My zipper is frozen. It scratches a welt in my cold cheek when I turn my head to speak and realize that Lorenzo has stopped down the path.
The others march dutifully up the snowy slope behind our guide and won't wait, but I turn around, grateful to stop. Fragments of an avalanche-preparedness lesson wind down the trail from above.
Lorenzo has removed his snowshoes, wool socks and brand-new boots and is sitting with bare feet in the air retaping his enormous blisters. My heart clenches. All this snowshoeing must be agonizing, but he looks at me and laughs sheepishly.
Our friends think we're heroic (or insane) snow camping for Lorenzo's birthday, but we know we're the weakest citified links in this chain winding up Diamondhead Mountain, just outside Squamish, B.C. “Just got back from safari in Africa,” drawls the elder of the father-son duo with us on the tour. His son is shifty-eyed and I suspect it was more of a sit-in-the-Jeep safari and less of a squeezing-water-from-cacti adventure. Lorenzo and I smirk and fall further back.
Our guide and avalanche rescue dog lead us to a clearing so steep that if I gave myself a push-start, I think I could slide down on my bum. This is a comforting thought. Maybe I can talk Lorenzo into doing this instead of schlepping back down in snowshoes tomorrow. We munch side by side in quiet companionship. The trees are weighted down with snow and with the mountain falling down beneath us and ice crystals swirling in the wind, it's a true winter wonderland.
The snow cave tutorial begins. The guide is digging snow from the hill, which she flings behind her, to the dog's delight, and he leaps to catch it tirelessly. I pull Lorenzo's arm to stop laughing at the dog and pay attention to the guide, who is steadily raising her voice in time with his dwindling attention span. She looks pointedly at us and I can tell she is resigned to digging our cave.
As daylight edges over the mountain, I have a sudden sense of urgency for shelter.
Lorenzo has a set to his shoulders that says he's felt it too, so we get to work. Single-mindedly, we dig. We dig until I'm sure my arms will fall off and we dig some more. The others tiptoe past our burgeoning cave and hurry back to their homesteads. I feel we've taken the lead and, smugly, I add a little swagger to my digging. Citify this, I think. We have built the Trump Towers of snow caves.
We collapse exhausted and admire our handiwork. There's a special quiet in a snow cave, like being underwater, as though the world outside doesn't exist. I feel a deep peace.
We eat dinner with the group and our guide offers one final gem. “The body expends important energy keeping urine warm. Don't hold it or you risk hypothermia!” she expounds over her onion soup, tuna and cheese mush. This is food you can eat only if you just spent an entire day digging and I watch covetously as I wait for mine, which is heating up in one of our brand-new camping pots.
Later, we are each wearing two pairs of wool socks, wool base layers, pyjamas, balaclavas and mittens to sleep. We are practically blue. Lorenzo squeezes into my bag and we suck in to zip up. Neither of us can move our arms and the tarp underneath is so slippery we keep sliding around, like a drunken snake, and the second bag slips off, so we're still cold.
We learn that the effect of our protein mush dinner is intense, overwhelming gas and spend hours tooting, then wiggling madly to get the smell out and laughing maniacally.
I awake alone much later to a strange sound. I sit up groggily. “Babe?” I whisper into blackness. No reply. My eyes adjust and I find Lorenzo crouching at the foot of the cave – peeing – into one of our brand-new pots. His eyes are frantically pleading for understanding – hypothermia! I crawl from the warmth and grab a pot. There are moments that define a couple, and as we sit over our new pots urinating and giggling, I'm overwhelmed with affection.
In the morning, as Lorenzo and I limp down the mountain, far behind the others, he turns to me. “I never understood the saying ‘Don't even have a pot to piss in,' before this trip babe, but now I get it.”
“Happy birthday,” I reply and we laugh down the mountain, through clear winter sunshine toward home, and more birthdays together.
Special to The Globe and Mail
