The Story of How a Trail Injury Launched a Website

There was not a drop of snow on the ground on the trail that January, but an arctic outflow had reared its icy head over the past week. As I descended from the mountain, I carefully picked my way across several patches of runoff that had frozen solid across the trail. It was a climbing trail for mountain bikes, not steep in the slightest, but with large and steady switchbacks. The bottom was what I’d call “Mission flat,” because when you live in Mission, BC, literally everything is up or down, and you can count the flat-flat trails on one hand. Mission flat is not quite flat-flat, but flat enough to be an easy walk.

Making my way down the easiest part of the trail, my mood was upbeat, fuelled by a rush of endorphins from the previous hour’s hike. I was thinking amicably about how life was wonderful. Midway down I normally deviate to another trail, but on that day I’d seen a few lost hats on the way up, and I decided to retrieve them and take them to the trailhead for their owners to find. I’ve often joked that rather than karma, I have the opposite: harma. It seems that whenever I do a good deed, I’m rewarded by something terrible happening, and this time was no different. I slipped on a root.

It was super dumb. Like, really, really dumb.

It wasn’t a large root, nor was it covered in ice. It was just a simple root, maybe one inch wide by five inches long, and it was pointing downhill in the same direction as my boot. Maybe that was what made me slip, or maybe there was a bit of frost on it. Whatever it was, my right foot slipped and I went down. The ground was hard and frozen.

Crack.

It happened so quickly that I couldn’t tell you how I landed on my arm, but nonetheless I did, and the instant I heard that crack and the pain rushed in, I knew it was broken. What followed wasn’t really screaming, but a string of semi-intelligible ahhhAHHH-ahAHahAH-hahahaOW-bleepbleepbleep-BLEEP!

There were some forestry workers a hundred or so metres away, measuring out a cutblock. One of them, having heard my shouting, called over asking if I was all right. I shouted back that I thought I’d broken my arm, and he started making his way over. Meanwhile, my mind was already working on the next steps, with my first aid training kicking in: immobilize the limb in a comfortable position. I had a first aid kit in my pack with triangle bandages. I also had my cell phone, which I could use to call my family to meet me at the trailhead. By the time the forestry worker arrived, I was trying to work out how to take my pack off.

Luckily, with his arrival, I didn’t have to. I was able to get him to unzip my pack and retrieve my first aid kit and phone. What was more difficult was trying to explain how to put on a triangle bandage. He did the best he could, and after a tearful call to my family, he helped me to my feet and walked me the few minutes out to the trailhead. I think he was more freaked out than I was, but he kept me talking the whole way and made sure I didn’t slip again.

(Thank you, Daryl.)

I kept muttering to myself at how stupid it was to break my arm on a flat trail without even any snow, and five minutes from the parking lot at that. It was so dumb. I’d been up mountains and guided in the wilderness for years, damn it. How could I break my wrist on one of my town’s two-and-a-half flat trails? Embarrassing, that’s what it was.

Soon enough, it was off to the hospital with my folks who came to pick up myself and my vehicle. The Abbotsford Hospital, because Mission’s had suffered a burst pipe some days before and was closed. After a grand total of ten hours in the ER, I arrived home at one o’clock in the morning with a brand new plaster cast on and the distinct awareness that I’d once again completely screwed up my life.

Sometimes I’d fancy myself cursed. I had never been one of those people who wanted to have a career and a house and a family. No, all I wanted was to write and live in the woods. I was one of those rare weirdos who aspired to nothing more than being a hermit. I wanted to build my own house. Maybe a cob house. Definitely an off-grid house. Despite being determined to do all those things, actually obtaining that dream proved incredibly difficult.

Things started off well. I was a kayak guide and I worked and lived in places all over the coast. I later worked at a wildlife rehab centre as well, where I learned to chase bear cubs around and wrestle eagles. But I couldn’t get the science degree that would get me the job that could get me the land because my brain turns to mashed potatoes anytime numbers enter it. A series of events over the years had an increasingly troublesome effect on my mental health. My life was just getting back on track, and now I’d broken my wrist and in turn lost my job.

My two constants in life are writing and nature. These two sources of happiness have always been there to keep me float even in the worst of times. So why not combine the two? Several years back I had the idea to start a website focusing on BC’s outdoors. As an avid hiker, backpacker, and kayaker, I often found that resources and information were scattered across the web and not always tailored to Canadians. Despite outdoor recreation being a huge part of BC’s culture, there was no website dedicated solely to that subject. I aimed to fill that gap.

It took me awhile to pull the trigger on the project. To keep myself busy during my unemployment, I applied for the StrongerBC Future Skills Grant and got into the Advanced Digital Marketing with Generative AI program at North Island College. I was thinking I would re-train in something non-physical to have as a fallback, but it turned out that the program was less about learning about marketing as a career than it was about building your own digital business.

With my life in shambles, I thought to myself, why not? I figured in five years I’d be better off than not if I created something that I could potentially making a living from. With the program’s help, I pulled the trigger. The Rainlander was born.

The name came from my dad, who liked to call BC’s Lower Mainland the Lower Rainland. It gives a coastal vibe, though the website’s aim is to cover all of British Columbia. I hope to eventually build the site into something that reaches every outdoor enthusiast in BC, and aim to make the content is useful, interesting, and entertaining.

If you’re reading this, welcome, and thank you for reading my story.

See you on the trails.