee jumper in a high wind. Then Tom Codrington and I decided to do a swing together, but the rope stretched too much and we kept crashing into the water on the down swing, slowing us down and taking up from the perpendicular to the pendulous in seconds.

We finished up utterly soaked, thoroughly exhilarated, and with the satisfaction of giving all those picnicking upon the riverbank a little lunchtime entertainment. It was a good afternoon’s work.

Month: July 2013

Waterlog 6: Lake Louise, Canada

Lake Louise, Canada

Bridge Swinging