No Place for Wolverines

by Dave Butler

  “You’re running a rogue investigation because of worries over political interference, due to concerns that the Collie Creek project might be crammed through review processes at the expense of the parks. Am I right?”

  “That’s it in a nutshell, although I’m not sure I would use the term rogue. If what you’ve heard concerns you in any way, I can understand if you don’t want to work with me on this.”

  Willson lifted her eyes from her cup to see Berland grinning at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “That’s it? That’s the big secret?”

  “That’s what I couldn’t tell you.” She saw that his grin had widened. “You’re not taking this seriously, Mike. Do you think I’m kidding you?”

  “I don’t think you’re kidding at all. I think it’s funny that you seem concerned about how I’d react to this. If anything, it makes me feel proud of you, for what it’s worth.”

  “Why the hell do you say that?”

  “Because I was worried that I was dealing with a do-gooder park warden who always follows rules and doesn’t ruffle any feathers. Now that I know what you’re really like, that you’re willing to operate in the shadows with the rest of us to uncover the facts, we might actually get somewhere.”

  “You’re not concerned?”

  “Not at all,” he said, leaning back again into the soft couch. “In fact, I wondered if that was what you were up to when we talked in Boise. Otherwise, it all seemed too pat, too sterile. I could tell there was something more.”

  “That’s good, then. I’m glad that’s out of the way.” Willson felt relief, yet at the same time foolish for worrying that the truth might send Berland packing. She realized that their jobs had much more in common that she’d originally thought. Her idealistic, single-minded focus on protecting the parks at all costs had clouded her judgment. It was, as they say, a learning moment.

  “Do your bosses know that you’re proposing to work with me like this?”

  “My Banff boss told me not to when I mentioned it to him, but he won’t be surprised that I’m ignoring him. The other knows nothing besides the fact that I might work with the RCMP on their investigation. I hope like hell that my read on you is correct, Mike, because I’m going out on a limb here.”

  The only sound in the room was a clock ticking from the kitchen, measuring the passing seconds as Willson watched Berland.

  “I’m not happy with it,” said the journalist, “but you can count on me, Jenny.”

  “Excellent,” she said, then stood and headed to the kitchen. “Let’s get this show on the road.” She opened the fridge, but paused for a moment. That was easy, she thought. Almost too easy. She grabbed two cans of Soggy Otter brown ale with her right hand, let the door bang closed behind her, and pulled two frosted beer mugs from the freezer. She walked back to the living room, her thick wool socks whispering across the wood floor, and passed Berland an icy glass and a can. After both glasses were full, they knocked them together with a satisfying clink. “To the success of our partnership,” said Willson, staring into Berland’s dark eyes.

  “And may our combined efforts finally put Stafford Austin behind bars, where he belongs,” said Berland in return, staring back at her. “Here’s to the death of the project — slow and painful, or quick and excruciating, it matters not to me.”

  “I’ll drink to that.”

  And they did.

  “Now that’s out of the way, you asked who was responsible for the violence,” Willson said.

  “I did. What do you think?”

  “Well, we don’t know yet. Ben Fortier and I have been over it a dozen times. We’ve looked at many scenarios. It could be Austin and his people trying to scare off or get rid of opponents. It could be any one of a number of anti-resort folks, trying to make the project go away. Or it could be some combination of the two, with both sides trying to dissuade, discredit, or scare the shit out of the other. With you here, we can focus more on motive.”

  “The list of suspects seems long.”

  “It is. Have you dug up anything more on Austin since we talked in Boise?”

  “Not as much as I’d like, but I do have a couple of interesting things for you.”

  He reached into his computer bag and pulled a file folder out. “Remember when I told you I’d heard Austin had been involved in something in South America?”

  “Yeah …”

  “Well, I did some digging. It turns out that Austin was part of a group of businessmen who tried to set up a new ski area in the Andes, in Chile. It was going to be a major competitor to the area’s other resort, Portillo.” Berland handed clippings to Willson from the El Mercurio, the main newspaper in Santiago.

  Willson flipped though the clippings. “I can’t read any of this, but I see Austin’s name mentioned once or twice. What does it say?”

  “Here are the translations,” he said, passing several typed pages to her. “I’ll let you read them in detail later, but in short, it seems that Austin and his colleagues persuaded a bunch of investors from Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay to invest in the project. But it went belly up. Nothing was ever built, and all the money disappeared. Around that time, Austin moved back to the U.S.”

  “Really? Were charges ever laid … or whatever happens in the Chilean legal system?”

  “Not that we can tell, from the newspaper reports. I tried to reach the federal prosecutor who was named in the articles, but he’s retired. No one seems to have followed up since then. It’s like it never happened.”

  “I bet the people who lost money don’t feel that way …”

  “I bet they don’t. But it’s been five years now and I can’t find any information beyond the newspaper reports.”

  “What’s your next step?”

  “I only got these clippings last week,” said Berland, “so one of the things I want to do now is to see if I can find any of the jilted investors. Perhaps they can tell me more about how the project was set up and what happened.”

  While Berland talked, Willson visited the kitchen again for a second round of drinks.

  “You don’t think Austin is doing the same thing here, do you?” she said, handing Berland another beer.

  “I have no idea,” he said after taking a long sip of the icy brown ale. “It’s a different jurisdiction down there, with different rules and a very different legal system. But it sure raises a fascinating question, doesn’t it?”

  “It sure as hell does.”

  The sun had dropped behind the Purcells, and a light beside Willson clicked on; the lamp was on a timer. It bathed the room in a warm orange glow.

  “What was the other thing you discovered?” asked Willson.

  Berland smiled. “It was the lucky result of online sleuthing. I found the name and contact information for one of Austin’s three ex-wives. She’s in Salt Lake City. It took me a while to find her because she went back to her maiden name after the divorce. We’ve since traded emails and she’s willing to talk. It’s obvious that she doesn’t harbour any warm and fuzzy feelings for her ex.”

  “Now we’re talking,” said Willson, raising her glass toward Berland. “You might bring some value to this partnership after all.”

  Berland laughed. “Your confidence in me is overwhelming.”

  “No problem.” Willson stood and stretched. “How about I show you your room? I warn you, though, this is no Château Lake Louise. While you get settled, I’ll order us a pizza. Any toppings you don’t like?”

  “Anchovies and olives disgust me, but other than that, I’m happy with anything.”

  “Extra anchovies and olives it is.”

  Three hours later, after they’d rehashed everything over pizza and more beer, Willson chose to call it a night. “We have to be at the helipad by eight a.m. for a safety briefing, so it’s time to hit the hay.”

  “Helipad?”

  “Yup, we’re gonna fly in to get a good look at Collie Creek and the area of the proposed resort. That’s why I
asked you to bring winter gear with you. One of my colleagues is doing a field inspection of the area, so she asked me to come along. I told her I had a friend who wanted to join us. Lucky you!”

  “Fly there? In a helicopter? I thought we’d be driving …”

  “Most of it’s inaccessible by road.” She saw a new expression on Berland’s normally calm face. It wasn’t confidence. “You’ve been in a helicopter before, haven’t you?”

  “Uh, no … and I don’t really like flying.”

  “Well, then,” said Willson with a grin, “this should be a treat for both of us.”

  CHAPTER 20

  APRIL 3

  The Bell 206 JetRanger lifted off from the helipad, dropped its nose to gain airspeed, then climbed slowly, heading northeast. The silty waters of the Kicking Horse River passed below them, as did the old houses of the Swiss mountain guide’s village on the bench to the north of town. The helicopter passed through a short patch of grey valley fog, the landscape disappearing and reappearing. It then headed up Hospital Creek toward Mount McBeath.

  Willson sat behind the pilot and Tara Summers occupied the seat beside him, a topographic map spread across her lap. Willson could see only the back of Summers’s toque-covered head; the headset gave her a set of giant mouselike ears. Willson’s own earphones muffled the sounds of the roaring engine and the spinning rotors, but her thoughts were on her father’s last flight to Golden, perhaps in this very machine. She’d been in helicopters many times over her career — rescuing injured climbers, searching for lost hikers, relocating problem bears — but no matter how hard she tried to focus on other things, her mind always shifted back to her father on the way to hospital after they’d pulled him from the icy river, lying on a stretcher on the aircraft floor, attended to by paramedics. Had he still been alive at that point? Had he been frightened, in pain? Did someone hold his hand to comfort him? Had he thought of her and her mother in his last moments?

  Willson suddenly heard a loud gasp through the headset that roused her from her memories. She looked to her left to see Berland’s eyes wide, his face pale, his hands gripping the seat on either side of him. She keyed the intercom with her left hand. “How are you doing over there, princess?”

  “Holy shit,” said Berland, “I was okay until we almost hit that mountain.”

  “No worries,” said the pilot, chuckling, “that was Moberly Peak. It was at least five hundred metres off our port side.”

  “Jesus,” Berland said. “I have no idea what a metre is, but that wasn’t enough of them for my liking.”

  “C’mon, Mike,” said Willson. “Sit back and enjoy the ride. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the helicopter, now at an elevation of 2,700 metres, passed Amiskwi Peak on the left and entered the airspace over Yoho National Park. When the ground dropped to the headwaters of the Amiskwi River nearly nine hundred metres below them, Willson heard another squeak from Berland. “Almost there, Mike,” she said. She smiled and patted his leg. “That’s Mont des Poilus off our nose to the right, about one o’clock. It’s right in the middle of where we’re heading.” Berland grimaced and looked down at the floor.

  “We’ll do a few circles of the whole area first so I can get some pictures,” said Summers, her voice vibrating in synch with the machine, “and then we’ll set down at the site of the proposed resort.”

  Summers directed the pilot through an aerial tour, stuck the lens of her camera out the open sliding window on the door, and snapped pictures of the area. Whether they wanted it or not, she provided a constant running commentary. Because her microphone was near the window opening, the passing air hissed loudly in their ears, at least until the pilot asked her to push the microphone to the top of her head. Willson basked in the welcome silence.

  On their left were the pyramidal shapes of Arete Peak and Mount des Poilus, which shared the same ridgeline. From this elevation, it was hard to tell which of the two was taller, but Willson knew des Poilus won the competition by a hundred metres. It was one of the highest points in the area, and it was also the proposed location of the topmost lift tower in Austin’s scheme. With a poke in the ribs, she tried to get Berland’s attention so she could point out the Mountain Club hut on a spur below them. But with a shake of his head, he refused to lift his head or open his eyes. Instead, he slumped forward as if praying, hands clasped together, elbows on knees.

  Shifting in her seat to look out the window on the right side of the aircraft, Willson blinked and then pulled on her sunglasses as the helicopter flew out over the blinding white expanses of glaciers and icefields that formed the north boundary of Yoho. Fittingly, the name meant “awe” in the Cree language. She saw a world of snow and ice, rocky ridges, and gaping crevasses. It was a wild world where winds blew cold and unfettered, a world inhabited by wolverines, mountain goats, hawks, eagles, and the occasional group of backcountry skiers on the multi-day Wapta Traverse.

  In a gap between Mounts des Poilus and Collie, they got their first full view of the entire drainage of Collie Creek, from its upper headwaters to where it joined the Blaeberry River twelve kilometres to the north. The upper portions were rock and snow, the middle was a patchwork of subalpine forest bisected by avalanche paths, and the lower valley were roads and regenerating cutblocks, their rectangular shapes and dense greens differentiating them from the uncut forests around them. Willson tried to imagine Collie Creek scarred by paved roads, hotels, condos, lift towers, and, if Austin’s proposal was to be believed, thousands and thousands of skiers. I can’t let that happen, she thought. I can’t and I won’t.

  At Summers’s request, the pilot turned to the north, skirting Ayesha Peak, and then began a gradual descent down the path of the Ayesha Glacier. Circling to the left, they dropped into the upper basin of Collie Creek, and at about 2,200 metres elevation they landed beside a frozen lake. The blades threw huge circles of snow up around them. Using full power, the pilot moved the helicopter back and forth into the snow to stabilize it; the settling protectors on the skids ensured it wouldn’t sink too deep. Willson and Summers knew what he was doing, but when Willson looked over at Berland, he looked terrified.

  When the pilot was satisfied that the aircraft was safe and stable, he wound the engine down, but told his three passengers to keep their seat belts on until the rotors had stopped.

  When all was quiet and the pilot had given them the thumbs-up, Willson opened the door on her side and stepped down, first to the step on the skid, then into the thigh-deep snow. She thrashed back to the cargo bay in the tail boom of the helicopter and pulled out their packs and three pairs of snowshoes. By the time she waded around to open the doors for Summers and Berland, the reporter had already leapt out of the cabin as if to get as far away from the machine as he could. He looked up at the two women from where he lay on his side in the deep snow, the relief in his face palpable. “I’m going to fucking walk back to Golden from here,” he said. “Don’t even try to talk me out of it.”

  Three hours later, the trio had tramped nearly the full length of a gravel moraine freed from snow by the sun, with Summers providing a running commentary on the locations where the lift towers, lift lines, ski runs, and resort base were being proposed. The west side of the ridge on which they stood, she explained, would be the site of an upper village, a small development with a restaurant and hotel beside the still-frozen lake, linked to the rest of the resort below by a gondola. Like many resorts in the border regions of the Alps, the lifts proposed here would rise to the peaks and ridges to the south of them, then continue down onto the glaciers beyond. In the Alps, skiers could start their day in Switzerland, ride a lift to the border, ski down into Italy or France for lunch, catch a lift back to the border again, and then ski back to Switzerland in time for dinner. In Collie Creek, skiers would move back and forth between Crown land in B.C. and Yoho National Park, similarly using lifts and ski runs on both sides of the park border.

  As Willson and Summers worked
their way along the ridge, talking and pointing and consulting maps, Berland followed behind them, casting suspicious glances at the waiting helicopter. He’d said little since they’d gotten out and seemed content to take pictures and scribble in a Moleskine notebook.

  “What’s up with all the shooting and writing?” Summers asked, glancing over her shoulder.

  “I’ve never been in a place like this,” Berland said, with a quick look at Willson. “I want to remember every moment. I can sure as hell see why these guys want to call this Top of the World.”

  Willson stopped when she spotted a set of tracks in the snow. “Wolverine,” she said.

  “How do you know?” asked Berland.

  “From the size and shape of the tracks and their location, I’m guessing it’s a male heading from the Yoho River drainage north into Collie Creek and the Blaeberry.”

  Berland looked at the wilderness around them. “What the hell is he doing way up here?”

  “He’s probably visiting one of his lady friends. This is his world — the bigger and wilder, the better. The biologists call wolverines an indicator species, because if they’re around, it means things are still wild. But if Austin’s vision comes to fruition,” said Willson, shaking her head in disgust, “it’s going to look like friggin’ Zermatt up here. And it will be no place for wolverines.”

  “Zermatt is the model Austin’s using,” said Summers. “He says there’s nothing like it in Canada, so people will come from all over the world to experience it. It’ll have the greatest elevation difference from top to bottom of any Canadian ski resort, and where we’re standing will be the highest on-hill accommodation. It will all be accessible by an interconnected network of lifts. According to Austin, that is.”

  Now back on snowshoes, Willson shuffled closer to the edge of the slope and looked at a large flood plain three hundred metres below them, where Austin was proposing to build the main resort village. It was a large and flat and gravelly, with a creek braided through it, and had clearly been under a glacier in the not-too-distant past. As she studied the narrow valley, she caught a flash of movement on a ridge on the far side. “Look!” she said, pointing.