Writer details exploits of more than four decades spent on horseback in the Columbia Valley high country
By Steve Hubrecht
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Readers with a taste for the backcountry will be delighted to learn about the launch of Canal Flats author Colin Cartwright’s third book A Trail That Needs Riding.
The nonfiction book is a collection of Cartwright’s best stories from more than 40 years spent on horseback, outfitting, packing and guiding deep in the Columbia Valley high country. Each chapter in the book centres around a different ‘trip of interest’, as Cartwright terms them, and each is accompanied by one of Cartwright’s poems. The poems, incidentally, do an excellent job of conjuring images of trail life into the heads of readers and are a real highlight of A Trail That Needs Riding.
“When I was on those trips, I kept a journal every day. So to write the book, I went back to the journals, re-read them and looked at some of the old photos I took, and it all came right back like it was yesterday,” Cartwright told the Pioneer.
The first chapter deals with Cartwright’s childhood in Canal Flats. He was on horses at a young age, and it wasn’t long before he yearned to head into the bush and alpine terrain in the Rockies and Purcells flanking the valley.
“Once I started heading into the backcountry, it just sort of got into my blood. I went up them all, from Dewar Creek in St. Mary’s Wilderness to Toby Creek in the Purcells, and just about every major drainage in between – the headwaters of the Skookumchuck, Findlay Creek, Dutch Creek, all of ’em. I went up most of the tributaries too,” said Cartwright. “On the Rockies side of the valley, it was up by Assiniboine, up the Simpson River to Bryant Creek to the Spray and Palliser. That was quite a loop. Another good loop, a fairly extensive one, was on the Purcell side: Findlay to Frying Pan Creek to Dutch Creek to Toby Creek to Panorama.”
These trips were anything but boring: snow in August, horses bogged in mud, having to cut trails through rough terrain, wet saddles, getting bucked off into the bushes, searching for lost horses, a grizzly or two, and an ill-advised attempt to put a halter on a moose (“it’s not a good idea, it doesn’t work,” said Cartwright of the halter-on-moose incident).
Aside from the poems and stories, the book included more than 30 black and white photos illustrating his backcountry exploits.
“Even people who have never done something like this will probably enjoy these stories,” said Cartwright.
Writing the book gave the author plenty of time to reminisce about the days when he frequently was 20 to 30 miles away from the nearest road, with nothing to tell him exactly where he was other than a contour map and his memory.
“The beauty of the thing is that when you’re in these places, up the top end of Dewar, Skookumchuck, Findlay or Dutch Creeks, there’s glacier and wildflowers all around. The beauty of the place is hard to describe, but it does affect you,” he said.
Being prepared on such trips was essential and you had to expect the unexpected, he said. Winter clothes were always packed, and everybody learned quickly to always carry two axes.
A Trail That Needs Riding came together with help from publisher Keith Powell in Cranbrook and came off the press several weeks ago. Cartwright has done a socially distanced book signing event in Canal Flats, but he said he probably won’t do too much more until the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is over.
Copies of the book are available at Lamber Kipp pharmacy in Invermere, or you can buy them from Cartwright directly by contacting him at 250-349-5203 or by email at [email protected].
