The Mountain Knows No Expert: George Evanoff, Outdoorsman and Contemporary Hero

By Mike Nash

Short-listed for the 2010 Banff Mountain Book Festival Competition

The Mountain Knows No Expert epitomizes George Evanoff’s philosophy towards the outdoors, while presenting an intriguing contrast with the man himself. Widely regarded as an "expert," he was a knowledgeable, experienced, and practical outdoorsman, teacher, and mentor, yet ironically lost his life in the mountains in an encounter with a grizzly. Son of a Macedonian immigrant family, George was raised in Alberta, and went on to become a mountaineer, guide, avalanche specialist, and pioneer in ecotourism in British Columbias North Rockies.

The many themes embedded in Evanoff’s life experiences encompass self-propelled backcountry travel, outdoor safety, avalanche safety and rescue, ski patrol leader, exploration and discovery, outdoor ethics, and public involvement with respect to land and resource use. George Evanoff was honoured in several tangible ways after his death, culminating in the naming of Evanoff Provincial Park in the Hart Ranges of the Rockies.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dundurn
• Release date: Feb 23, 2009
• ISBN: 9781770705128

Mike Nash

Mike Nash has 34 years of experience with outdoor and backcountry recreation in Prince George and northern British Columbia, and has been writing about the area in newsletters, magazines and a community newspapers for over a decade. Mike is the author of Exploring Prince George: A Guide to North Central B.C. Outdoors (RMB, 2007).

Book preview

Path of a Hero

Prologue

This book began as an idea while hiking with George Evanoff in Canada’s Northern Rocky Mountains on a Saturday morning at the beginning of the Thanksgiving weekend in 1998. Exactly two weeks later, on Saturday, October 24, George Evanoff died on a nearby mountain ridge after an encounter with a grizzly bear.

I mentioned the book idea to George Evanoff during that October 1998 trip — the last of many that we had taken together over a nearly twenty-year period. Then, before we had time to digest what we might be getting into, he was gone. The idea did not go away, however, and a few months later I met with George’s wife, Lillian Evanoff, his son, Craig Evanoff, and Craig’s partner, Bonnie Hooge, to talk about writing his story posthumously. Our first conversation took place after dinner in Lillian and George’s home where we reminisced over tea and a tape recorder about an individual who had inspired many outdoor enthusiasts in north-central British Columbia. Ten years on, the result is a book that tells the story of a man who began his time on earth with the free spirit of a first-generation rural Albertan, born of Macedonian immigrants in the 1930s, who went on to become synonymous with the outdoors in British Columbia. George Evanoff never lost his youthful spirit, and gave back to society in his later years for the inspirations and opportunities that he had received.

George Evanoff grew up in the small town of Edson in west-central Alberta, east of the Rocky Mountains and Jasper National Park. The North Rockies were central to George Evanoff’s being, as he spent the first half of his life living about a hundred kilometres to the east of them, and the latter part a similar distance to the west. These mountains provided him with a constant source of inspiration and fulfillment.

George’s story is also about role models and mentors, and their lasting impact on successive generations.¹ Several individuals helped shape the teenage George Evanoff in Edson. Among them was the Honourable Norman Willmore,² after whom Alberta’s Willmore Wilderness Provincial Park was named, and who first introduced George Evanoff to skiing in the mountains. During our first meeting in early 1999, Lillian Evanoff explained that Willmore definitely had a very big influence on George; he took any kids from the town of Edson who were showing sign of interest in skiing to hike up Whistlers, and later Marmot Basin in Jasper, before those areas were developed. George was amazed that this man would take the time to take him there. The greatest influence on young George Evanoff was his cousin, Bob Evanoff, who introduced George to fishing, hunting, and canoeing at an early age.

I knew George Evanoff during the last twenty years of his life, the period when he had the most impact on the outdoors people of north-central British Columbia. I met him at the tail end of the big-game hunting trips that he used to take in the mountainous wilds of northern British Columbia, adventures that honed his outdoor skills and backcountry ethic before he exchanged his rifle for binoculars and a camera. Years later, I retraced his steps to some of the remote places that he had been, on extended backpacking trips of my own, where I gained a deep appreciation of his exploits. You will experience some of these quests through anecdotes from George’s journals and hunting partners; and in George’s own words in the chapter, Dall Rams the Hard Way.

In the early 1980s, George turned his focus to introducing others to north-central British Columbia’s backcountry, just as Willmore had done for him. Notable in this respect were several week-long trips that he organized and led to the area known as Kakwa, which he later championed and helped to become a world-class Rocky Mountain park.

George Evanoff spent the first half of his life living a hundred kilometres to the east of the Rockies, and the latter part a similar distance to the west.

George Evanoff’s meticulousness and attention to detail were evident in everything he did. In going back through some of George’s files, Lillian commented that he planned every detail on paper, right down to the specifics of getting people in and out of the helicopter during a ski trip. I first encountered George Evanoff on such a trip in February 1979, when I participated in an avalanche course that he was teaching to backcountry skiers and search and rescue volunteers. I later assisted him with some of the avalanche and outdoor safety courses that he taught every year to increasing numbers of recreational and industrial backcountry users. Twice I found myself high on mountain ridges in arctic-like conditions, helping him to set dynamite charges to remove threatening snow cornices.

George had his fingers in many pies outside of his profession as an electrical coordinator for a pipeline company, but the one that stood out was avalanche safety. During the period from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, public appreciation of the risks posed by avalanches in British Columbia’s backcountry was not as high as it is today, and there were few avalanche-savvy people in north-central British Columbia. It is impossible to know how many lives George Evanoff saved through the know-how that he passed on, because you don’t hear about non-incidents. I do know that he influenced me many times to take a safer course in the mountains; yet he refused to allow anyone to call him an expert despite his considerable outdoor knowledge and experience.

George Evanoff and I were both members of the Prince George Search and Rescue group in the early 1980s, and I witnessed his unabashed joy the day after he found and carried two small, lost children out from rain-soaked bush during a tense night search. It was easy terrain by his standards, but because of the darkness and miserable weather, time was of the essence. I have no doubt as to the speed and determination with which he hit his assigned area, and his satisfaction with the outcome. Dave Snider was the search leader that night. An officer of the armed forces reserves and leader of a local cadet corps, Dave later told me of the sheer delight that George displayed when he emerged from the bush with the lost kids, and that joy was still evident to me the next day.

I was directly involved with George in the discovery and first exploration of Fang Cave in the McGregor Mountains. This discovery led to the establishment of Prince George as one of Canada’s foremost caving areas. According to Jon Rollins’s definitive book Caves of the Canadian Rockies and Columbia Mountains, Fang Cave is one of the finest caves in the Rockies. George and I also participated in nearly a decade of public land use planning meetings regarding an area similar in size and geography to the country of Switzerland. Throughout this process, George was soft-spoken and generally didn’t talk unless he had something significant to say. The effect was that the noise level in the room dropped when he took the floor as people strove to hear him.

I watched George Evanoff assemble and pre-build a ski lodge in Prince George in the summer of 1985, and I was there when it was flown to the site in the Rocky Mountains in the fall of that year. I took part in North Rockies Ski Tours’ first shakedown trip the following January when a valuable lesson was learned from an avalanche accident that took the life of a favourite dog named Wrex, and very nearly claimed George’s son and his partner.

I helped George on several trail-building projects, where I learned the essential art of self-preservation by keeping clear of him while he was swinging trail-clearing tools. One of George’s friends was not so fortunate, as George dropped a small tree on him while clearing the Gunn Trail atop the Fraser River cutbanks in the city of Prince George. Once, while cutting firewood, George told Lillian to take refuge in the cab of the company truck that he had borrowed for the occasion, and then accidentally dropped the tree squarely on the roof of the cab. Yet, like all those who helped him with his projects, I came to know the exacting standards that he demanded of himself and everybody else. I remember working with him on the new Torpy Trail in what is now Evanoff Provincial Park, where he made me bushwhack out at the end of the day, declaring (to my consternation): You can’t walk on the trail yet, it isn’t set!

I saw first-hand George’s self-proclaimed Evanoff Torture Test, as he invariably broke almost all new outdoor equipment that came his way, then later redesigned the items to create stronger and better products. More than one manufacturer of a tent or piece of outdoor safety equipment received an unsolicited letter and professional drawings from George for design improvements.

I watched him make a lightning fast recovery from the trauma of a serious head injury suffered during a fall on the job. I saw him steadfastly endure surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy treatments in a successful fight with colon cancer. It was only during the final days of his six-week radiation therapy in Vancouver that he was forced to cut back his daily regimen of hikes in the North Shore Mountains; instead he walked around the Stanley Park seawall, an activity that most healthy people would consider energetic enough. More than one physician attributed his successful recovery to his high level of fitness and his mental attitude, as he exemplified the use it or lose it philosophy of fitness and health.

George Evanoff was a friend with whom I could discuss things from a foundation of shared values. For these reasons, I have adopted a familiar style of biography, often referring to George by first name, and basing part of the latter narrative on my own personal experiences with him. By sharing with you a slice of the time that I, and others, spent with the man, I will give you a sense of who he was and how he touched those around him.

The opening chapter of the book takes place during the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend of October 1998, and the closing chapter narrates events just two weeks later on the nearby Bearpaw Ridge, east of Prince George. Together they cover a very small part of George Evanoff’s life — his last trip to his backcountry lodge, which I was privileged to accompany him on, and a fortnight later, his final walk alone into the mountains and the ensuing search for him, which I took part in. There is a risk that the dramatic events of his last mountain hike could subsume George’s story. Yet for George, a man who lived life in the outdoors to the fullest, what happened to him then could have taken place on any of a thousand other excursions that he had made; he certainly had more than a few near misses. The events of October 1998 were therefore an important part of a life spent walking towards that moment, and I have used them to frame George Evanoff’s story. One cannot know what went through the sixty-six-year-old’s mind as he lay mortally wounded on the Bearpaw Ridge, but he had twice said that his preferred place to die would be a mountain ridge.

I wrote the first draft of these two sections a few months after George’s death, while emotions were still high. The rest of the book was completed eight years later, with the dispassion that time provides. After completing several interviews for the book in British Columbia and Alberta, my life took new turns and another book struggled to the surface.³ While that book temporarily displaced the writing of George Evanoff’s story, it did introduce George Evanoff to its readers, with many index references and a first-edition cover photograph taken by him.

In early 2005, as my push to complete this book began, my wife commented that I was working on a biography of late local hero George Evanoff. My first reaction was that George, a modest a man who resisted being called an expert, would have rejected even more strongly the word hero. Yet, for the next few days the notion would not go away. I found myself asking, What is a hero, really? I found definitions that went beyond the customary ideas of mythology and battle. They included, legendary figure, a man noted for courageous acts or nobility of purpose, and a man noted for special achievements in a particular field. I thought of mythologist Joseph Campbell’s groundbreaking 1949 work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he introduces the hero story common to every human culture. The hero begins his journey as a youth, and inspired by a person or people of wisdom, begins an adventure of his own. In time, he returns transformed into a hero with the power to stimulate others to undertake their own journeys.

George Evanoff lived his own adventure, and later emerged as the hero ready to inspire others, such as students at the fledgling University of Northern British Columbia in the 1990s. Although I heard many snippets of George’s earlier life when I knew him, I didn’t really appreciate the bigger picture until I undertook this project. In that sense this work has been a revelation and further inspiration to me, as it may be to others who knew a part of George’s story.

One telling moment occurred in 1989 when I needed a trustee for an estate document. I asked George Evanoff if he would be that trustee, and after serious reflection he agreed. The lawyer with whom I had been dealing was not available when I went in to complete the documents, and instead I found myself in the office of the firm’s senior partner, Harold Bogle, a prominent citizen of Prince George. As he solemnly explained the importance of the choice of trustee, I had no reason to believe that he had ever heard of George Evanoff, and I was preparing to justify my choice. Then, giving me a cautioning look, he asked for the name of my nominee. His reaction caught me by surprise. His face lit up the instant I voiced George’s name and he said approvingly, Oh, George Evanoff’s alright!

This is the story of an ordinary man, born in rough-and-tumble rural Alberta in the midst of the Depression, a first-generation Canadian who instinctively and fearlessly lived his life well. As the book title suggests, George was not immune to mistakes, including perhaps a final misstep on the Bearpaw Ridge, but he was always willing to learn and to pass on what he had learned to others.

Drawing on the words of Bessie Anderson Stanley in her famous 1905 essay on success, George Evanoff left the world better than he found it. His ever-present smile or outright grin when in the outdoors indicated how much he appreciated the Earth’s beauty. He always looked for the best in others, preferring to keep quiet rather than speak ill of someone. He gave the best that he had, enhancing the outdoor experiences of others, and undoubtedly saving lives in the process. He was an inspiration to those who knew him.

For those who never knew George Evanoff, I hope that his story inspires you to experience and to enjoy life in Canada’s outdoors to the utmost, and especially to tread lightly on the land and in the wild mountain environments that we still have in Canada. That was George’s wish when we discussed this project a few days before his death.

Thanksgiving 1998

Chapter 1

The morning was clear and cool as we began an hour of bushwhacking to reach the mountainside. There were still yellow and green hues on the trees, and the vegetation carried just enough frost to get us wet without soaking us through. With winter approaching, the bush was quiet, apart from the sounds that we made pushing through it. George Evanoff had invited me to ski with him to his lodge in the Rocky Mountains northeast of Prince George on the Thanksgiving weekend. It was October 1998. Less than a day earlier I had been sitting in my office contemplating the long weekend. Not having any definite plans for Thanksgiving, I had imagined three relaxing days at home, with excursions to enjoy the dramatic fall colours of British Columbia’s interior.

The phone rang; it was George. What are you doing for the weekend? he asked.

Oh, nothing special, I replied.

Well, I’m going up to the cabin, he continued. Why don’t you come with me?

Already past his mid-sixties, and a recent five-year colon cancer survivor, George set a pace in the mountains that few people of any age in north-central British Columbia could match. More than a decade earlier, he had conceived of and built a backcountry lodge in the Dezaiko Range of British Columbia’s Rocky Mountains, northeast of Prince George. He used it as a base for a company that he called North Rockies Ski Tours. With his wife, Lillian, he had run commercial backcountry ski tours there for thirteen years. Later, his son, Craig Evanoff, took over the operation, renaming it the Dezaiko Lodge. In the winter months, George flew clients to the lodge by helicopter for four to seven days of backcountry skiing. During the rest of the year he made regular trips to the lodge, usually on foot, to check on the place, do maintenance work, cut firewood, or to just enjoy the mountain wilderness, its wildlife, and its solitude. Located more than fifty kilometres from the nearest permanent human settlement, the lodge’s further isolation from adjacent forest roads was afforded by steep, wooded mountain slopes, and high ridges that had to be traversed to reach the site.

I thought over George’s invitation. The trip to the lodge would mean racing around after work getting food and gear ready, and getting up at five o’clock in the morning for the two-hour drive east to the staging area. I didn’t think of it as a trailhead, as this would incorrectly imply the existence of a trail. The first part of the hike was a three-kilometre walk carrying skis through wet, recent-growth McGregor Valley jungle, where I had gotten lost a couple of years earlier. George had deliberately allowed what had passed for a trail to grow in and all but disappear. The approach hike would be followed by a 1,200-metre vertical climb through the forest, across alpine meadows, and over a ridge, where we expected to don skis for the six-hundred-metre descent to the lodge. We would be alert for grizzly bears as this was an area of frequent sightings, where I had personally had five close encounters in as many years, and George many more.

We would be prepared for winter weather — storms and whiteouts are common in the Rocky Mountains, but as George often pointed out, that’s how you get the good snow. Winter comes early enough in the north, and it is easy to question the desire to climb up to it while the valleys below are still green. Part of the motivation lies in the joy of walking in the season’s first embrace of snow and returning to the fall colours below; in this instance, visiting a well-appointed backcountry lodge added further incentive.

Thanksgiving weekends in the Northern Rockies can afford beautiful golden fall colours, with pleasant shorts-and-T-shirt weather and dry alpine meadows stretching to distant ridgetops that are brushed with a hint of white. Or they can produce a metre of new snow at alpine elevations, as was the case during the first hike to the newly completed lodge on the same weekend in October 1985. On that occasion George carried a seven-kilogram turkey up the mountain and all the way back down again after we were rebuffed by thigh-deep snow at the treeline. With several kilometres of higher and more exposed terrain still to cover, and with more precipitation in the forecast, there was a heated debate as to whether, having lacked the foresight to bring skis or snowshoes, we should turn back. With the group evenly split, it was agreed that we would wait for Craig Evanoff and his partner, Bonnie Hooge, who were coming up behind the main party, to cast the deciding vote. Those who favoured continuing on, including George, were sure that youthful enthusiasm would carry the day. In due course, however, Craig, who would later go on to become a certified ski guide, demonstrated that the wisdom of youth sometimes trumps that of age when he arrived with the deciding words, Are you guys crazy?

After carrying a large turkey up the mountain, George Evanoff argues in favour of continuing on before agreeing to abort the Thanksgiving 1985 trip to his just-completed backcountry ski lodge.

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving 1985, it had rained steadily in Prince George, but our minds had not been in winter mode, and nobody had thought of snow. Thirteen years later there had been a few days of cool, wet weather in town prior to Thanksgiving, which probably meant some new snow in the mountains. We wouldn’t know how much until we were there, but this time we would carry skis.

The deciding factor to accept George’s invitation was simply that I hadn’t seen much of him for several weeks. This would be a chance to renew our friendship in the type of mountain setting that was its foundation. As we drove out to the Rocky Mountains on Saturday morning in George’s truck, I pulled out a tape recording that I had made from a CBC radio show that had been broadcast a few weeks earlier. It was a chance recording of a fifteen-minute debate between two men who had each written books about bear safety. The authors had differing views on the subject, and the drive out to the Rockies that morning would be a good opportunity to listen to and discuss the debate with George. We had both had many encounters with black and grizzly bears, some of which were shared experiences.

We didn’t start the tape until we were close to the mountains and were driving along the Pass Lake Forest Service Road. As we listened, we were travelling beneath the Bearpaw Ridge where, just two weeks later and a few hundred metres above us, George Evanoff would encounter a grizzly bear that was defending a moose carcass. A few months earlier, he had been appointed as a lay expert in a University of Northern British Columbia grizzly bear study in the northeast Rockies,¹ recognizing a lifetime of experience gained in the mountain backcountry. George discussed his thoughts about bears as we listened to the tape.

In his later years, George did not feel that it was necessary to carry a firearm for defence in grizzly country, although an entry in one of his journals suggests that he may have felt differently during his big-game hunting days.² He knew from experience that you would have to be both skilled and very lucky to use a gun successfully in a surprise encounter with a grizzly bear. But neither did he carry bear spray, which is considered to be a very worthwhile grizzly bear deterrent. I later discussed the circumstances of George’s death with one of the men we had listened to on the tape recording, a man widely regarded as Canada’s foremost grizzly bear expert.³ He told me that while bear spray is somewhat effective in the case of females defending their young, it is really dicey in carcass situations. He stressed that there is an irreducible bottom line with grizzly bears.

In the twenty years that I knew George Evanoff, we talked many times about his experience with wildlife and his feelings about bears. He respected them, and he was not generally afraid of them. That was not always the case for me. I grew up in England, a country where there aren’t any dangerous wild animals, and despite thirty years of roaming Canada’s bear country, I have never quite overcome this aspect of my youth. I have had many grizzly bear encounters that I excitedly described as being close, ranging from a few hundred to only a few metres. During some of those encounters, I was travelling with George. That wasn’t close, I don’t know what you’re so worried about, he once told me. But George did occasionally worry about being too close to a grizzly. His neighbour, Bob Wiseman, recounted one such incident to me that took place in the Blue Sheep Lake area of northern British Columbia. Like the Bearpaw Ridge, it involved a carcass.⁴

At least one other encounter gave George pause during his final hunting trip to the Kusawa/Takhini area of northwestern British Columbia, when he walked alone without his rifle down the valley from his camp to look for two companions, Laurie Marquis and Fred Wuertch, who were scheduled to fly in later. That evening George wrote in his journal:

August 19, 1977 (Kusawa/Takhini): Went down valley about 1730 [hours] to see if Laurie and Fred were coming. Watched for them about one and a half miles below camp. Didn’t see them so headed back at 1830. Seen a cow moose and a grizzly one and a half miles from camp — no rifle!!!!! Saw a goat across valley from camp. Fred and Laurie arrived about 2000 hours, tired and hungry. Fed them goat stew and meat. Stayed up quite late around fire. Didn’t sleep good thinking about the grizzly.

George’s matter-of-fact writing style belies the intensity of this bear encounter. He had once related this story to me, describing with feeling how he was a good distance away from his hunting camp without his rifle, sitting beside a creek, when suddenly a grizzly bear appeared on a large rock only a few metres away. His written account understates the anxiety that he must have felt at the time, and that clearly lingered well into the night.

We put the tape aside as we neared our destination. Passing through the McGregor Mountains, we parked the truck on a side road below the Dezaiko Range of the Northern Rockies, and started our approach hike. Because of the early morning frost on the vegetation, we didn’t get too wet. After the first hour, we entered the mainly primordial forest on an old horse trail that had been built some thirty years earlier by guide outfitter Clarence Simmons.⁵ Once we were under the cover of the old trees, where the vegetation changes more slowly over time than in the open, our route became much more distinct. We arrived at a familiar stream crossing at the bottom of the gully that led up the mountain, and we each found a different way to cross according to our individual temperaments. George took the most direct route, moving with a sure foot over a slippery log. I can almost hear the words of his childhood mentor, his cousin Bob, admonishing him: George, do not hesitate. I gave the problem more thought, and hesitantly worked my way upstream over moss-covered rocks and woody debris to make a precarious crossing on slippery rocks. George’s temperament, born of experience and confidence in the outdoors, was to just go for it.

George’s patience in situations like this stood in stark contrast to the restless energy that he exhibited in almost everything else that he did. The first ski trips that I had done with him nearly eighteen years earlier were taken at a time when I was ill-equipped and inexperienced in steep terrain. He would sometimes wait for me for what must have seemed like hours to him as I struggled up or down the mountain. I often wondered where his patience came from. Perhaps, someone who knew him well once confided to me, he’s worn out so many prospective hiking companions that he’s learned to be patient with those who remain.

The trail climbed steeply up the ridgeline to the east of the gully, and we paused partway as a golden eagle sailed past us up the draw. The previous evening, I had dreamt of a golden eagle perched next to me as I sat with a companion on the edge of a steep gully or valley. The bird in the dream was brightly coloured, although these eagles are not; yet for some reason, in the hazy world of sleep, I knew it as a golden eagle. To the best of my recall, I had never dreamed of an eagle before, and I couldn’t remember a dream object being so vivid.

We continued climbing. For nearly twenty years, I had been writing for various publications, and for some time I had harboured the idea of writing a book. Several topics had eddied around, but nothing definite had settled out. As we climbed the mountain in the quiet, crisp morning air, a thought hit me with sudden clarity. My book would be a biography of this man I was travelling with. I was taken aback — where had that idea come from? This was not the first time I had a flash of insight on this route — another had occurred while climbing alone on a Friday evening, an hour away