Mother and daughter ski back-country mountain odyssey

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In mid-June, when most of Canada was ready for summer, Tania and Martina Halik ground through the last days of a long winter – on skis, in the snowy, northern reaches of the Coast Mountains.

It was the end of an epic back-country ski traverse of more than 2,000 kilometres, from Squamish, B.C., to Skagway, Alaska – about the same distance as from Canada to Mexico.

Over their 5 1/2-month odyssey, the mother-daughter team savoured stretches of remarkable beauty, but the winter was unusually tough. Tania, 60, and Martina, 30, were beset by trials.

In February, a food cache was lost, and the women barely ate for several days during a blizzard.

Another harrowing episode had them separated in a whiteout. The terrain was steep and prone to avalanches. For an hour, Martina felt like a frightened, lost child and called out for her mom. Then Tania appeared, like a ghost.

They finished on June 19, hiking down a trail into Skagway, skis on their shoulders. The Haliks arrived at midnight, in the soft northern twilight, some 24 hours ahead of the summer solstice.

"This is the hardest thing I've ever done," Martina said after it was over.

Mother and daughter had pushed each other forward. "I definitely would have quit if it wasn't for her," Martina said. Tania said of her daughter, "I don't know if I could have done it with someone else."

The Coast Mountains extend from Vancouver to southern Yukon, some 50 per cent longer than the Alps. The Coast Mountains, covered in glaciers and ice fields, remain largely untouched by humans. Backcountry skiers began to push deeper into the alpine regions after the Second World War. By the 1980s, groups were doing multiweek traverses of shorter sections.

The first team to cover the whole distance, from Vancouver to Skagway, did it in 2001. "You get out there and you keep going," said Vance Culbert, one of the three skiers. Chic Scott, a pioneer of backcountry skiing in Canada, has called that expedition "the greatest ski, ever, by anyone."

Martina Halik, reading about the trip a decade later, was intrigued. She had already skied several short backcountry traverses.

And in 2013, one of her friends attempted the Coast Mountains ski traverse with a team, making it most of the way before infighting ended the trip.

Martina couldn't stop thinking: "Wouldn't it be cool to do one thing in your life, one thing, that big?"

If she was to undertake a Coast Mountains epic, she knew who to ask: her mom.

Tania Halik grew up under communist rule in Czechoslovakia. She was a strong cross-country skier, trail runner and kayaker. In the mid-1980s, she and her husband made a daring escape on foot and began a new life as refugees in Switzerland, where their daughters were born. The family eventually settled in the mountains of eastern B.C., in Invermere, where Tania worked as an avalanche forecaster, ski patrol member and paramedic. In summer, Tania would take long canoe trips up north with Martina's sister, Kat.

Finally, Martina proposed the idea. Tania's answer was an instant "Yes."

They prepared last fall. The logistics were extensive, from route planning to organizing food that was to be deposited in caches along the way by plane or helicopter.

Martina signed up some sponsors and consulted people who had gone before. She sold her truck, snowmobile and dirt bike. A budget of about $30,000 was tallied. And she created a lively online presence on Facebook and a website where people could follow day-by-day progress relayed by a GPS beacon.

On Jan. 6, the journey began.

"It went from the first week, being so happy and so stoked, because it's so beautiful," Martina said, "to sometimes it got so hard that I was like, 'Why are we out here? This hasn't been fun for weeks.'"

On many days, they each carried, by pack and sled, upwards of 80 pounds.

Several trials sharpened their appreciation for the line between life and death. Crossing the Dean River, near Bella Coola, was treacherous. The Haliks got stuck on opposite icy banks. Equipment failed. Hours passed, rain poured down, hypothermia threatened – but they made it.

Through it all, mother and daughter got on well. They would snap at each other on occasion – when they were hungry or tired and irritable. But the challenges bonded them further.

There were joys, too.

"The sun comes out, you're in the most beautiful place on the planet," Martina said. Her mind was blown by the mountains of the Alaska Panhandle. "I've never seen anything like it."

Tania was likewise awed. "It was such a huge reward. The incredible, incredible landscape."

The long hours became meditative.

"You start to think differently out there," Martina said. "You live so intensely."

A late May storm trapped the Haliks in their tent for almost four days. When it cleared, the jagged spire of Devils Thumb emerged. In 2003, Guy Edwards and John Millar died there, presumably killed by an avalanche. They were two of the three who skied the entire Coast Mountains with Culbert in 2001.

"It was very sobering," Martina said. "We thought about the two of them, still being out there."

Near the finish, when the Haliks imagined soaking up sun as they cruised over expansive Alaskan ice fields, they were dealt a final test. A storm slammed down half a metre of snow. Strong winds sent the snow pelting sideways. Visibility was akin to being inside a milk jug.

"I can imagine," Tania said, "some god pushing the buttons, and just having fun, because he's bored and nothing ever moves up there. 'Ah, these two people, let's see what they can handle. A little more wind?'"

At the end, there was exhilaration, tears and relief.

In a final message sent from their GPS beacon, Martina exclaimed: "We made it!!!!!!"