Looking back on Black Friday

The song "Tornado '87" by The Rural Alberta Advantage has been popular on the radio lately. It's about the tornado that hit Edmonton on July 31, 1987, known locally as Black Friday. It's the 24th anniversary of the tornado and that song got me thinking back to that day...

I was five years old at the time. My family had recently moved from north-central Edmonton to the Mill Woods area in south Edmonton. I was fairly young at the time so I'm sure some of my memories of that day have become exaggerated or fuzzy, but I'll try to recount it.

My mom took my brother and sister and I to the playground that morning. It was a hot day, and the clouds looked yellowish. I don't remember this, but my parents told me this part.

Later at home, storm clouds rolled in. They got so dark, it looked like night outside. I think I had to be reminded that it was still the afternoon. There was a thunderstorm, and somehow (either by radio, phone, or TV) we heard that a tornado had touched down. I had never heard of a tornado before. My parents explained what it was and what to do if one came near the house--go to the basement. I remember being scared. After all, I was a five-year-old kid who just learned that wind can get so strong it can destroy a house and kill people. (I'd probably heard the story of the Wizard of Oz by that time, but maybe the story didn't make me realize how bad tornadoes really are.)

The tornado didn't come anywhere near our house but it did hit the other end of Mill Woods. After the storm let up, my dad went out for a drive. He may have been bringing some things to donate to victims of the tornado, or maybe he just wanted to survey the damage, but if that's the case I'm pretty sure he made some donations later. The rest of us stayed inside. I was scared to go outside, and I think I was scared for my dad too, but by then I'm sure he knew the tornado was nowhere near our house. I remember him coming back in the house with a hailstone he found in the yard. I think it was close to the size of a baseball, but maybe my memory is exaggerated. (Everything seems bigger to young kids.)

Another day my family went for a drive to see some of the damage near the edge of the city. All I remember was seeing one of those large metal power poles lying in a crumpled heap. That tornado was powerful.

According to Wikipedia, mayor Laurence Decore said the city's response to the tornado showed that we are a "city of champions." Later, that became Edmonton's official slogan. (That same year the Oilers won the Stanley Cup and the Eskimos won the Grey Cup, so the slogan may have also referred to those champions, and that seems to be what most people think of now.)

My family was fortunate. The worst thing that happened to us was damaged shingles, and insurance covered that. Some people lost their lives or the lives of loved ones. But tragedies like these can bring out the best in a community. This photo (with a rainbow in the background--the colouring is kind of weird) shows a sculpture in Hermitage Park in east Edmonton, called "Pillar of Love," made in memory of that tornado. It shows five people linked together, all supporting each other, but the base doesn't consist of their legs. Instead, their bodies all merge into one pillar, "unmovable and steadfast," in the words of the sculptor.

Lost on Yamnuska

On the Canada Day weekend, I went camping in Kananaskis with a group of friends. On the Saturday, several people went for a long, tough hike, but a few of us decided to go for something slightly shorter and easier. Not necessarily easy, but we wanted to have supper at a decent time and one person (Sacha) wanted to get back to Edmonton that evening. So, on the advice of some of the people doing the longer hike, six of us went to climb Mount Yamnuska (also known as Mount John Laurie).

There are basically three different ways that a person can hike this mountain. They can hike part way up (maybe up past the treeline, maybe to the first part where they can see down both sides of the mountain). They can hike all the way up to the summit and back down the same route. Or they can hike to the summit and take an alternate route down, which is shorter but involves some scree slopes (which would be very difficult to climb up). We planned to go the third way, and that was our undoing.

We started off hiking uphill through a forest and eventually got above the treeline. It's a beautiful area, and the hike gets more interesting once it goes above the treeline. We passed some people rock climbing using ropes and continued up the non-cliff side of the mountain. It's a long, narrow mountain, so we got to a place where we could see down both sides of the mountain and had a 270° panoramic view well before we got to the actual summit.

Continuing from there, there's a lot of rock to climb, but nothing that a person would need ropes for, except at one place where there's a narrow ledge to walk along. There's a cable permanently fastened above the ledge to hang on to.

Finally, we got to the summit.

By then we were all pretty low on water, but we were expecting a quick descent down the scree slopes and back to the parking lot. After hanging around the summit for a little while, we continued along the trail that started down the back side of the mountain toward a scree slope.

As we made our way down the slope, my wife Cathy was the slowest one, so I slowed down so I wouldn't get too far ahead of her. Eventually we got down to where two more people, Erin and Beth, were waiting for us. They said Nick and Sacha had gone ahead so that Sacha could get home faster. So we continued down the slope looking for a clear path. We thought we should probably turn right sometime, since we'd have to climb back up to get to the front of the mountain if we turned left. No clear trails emerged, but we found some reasonably clear routes that sort of resembled trails. Around that time, we met another couple that was hiking the same route.

We continued through the woods for over an hour with the people we just met, and we could see that we hadn't got all that far along the mountain. We hadn't even found a real trail. If anything, there was less of a trail here. It was going to take a while to get around to the front. I was the only one of the four of us who had a cell phone there. I pulled it out of the bag and turned it on, but we were barely in range so I couldn't make a call. Cathy suggested moving to higher ground so we could get a better view of our surroundings. So we headed uphill. There were more short plants in that direction, so our walking got slower. We started to wonder how long this would take to get to our cars. Cell phone service improved, so I phoned a friend who was hiking the other trail. He was back in cell phone range by this time, so he answered the phone. He'd done this trail before, but when I described where we were, he had no idea where we should go. I told him that we couldn't find any trails, and just in case he didn't hear from us by 7 or 8 pm, he should call for help. We knew where we were; we just weren't sure how long it would take to get out. Fortunately the weather was good so we weren't cold. We were getting thirsty (we were out of water), but fortunately the weather wasn't sweltering hot either.

As we got to higher ground, we could see the ridge that juts out that side of the mountain. One of the people who was lost with us suggested that we climb the ridge. We should be able to see the highway and maybe even the trail from there. So we headed for the ridge, and there was less vegetation along the way, so the going got easier. Along the way up, Cathy and the other person we were lost with realized they went to high school together. Small world!

As we climbed, we wondered about Nick and Sacha. Maybe they had found the correct trail and got to the parking lot way before us. If Sacha went home already, Nick would be waiting for us with no car keys and no cell phone, wondering where we are. Or maybe they were lost too. Maybe they were having even more trouble finding their way out.

At the top of the ridge, we found the trail. I called our friend to say we found the trail. It still took us over an hour to get down to the parking lot. Nick was waiting there at the parking lot for us. He and Sacha got there about 15 minutes before us, and Sacha had already left. The two of them had been lost too, and they encountered one other person back there who was also lost.

So three different groups or individuals got lost independently, around the same time, that we know of. How many people get lost back there on a typical day? They really need to mark the trail better. But we got a good story out of the poorly marked trail.

We found out from our friends that we should've turned left off the scree slope at some point, rather than continuing all the way down. Keep this in mind if you're ever hiking there. Or just go back the way you came from once you get to the summit. Or don't even go all the way to the summit.