Copyright The Telegram (St. John's) 2003

Snow, ice and lots of wind -- sound like a typical winter day in Newfoundland? Maybe so, but add to that altitudes of 14,000 feet and above, and 200 pounds of supplies on your back, and you've got Shawn Stratton's dream vacation.

Stratton, a 28-year-old from St. John's, recently attempted to summit Mount Logan, Canada's highest and most technically difficult mountain, located in the Yukon's St. Elias mountain range.

ALTITUDE ESTIMATED

The base of Mount Logan covers more area than any other mountain in the world. Although the exact elevation is unknown, its estimated altitude is 19,550 feet, and only a few groups attempt to climb it each year.

Stratton and two friends -- Andrea Blaikie from Montreal and Nicole Blaser from Colorado -- formed one of this year's groups. The three instructors at the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) started their expedition at the beginning of May with an hour-long bush plane flight to the base of the mountain, at 9,000 feet, where they spent five days acclimatizing to the altitude. From there, they began the trek up the mountain.

"From the base camp, we moved camps up the mountain," Stratton said. "We carried 30 days worth of food with us -- almost 200 pounds each of gear. We'd move a load of food to a camp up the mountain, bury it, and then go back down to sleep. The next day we'd move up the mountain to the stash. We basically did that all the way up the mountain."

FOUR OTHER TEAMS

When Stratton arrived on the mountain, he learned there were four other teams of climbers ahead of them. The three quickly passed three of the groups, and met the remaining team at the most challenging part of the climb.

"These major icefalls had opened up because of the lack of snow this year, and there were a lot of crevasses," Stratton said. "This group had spent nine days scouting the ice falls and trying to figure out a way up. They couldn't figure it out so they decided to call it quits. After that, we were lucky enough to find the route up the mountain."

Stratton, who has climbed peaks in the United States, Nepal and India, says becoming the first team on the mountain was exciting but not an easy position.

"We were like, 'Oh no, now we've got to put the route in,'" he said. "It takes a lot of work. You're the ones that go out on a limb to try and find out if the bridge of ice is going to hold you or not, and everybody else can follow your path. It was fun though, knowing we were the first team up."

Once Stratton and his friends reached the halfway point of the climb, they decided to make themselves lighter by getting rid of some of their gear. Their sources of entertainment -- books, playing cards, a mini-disc player and a short-wave radio used to pick up the CBC and BBC -- were all buried in the snow with some extra food, to be picked up on the way down.

"After that, we were snowed in the tent for three days and had nothing to do," Stratton said with a laugh. "We counted the squares on the inside of the tent for hours. We got so bored that Nicole cut up pages of her journal to make a deck of cards. It was so cold that instead of having the traditional spades, clubs, hearts and diamonds, she drew hot themes: surfboards, bikinis, suns and flowers. We played gin rummy for most of the day, and shoveled a lot as well."

The mountaineers were forced to leave the confines of their tent in the midst of the storm in order to build a snow wall encircling the camp for protection from gale-force winds.

When the weather improved, the expedition continued. The group had been climbing for 17 days when they finally decided they had gone as far as they could go -- just 300 feet from Mount Logan's summit.

"We had to stop," Stratton said, with no disappointment whatsoever. "Another storm was blowing in and our visibility was reduced to about 20 feet. We measured the wind chill temperature at - 51 Celsius at that point. Also, we were running low on markers, which we had been placing in the snow every 100 feet or so, so that we could find our way back to camp. We knew that if we ran out of them we could easily get lost on the mountain and end up in big trouble. There were 1,000-foot cliffs on each side and it would have been easy to walk off the edge."

Stratton convinced his partners to begin their descent down Mount Logan, but not before taking some photos. He had promised RealTime Cancer founder Jeff Eaton, a long-time friend, that he would raise publicity for the charity by getting the RealTime Cancer logo as close as he could to the summit. Stratton posed for pictures wearing the organization's T-shirt.

When asked if he had been frightened at any point during his trek up Mount Logan, Stratton laughed.
"All the time," he said. "I think it's really important, maybe not to be scared, but to have a heightened sense of awareness of what's going on around you at all times, whether it be avalanches, crevasses, or just the weather."

Stratton is already planning his next expedition: a sea-kayaking trip around the northern tip of Labrador. Although he will continue his wilderness treks, he says he plans to slow down some time in the next three or four years.

"I have a dream of starting my own business, taking teenagers into the beautiful areas of the backcountry around the world," he said. "I plan to maybe settle down a bit, but right now I'm having too much fun!

"I tell people that I'm living my retirement now and I'll worry about making the money later."