Loneliness, 3

What does your fourth trip to Lake O’Hara look like?

The East side of the valley is dominated by Oesa Valley and Opabin Plateau, arguably the best hikes in the Rockies. Both are a mere six kilometres there-and-back, though, so you can bliss out over both in one day. There are a few alternative routes through each, but that only burns off another day. Lake McArthur is quite good, but it’s eight kilometres there/back and you can’t wander around nearly as much. Mary Lake’s emerald green waters would be an irresistible draw elsewhere, but here they’re merely worth a glance on your way up to Opabin Plateau. That’s maybe three days’ worth of hiking, four if you take your time.

The West side doesn’t offer much. Odaray Grandview does live up to the name, but you have to sign a book before you’re allowed to cross prime grizzly bear habitat, and the trail disappears up a step slope of loose rock well before you reach the Grandview. There are great views hidden on the shelves of Cathedral Mountain, but the cost of entry is grinding through twenty kilometres of dense forest. A ridge of Mount Odaray creates a nice wall behind Morning Glory Lakes, but said dense forest presses you in too close to properly enjoy the view. There’s another half dozen forgettable lakes scattered amongst the trees. Only those desperate for something new on their fourth trip in would wander the West in summer.

But I’m guilty of a lie of omission. I made a big fuss over how exclusive this place is, but that’s only true over the summer months. In winter, the shuttle busses no longer run and so the O’Hara Valley empties out. Some cross-country skiers might venture in, but steep mountains and tonnes of snow turns the East side into a death trap. The West’s dense forest, in contrast, shelters you from the elements and those lakes become clearings of pristine snow. Winter camping can easily turn deadly, but the Elizabeth Parker Hut‘s comfy beds, spacious kitchen, and infinite supply of propane make it luxuriously easy. With room for two dozen, a solo skier should have no difficulty laying out a sleeping bag.

It took a while for the phone operator to convince me the hut was booked solid that weekend. I reluctantly hung up, while a plan B slowly started to form. It was an eleven kilometre ski to reach the temporarily-closed campground; I could then snowshoe for about eight kilometres around Linda and Morning Glory Lakes, eventually climaxing with the always-beautiful Lake O’Hara; and then I only had to snowshoe a kilometre back down the road to return to my skis. Twenty-eight kilometres would be longer than I’d ever hiked during the summer, and snowshoeing takes more effort than hiking, but the eleven kilometre ski out was all downhill. I could do that in a day.

Like all plans, this one began perfectly. I’d been warned about an avalanche chute that crossed the bus route, but one glance had me feeling sorry for it instead. I tossed my skis aside at the spot I’d marked on my GPS, slapped on my bulletproof snowshoes, and headed down the trail to Linda Lakes. The snow cap over them sparkled like diamonds in the winter sun, and I was completely in my element. A local animal must have felt the same vibe, as our tracks were running parallel to one another.

Gradually, I realized the plan had been challenged. Those tracks were from a wild cat of some sort, no doubt on the hunt. That was a rare treat, as the First Nations people of this region considered these felines to be solitary ghosts of the forest. Like all cats, they’re ambush predators. They quietly slink into position, then pounce on their prey from behind and rip out the back of their neck. While it panics and crashes through the bushes, the cat silently purrs along at a distance and waits for their prey to bleed to death.

Hmm. I knelt down closer to the track. Those cute lil’ toe beans had made a razor-sharp impression in the snow. I wasn’t even an amateur tracker, but even I knew that meant the tracks were pretty fresh. How fresh depended heavily on the local weather conditions, and I had only arrived hours earlier. That cat could have trotted by two days ago, or two hours ago. I started looking around the wall of trees surrounding me; the area was pretty flat, but there were still subtle hills and dense brush to hide in. I was, thankfully, not a prey-shaped object to a kitty that would rub up against my knees, buuuuut a hungry ol’ cat might get desperate in the lonely winter months. I didn’t stop casually rubbing the back of my neck until I was well past Morning Glory Lakes and descending into the meadow by the Liz Parker Hut.

Had rabbits booked the place? Scattered across the meadow were human-sized holes, but they seemed too shallow and exposed to act as emergency shelters. Some random trinkets of technology were peppered in and about, with no obvious purpose. A peek in the windows revealed an empty hut, while a glance down the path to O’Hara revealed an embarrassment of snowshoe tracks. Very strange.

I followed both the trail and trails to the picturesque dock at Lake O’Hara that always demanded a photograph. Alas, that beautiful vista had been tarnished: the parade of rabbits had trampled a line into Lake O’Hara’s frozen sparkle, in the direction of the East route up Opabin Plateau.

The traditional West route curls around exposed rock under cliffs and then cuts up one, making it nigh impassible in winter. Years earlier a new route had been cut through the trees to the North-West of the Plateau, to the delight of tourists. This “East” route had steep switchbacks, but was shorter and more gradual than the traditional route, plus the dense forest protected it from rock slides and avalanches… except for the very end, where the trail marched right through a Yukness Mountain avalanche chute. I had thought both routes were death traps in winter, but did the rabbits know something I didn’t? I was supposed to turn back and head to my skis at this point, but I had plenty of stamina left, so my inner cat pounced on the opportunity. I took off over Lake O’Hara in pursuit of my prey.

The bunnies’ secret knowledge were the creeks running out of the Plateau’s many lakes. In summer they were a rocky mess of logs, but in winter you could hop between them and the trail to avoid the worst bits and reach a part that opened up into lumps of snow-covered rocks on a steep slope. While this still led into the avalanche chute, you now had the option of tiptoeing around the edge to reach the safety of the Plateau’s treeline. The tangled tracks bounded up and down this steep slope, so the snow bunnies clearly weren’t worried about an avalanche roaring down the creek. It seemed safe enough, provided I had enough stamina to clamber up steeper terrain than I’d ever snowshoe’d up before. I needed frequent breaks, but nonetheless I was soon walking across the Plateau in winter. I headed West, where I knew of a cliff that would net me an excellent view of the O’Hara valley while I took a short break and reassessed.

My situation was much worse than I had realized. I was down to two handfuls of trail mix, and maybe a quarter of a cup of water. That had to last for what was now a good fifteen kilometres of distance, four of which were snowshoeing over rough downhill terrain. The ascent had drained my “infinite” stamina, and it had barely recovered after the rest stop. But my GPS said I had maybe three hours until the sun set, and the mountains can subtract an hour off that. I had to average more than seven kilometres per hour, while tired and with no food or water to fuel me, if I was heading back to the car. Even if I pulled off that feat, my reward was over two hours of night-time driving while exhausted and barely able to focus.

Alternatively, I could head to the Elizabeth Parker Hut. Yes, that meant crashing someone else’s party, but this was turning into a survival situation. They’d almost certainly forgive my trespass, given the circumstances, and I’d probably enjoy swapping tales from the trail over some donated tea. The wilderness is always safer as a group activity.

My choice was obvious. I collected my backpack, grabbed my poles, and headed back to the car.

We’re still in the early days of researching how LLMs effect loneliness. Nonetheless, I think a picture is coming into focus.

Overall, the analyses showed that students who use chatbots are more socially disconnected than their peers. However, we also found that students who engage in casual conversations and seek emotional support from chatbots are even more socially disconnected than peers who do not use chatbots and more than those who use chatbots for utilitarian, goal-oriented purposes. The more socially disconnected students were more inclined to use chatbots upon situational feelings of loneliness, when in bad mood, and when feeling a need to self-disclose.

Arthur Bran Herbener and Malene Flensborg Damholdt, “Are Lonely Youngsters Turning to Chatbots for Companionship? The Relationship between Chatbot Usage and Social Connectedness in Danish High-School Students,” International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 196 (February 2025): 103409.

That is the best-conducted study I can find on the subject, and it finds chatting with a general-purpose LLM is associated with increased loneliness, not decreased. Whoops, but the evidence is the evidence, is it not?

Third, we prereg­istered hypotheses concerning why youngsters initiate conversations with chatbots. We hypothesized that loneliness predicts chatbot in­teractions intended to counteract loneliness (H3a), whereas low perceived social support predicts chatbot interactions intended to discuss one’s feelings (H3b). …

In other words, the findings suggest that individuals with higher levels of loneliness are more inclined to seek out chatbots when expe­riencing a situational feeling of loneliness. Likewise, students experi­encing less social support are more inclined to start conversations with chatbots when feeling a need for self-disclosure. A similar pattern was observed in the total group of chatbot users (…).

Ibid.

Alas, “correlation is not causation” has something to say here. Does chatting with general-purpose LLMs make people more lonely, or do lonely people gravitate to using general-purpose LLMs to alleviate their loneliness? Both would show up as a correlation, and yet both have vastly different implications.

Figure 1 from Herbener et. al (2025). It shows those who use conversational LLMs for social support tend to be lonelier and have less social support, but the effect appears small and the standard deviations are wide.

We’ve also got to be honest about the scale of the effect, it’s really not all that large. “Socially-supportive chatbot-users” means those students who treated the LLM as a social partner or called on it for emotional support, according to these researchers, and only a grand total of 39 students fit in that category. 174, in contrast, were “utilitarian” and only used the LLM like an encyclopedia or servant, and there were 1,365 “non-users” who hadn’t touched the things. Data was collected between December 2023 and March 2024, and to put that in context ChatGPT 4 was released March 2023 and 4 Turbo in November 2023. This was a golden period for LLMs, and yet we’re looking at minuscule changes that could easily be swamped by noise. Has there been a more recent study that better accounts for causation?

We found that increases in emotional isolation predicted significant increases in chatbot use 4 months later (…), consistent with the hypothesis that feeling lonely leads people to seek out chatbots. Importantly, after people increased their chatbot use, they reported increased emotional isolation 4 months later …

Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn, “How Does Turning to AI for Companionship Predict Loneliness and Vice Versa?,” Psychological Science 37, no. 4 (2026): 276–86.

There has, and it found using an LLM for emotional support is indeed linked to increased loneliness, not decreased. But again, the effect size is small. Interestingly, there was no statistical correlation between LLM usage and social isolation, “although the relationship was in the right direction” to suggest precisely that. More interesting for me, though, was Table 1 from the paper. The researchers looked at four distinct “waves” of cohorts that lasted four months, the first starting in November 2023 and the last ending in February 2025. Over that time, there’s very little change in the number who used it for social support. The number who never used it for that may have dipped to 70% in the last wave, but there’s no clear trend down. The fraction who turned to an LLM for that support multiple times a month, or more frequently, has remained stuck at 9% the entire time. It’s a common claim that LLMs only get better over time, and presumably that also means at least minor improvements in their ability to provide emotional support. So why wasn’t there a matching increase in those relying on it for that support?

Perhaps these things aren’t getting better, after all.

Participants were invited to the lab in small groups, where they completed a consent form and a pre-study survey, before being randomly assigned to one of three conditions. … In the human condition, participants were randomly paired with another participant in the session and instructed to begin texting each other daily for 14 days, starting the following day. … In the AI condition, participants were added to a private Discord chatroom with the chatbot Sam, sent one message to confirm the setup worked, and were instructed to begin interacting with Sam daily for the next 14 days. … In the control condition, participants were placed in a private chatroom alone and instructed to write a one-sentence summary of their day each day for 14
days.

Ruo-Ning Li et al., “Is a Random Human Peer Better than a Highly Supportive Chatbot in Reducing Loneliness over Time?,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 125 (July 2026): 104911.

I got that previous study from the citations mentioned in this one. This one seems rigged; didn’t we already discover that group Cognitive Behavioural Therapy was the most effective approach towards loneliness, and one-on-one interventions did poorly?

Participants who messaged with human partners reported significantly lower post-study loneliness (M = 1.85, SE = 0.03) compared to those in the control condition (M = 2.00, SE = 0.04), and compared to those in the AI condition (M = 1.98, SE = 0.04). In contrast, participants who texted with the chatbot did not report significantly different levels of loneliness than those in the control condition …

As an alternative measure of loneliness, we assessed perceived isolation (…). We found the same pattern as the loneliness results: only participants in the human condition reported significantly lower perceived isolation than those in the control condition (…), with no significant difference between the AI and control conditions (…).

We also assessed positive and negative moods both daily, as well as pre- and post-study (…). For positive mood, we again
found the same pattern. Only participants in the human condition showed greater increases in positive mood relative to the AI and control conditions (…), which did not differ from each other (…). For negative mood, however, we found that participants in both the human and AI conditions showed greater improvements compared to the control condition (…). We also assessed social support at the end of the study, which did not significantly differ across conditions (…).

Ibid.

And yet the LLM could not even perform poorly. The researchers also checked how empathetic the LLM was (more so than the humans, on average), and how engaged everyone was in their tasks (the LLM again had the greatest average level of engagement, while the humans usually engaged more with other humans than the LLM), though they also stress there’s a lot of noise and variance in those findings.

Can I find a study that suggests LLMs could help people become less lonely? Certainly!

In short, interacting with an AI companion improved their baseline loneliness levels on par only with interacting with another person, whereas a common technological alternative did not. Furthermore, participants underestimated the degree to which AI companions improved their loneliness relative to their true feelings after interacting with such AI.

Julian De Freitas et al., “AI Companions Reduce Loneliness,” arXiv:2407.19096, preprint, arXiv, July 9, 2024.

Small- or zero-effect sizes imply you’re going to get scientific studies with contradictory outcomes entered into the record, so I shouldn’t have difficulty finding studies which show LLMs help with loneliness. And yet, I do; the one I linked to above was the only clear-cut single study I could find, and it’s authored by economists with some serious methodological problems. Even that can only find that the equivalent of GPT-3 was about as effective as reducing loneliness as a one-on-one chat with a stranger, which again is one of the least effective treatments.

Findings indicate a generally significant positive correlation between AI use and loneliness (…). Specifically, interactions with physically embodied AI are marginally significantly associated with decreased loneliness (…), whereas engagement with physically disembodied AI is significantly linked to increased loneliness (…). Among older adults (aged 60 and above), AI use is significantly positively associated with loneliness (…), while no significant correlation is observed (…) in younger individuals (aged 35 and below).

Xu Dong et al., “A Meta-Analysis of Artificial Intelligence Technologies Use and Loneliness: Examining the Influence of Physical Embodiment, Age Differences, and Effect Direction,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 28, no. 4 (2025): 233–42.

This meta-analysis does show an LLM can reduce loneliness, provided you put it in a human-like puppet or toy that can be physically interacted with. The typical chatbot experience, in contrast, seems to make people more lonely instead, and that’s the picture that seems to be coming into focus.

How could that be?

What you do and where you are after you run out of water can dramatically shift your expected lifespan. Andreas Mihavecz’s was longer than eighteen days, but he was sitting in a room with a comfortable temperature and enough humidity for a tiny bit of water to condense on the walls. Add some activity, push the temperature to the extremes, lower the humidity, and your time can be up within ten hours.

almost missed it (2026): a photo of a trail signpost that's nearly been covered by at least one and a half metres of snow, with a tree just barely in frame behind it.

I was two hours from my car and surrounded by enough aerated frozen water to bury me up to my mouth, in some places. Dying of thirst was technically possible, but only with effort.

The forty days without food meme assumes plenty of water and sloth, which didn’t apply to me, and again: two hours. No, my primary concern at that point was a lack of cognition. Those hungry leg muscles needed fuel, so my body would starve my brain to satisfy them. But that meant I had a poorer grasp on reality, and was more prone to making terrible decisions, and those can be fatal even under the best of circumstances. You can mitigate that by bouncing your bad ideas off of others, but I was alone.

Cognition is kind of my thing, however, and I knew the area well. I could cope with a bit of self-inflicted stupidity. And so I headed back to the car.

As I swiftly strode back along the open Plateau, I finally ran into some of the bunnies! The four of us casually clomped towards each other, and I learned these “rabbits” were actually university students performing a hydrography study. It made me seriously reconsider my chosen area of expertise. My clock was ticking, alas, so I only enjoyed the companionship for a few minutes before I broke off to resume my thoughtless dash.

Half way down the access road, though, I noticed the front of my legs were moving funny. I had been generating a tonne of heat snowshoeing through the trees, but now that I was standing in a headwind those lightweight Nike trackpants weren’t enough insulation for my bare legs. My skin was starting to freeze. I pulled to the side of the road, carefully popped off my skis, removed half the contents of my backpack in small increments, and struggled to cover my thin trackpants with a thinner pair of snowpants.

By this time, exhaustion had been chewing away at me. I was seeing spots and feeling lightheaded, which meant slowing my descent to prevent injury. But I’ve never been a good skier, so that took a fair bit of physical and mental effort to accomplish, which in turn aggravated my vision and balance issues. Slowing down would also rob me of precious daylight. Balancing all that, after the equivalent of downing a few beers, took most of my concentration. The pause to insulate let me recover a bit, and rub some sensation back into the front of my legs, but it also lightened my cognitive load enough to allow for a proper assessment of the situation.

Would I live? Probably, but the sky had already dimmed noticeably and I was behind schedule. Would I have enough daylight to get to my car? Just barely, if I picked up the pace a bit. Would I encounter any wildlife? Some animals became more active at dusk, but if I kept my eyes up and periodically shouted a warning that shouldn’t be a problem. Would I enjoy the rest of the trip down? No, and I cursed the pause that had let me realize that.

I spent at least fifteen minutes sitting in the car, letting myself warm up a bit and puzzling out how to stay awake when every instinct told me to take a nap. That task would be much easier if I drove half an hour to Lake Louise, which had gas stations where I could refuel myself on expensive snacks. By the time I backed the car up to leave, it was pitch black out and impossible to navigate without headlights. I got damn lucky in Lake Louise, the attendants were debating whether to close early for the night when I pulled up to a pump. They instead got to listen to a tale of miraculous survival, while I stuffed myself with overpriced beef jerky and guzzled Gatorade.

I hope your fourth trip to Lake O’Hara looks a little less exhausting.

The Cold Calculus of Hiking

For part of the trip, I couldn’t decide which was the tougher scramble: Crowsnest Mountain or Mount Sparrowhawk. That debate was conclusively squashed in the crux of Crowsnest: picture a gully a few metres wide but a good dozen meters tall, filled with loose scree that makes grinding up the channel a slog, and sprinkle in a few upclimbs just to further piss you off. Those two metal chains did indeed make the near-cliff at the top of the gully easier to exit, but there was an awkward section between them with few good footholds. The angle of the rock strata was down-slope, too, which I noted would make that section extremely dangerous when wet.

I didn’t know the half of how treacherous it could get.

===

Weather reports in the mountains are like the Pirate Code. The mountains themselves cause weather and redirect the wind, and tend to be more prone to moisture and wind than the surrounding valleys, making forecasting difficult. I ruled out hiking in Lake Louise or Banff due to 50% chances of rain, but I thought Crowsnest Pass had a 0% chance of rain that day, which didn’t offer much room for a weather surprise. I later learned I’d misread the report and there was a 20% chance in the afternoon, but at worst I’d just have been more slightly more alert to the weather. I would have been on alert anyway, as the high winds of the Crowsnest Pass only make weather surprises more likely. Reading the conditions while on the hike is far more reliable, for obvious reasons, but when scrambling a mountain you spend most of your time with half the sky blocked by said mountain. As unreliable as they can be, weather reports are still vital.

Alas, the forecasts were wrong even before we stepped out of the vehicle. Webcams from the Crowsnest Pass region showed smoke-free skies the previous day, another plus over Lake Louise/Banff, but we arrived to find quite a bit of smoke in the air. To understand why that’s annoying, consider the view when there isn’t much smoke about.

A teeny bit of the view from the top of Mount Sparrowhawk. Click for a bigger version.

This is a small slice of what you see from the top of Mount Sparrowhawk. That long “lake” on the left is actually the Spray Lakes Reservoir, while the stubby one is Goat Pond. There’s a bit of Mount Lougheed in shadow, and dead behind it are The Rimwall (7km away), the Three Sisters (10km), Mount Rundle (25km), and Cascade Mountain (38km). All of those are beneath you! There may only be two mountains higher than Sparrowhawk visible here, Bonnet Peak and Mount Temple, and the closest of them is 70km away. That’s not my record for mountainspotting, but you get the point: clear air on a mountain top earns you spectacular views of distant scenery.

The view from the final ascent of Crowsnest Mountain.

Smoky air is more like this. The pretty boomerang is the Seven Sisters (2km away), the sun-kissed mountains are Allison Peak and Mount Ward (7km), and that black mass behind the Seven Sisters is part of the High Rock Range (no more than 15km). It doesn’t have the same impact, right?

It was a lot more alarming, though. This shot was taken above those chains, about 200m short of the summit, and the more I looked at it the more worried I got. The biggest tell for rain is dark tendrils coming down from puffy Cumulus clouds, because that’s precisely what you’re looking at. All that smoke in the air led to deep dark cloud shadows and poor visibility, though, blocking my view. I had to rely on more qualitative tells, which fell outside the frame of this shot: really tall Cumulus clouds and “smearing” that blurs normally sharp boundaries. Overall, I figured there was maybe a 30% chance the haze was hiding rain. On the other hand, those clouds had been building for hours and slowly marching towards us from the North. Shortly before taking this shot, I called an audible: we should turn back. The risk side of the equation outbalanced the reward, even though the flag was waving at us from the summit. There was no way I wanted to be caught between those chains in the rain. We were all hungry and tired from the grind, so I recommended a quick break for food and photos before we retreated.

Shortly after taking this shot, I saw a lightning bolt over Allison Peak.

As we raced back down, I first saw the first clear signs of dark tendrils rapidly coming at us from the High Rock Range, as well as an ominous white “fog.” The rest of the group were pressuring me to find shelter immediately; I agreed and had a place in mind, but it was past those chains. Maybe five minutes before reaching the pair, the wave of rain hit. It really brought down the temperature, and made it tough to navigate through wet sunglasses. There wasn’t much lightning, thankfully, but we couldn’t be more exposed. I almost led us into another gully to the West of the chains, but caught sight of a cairn and was able to steer us true. I was shouting directions to the rest of group as they descended down, as by this time the wind had really picked up. The white fog chose that moment to reveal it was actually pea-sized hail. Fortunately, I saw a ray of hope: there was a bright spot behind Allison Peak, where the sun appeared to be shining through the clouds. This nastiness would pass shortly, and if only briefly we’d have a window of better weather.

But that was only the first half of the treachery.

===

I have a reputation for being impervious to cold. But I’ll let you in on a secret: there’s nothing special about my body. I was that kid who had to come indoors after ten minutes in the cold, and eventually it pissed me off enough to try to find workarounds like how to dress in layers. That was so effective, I wound up ditching my winter coat in favor of a thin raincoat I’d layer over one or two sweaters and a shirt. I could easily adjust for the conditions, or swap out layers as they got wet. And it was cheaper than a proper coat! Nowadays, my standard hiking clothing is a thin exercise T for moisture wicking, a beat-up puffy fleece sweater for insulation, and said raincoat for wind protection. For the lower half, I wear convertible pants as shorts for the outer layer, with some thick tights for insulation and a pair of thick wool socks for either feet or hands.

My record for remaining comfortable in a T-shirt and shorts is 0 Celsius. But I managed that while snow-shoeing in a dense forest on a sunny day; there was no wind to accelerate the loss of heat, the sun was warming my skin, and the physical exertion was just able to compensate for what I was losing to the surrounding atmosphere. When you’re a cardio junkie with the resting heart rate of an athlete, “keep moving to stay warm” is easy advice to follow. It’s one reason why I rarely throw an extra layer on when I stop for a snack, because I know that any chill I get will be gone fifteen minutes after we move again. Conversely, if I threw on the layer I’d overheat at roughly the same time and be forced to stop and change.

So when I snapped that photo on Crowsnest Mountain, I was wearing only my wicking layer and shorts. By the time we reached the chains, what little body heat I’d earned from that exercise was canceled out by my wicking layer dutifully using the rain to rip heat from me. I instinctively stuck to the back of the pack, thanks to years of experience, but that also meant I had to sit tight while the rest of the group descended the chains one-by-one. I could feel my core temperature dropping.

Alas, the layer system has flaws. If there’s only a drizzle, throwing on just the rain coat may temporarily keep you dry, but as moisture accumulates the coat will cling to your skin and suck the heat out of you. The sweater usually fares better in the short term, but offers no protection from the wind and will eventually get wet enough to suck heat even faster. Combining both will overheat you and build up sweat, which again sucks the heat out. I’d wanted to try out a new coat aimed at this middle space, and intended to use it as my insulating layer in case things went sideways; instead, I forgot the coat at home. Everyone else had all their layers on, so my only option was the rain coat destined to cool me down.

And there was no place to run. I could try to work up some heat by marching up and down the mountain, but that would increase my exposure to a lightning strike. To my left and right were cliffs, and the descent would be slow, methodical, and destined to generate little heat. Chilling down isn’t just dangerous because it slows your movement or causes shivering, it also saps your brain power. You become less observant and make more mistakes, which could prove fatal when descending slippery rock. The rest of the group was also counting on my experience to lead them back down the mountain, so I had to stay sharp. And the cooler I got, the longer it would take to warm back up.

I was faced with a difficult decision: I could launch down the chains ASAP, or I could pause to throw on my rain coat and tights. The former sacrificed some cognition and increased the risk of an accident, while the latter allowed the rain more time to wet down my footholds and increased the anxiety of the group below. I let the hail bounce off my helmet for a few seconds as I weighed each option, and cursed my rotten luck.

A puny hail storm that I’d have shrugged off below treeline had just put me in one of the most dangerous situations I’d faced.

===

I reached for my coat. It felt wonderful to be protected from the wind. Unfortunately, trying to pull my tights over my pants and hiking sandals cost me a fair bit of time, and I could hear shouted inquiries from below when I finally reached for that first chain. I debated what to do about my gloves. They were intended to protect your hands while belaying, but had proven useful for scrambling. Now, they were waterlogged and cooling off my hands. I decided to leave them on anyway, as the rain was slacking off and they’d help me on the chain.

I wrapped the first chain once around my dominant arm, to maximize friction, and began carefully inch-worming down the line. I shouted back commentary as I descended the chain. Dangling off the end, I probed the very top of the awkward section. I found an unappetizing mixture of mud-like rock dust and slick footholds. By this time the hail had stopped and the rain was dwindling. The distant bright patch wasn’t the Sun breaking through the clouds, but it was still a rain-free oasis of thin cloud rapidly advancing on us. I called down to the group: I was going to wait between the chains for fifteen minutes, to give the rock some time to dry.

The rain faded away. The damp rain coat slowly sucked away my heat. I kept up a conversation with the rest of the group, unseen below. It soothed their nerves. It soothed my nerves. And it helped me assess my cognitive abilities. The others had made it down safely. They weren’t in the place I’d called a shelter, but they had sheltered and could wait. I meditated over the awkward few metres of rock below me. I hadn’t realized how narrow the walls were on the ascent. I could use that.

I grabbed the end of the chain again and probed. There was a teeny bit less moisture, but more importantly I could see my first few steps. My core temperature was cool but OK. I paused for a bit, contemplating, then called down: I was descending the tricky section.

I’ve never been interested in climbing, but I used to boulder a fair bit and had absorbed a few tricks. When faced with a chimney just wide enough for their bodies, climbers wedge themselves sideways and used friction to overcome missing footholds. The vertical rock was much less likely to be wet than the horizontal footholds, though the friction is strong enough that any wetness didn’t matter. I keep typing “footholds” instead of “handholds” because climbing is really about your feet. Your hands are there to help steady you against the wall and help distribute the pressure a bit, but to a first approximation climbing is just standing in places no sane person should.

Carefully, I tried to examine the rock for a potential foothold. I slowly probed with a foot until it touched potentially-friendly rock. I looked where it landed. I scraped around a bit, to clear off any water or mud-dust, and assess what sort of friction I could get out of the rock. I braced against the sides of the little canyon. I eased myself onto the foothold, not fully trusting it. When I was confident, I did the entire process again. And again.

Three metres down, I noticed the little canyon was getting wider. Bracing against the side was increasingly less viable, yet I was still a good two metres from the chain. A small wave of panic passed over me. I looked up and down the length of the mini canyon, debating if I should head back up or continue on. With a deep breath, I had a look down for my next foothold.

Then I blinked and was standing next to the chain. I’m not sure why I don’t remember those next few metres; I had successfully fought back that brief bit of panic, and while I was cold I still felt mentally sharp. Maybe I was so focused on the rhythm of easing myself down that I lost track of time? Whatever the case, I announced I was at the second chain and eagerly grabbed it. Thus began another rhythm: release dominant arm, awkwardly slide it down the chain, grip, release the other hand and slide it to meet, look for a place for one foot, look for a place for the other foot, repeat. Within a few minutes, I could see the rest of the group huddled below. Alas, it felt like forever until I was next to them; had someone moved the footholds I used to get up this section? It wasn’t a big deal given my body temperature, so I ambled down like I was pondering chess moves.

I checked in with the group, this time face-to-face. They were in much the same shape as I was, chilled but unharmed and calm. They had blasted through the awkward section without trouble, as they’d been too busy concentrating to let fear overwhelm them. I gave some pointers on how they should descend the rest of the gully, as scree made it terribly easy to send rocks flying into any person below. I took my time to grab a quick snack and readjust my gear, deliberately letting them get well below me. I could descend scree a lot faster than they could, though I kicked up a lot of rocks in the process. As started down I grumpily noted they weren’t sticking to my plan, but they had enough distance between them to be safe.

We reconnected at the base of the gully. The danger level was rising again: the trail split into multiple similar-looking paths, the bright horizon had again been replaced with dark shadows moving in our direction, yet we had one more down-climb left to do. This wasn’t over yet.

===

Just kidding, it pretty much was. That second rain burst was shorter and less intense than the first, with no hail and barely any lightning. It finished before we hit the second down-climb, and that section of rock was surprisingly dry. The rest of the group did try to pick the wrong trail, but after a bit of shouting and wild gesturing on my part I got us all back on what I remembered as the proper track. And my memories proved true.

As we made the final descent down steep scree to the safety of the trees below, the clouds parted and that smell you get from a freshly watered forest wafted up to us. The Seven Sisters were bathed in a beautiful light, the greenery was lusher than we remembered. I tried to rain on things a bit by pointing out that there was a chance the creek we needed to cross had become bigger, but it was unchanged from earlier.

We spent the hike back to the vehicle debating which mountain to try next week.

Cory Pass Loop

The Short Version: A bit less strenuous than the tin says, this hike will introduce you to a wide range of biomes and rock formations. It’ll also test your navigational and avalanche skills, so don’t let it be your first or shoulder hike.

13.4km distance, 1130m net gain, 961m peak-to-valley, 2376m max elevation, 6 hours.

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