9
CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE BEAR KIND

With faith in yourself you can overcome any obstacle

Once I got back to Vienna the true damage my body had sustained in the desert soon became apparent. After I finally recovered from the stomach upset from eating street food in Cairo I found that my digestive system still wasn’t functioning properly. My kidneys had been severely damaged through the dehydration. One kidney was twice the size of the other and the function of both of them was impaired. The doctor gave me a course of antibiotics to try to reduce the inflammation that, thankfully, worked but even now I still have a slight impairment in the function of one of my kidneys.

The damage to my spine was worse than I first thought. It was another six months before the muscles in my back began to function anything like normally and it was several weeks before my feet looked like they were supposed to.

Quite apart from that, I had nowhere to live and knew no one in the city except Paul. Thankfully, the people I had met on the Arabian Desert trip scooped me up and helped me get back on my feet. One of the women, Barbara, invited me to stay with her and I happily accepted. I’d also made friends with another guy on the trip, Werner, and he provided a shoulder to cry on.

I had no one else in the entire city and Paul had organised my whole life for me for years. Suddenly Werner was there looking after me and complimenting me. Unsurprisingly, given what I had just been through with Paul, all I wanted was for someone to look after me and Werner was there to do exactly that. When Paul found out that I was seeing Werner he was furious, even though he had told me that he didn’t want to be with me and that he never wanted to see me again. As soon as we got back to Vienna and I started to make a life for myself he changed his mind. He was extremely jealous. He couldn’t believe that I actually did leave him.

I was completely numb. I didn’t know what I wanted. I couldn’t feel anything. I don’t think I was in love with Werner but I wanted someone to be nice to me. He treated me so nicely that all the emotions I had kept down inside me came pouring out. Paul hadn’t let me wear a dress or try to be beautiful. I felt guilty wanting to be feminine again, but I loved it.

Part of me still loved Paul, too. He made me feel so guilty and he put himself firmly in the role of the victim. He was constantly telling me he didn’t realise how much he loved me. There was still a kernel of the dream of us being together and happy that I held onto.

A few months after I’d made all those promises to myself in the Libyan Desert, here I was planning another trip with Paul. We decided to do a make-or-break trip through Canada and Alaska. Pretty much as soon as I agreed to go with him, he’d booked plane tickets for us both to Vancouver. From there we trained and hitched our way to Kluane National Park in the south-western corner of Canada’s Yukon territory. The park is right on the border with Alaska and is dominated by the St Elias mountains. It’s about the same size as Switzerland and is home to numerous massive glaciers. It’s absolutely beautiful.

Like a lot of wilderness spaces in Canada, the park was home to numerous bears. We had to be really careful to follow all the park rules to do with bears. We never slept in clothes we ate in, we kept all our cooking stuff away from our tent and we made sure that all our food was stored in air-tight bear-proof containers.

Kluane was amazing in that it was so huge and there was hardly anyone there. We had the place almost to ourselves apart from a party of trampers who were walking behind us. For some stupid reason they’d brought their dog with them. As in New Zealand, in Canada it’s illegal to take a dog into a national park. Not only did they have a dog, but they didn’t keep it under control. It took off and ran up past Paul and me all the while barking its head off. It was barking at a bear that was on the side of the trail. We were in steep valley and the dog was on one side of us barking at the bear that was on the other side of us. The bear got really agitated and I could tell it was about to charge over and take on the dog.

Paul kept saying, ‘Keep calm, keep calm.’ I raised my hands up so the bear could tell I was a human being. We edged our way past the bear, which was focused on the dog, all the while absolutely terrified that the bear would turn on us.

While we were focused on getting away from the bear, we missed the turn off that we were supposed to take on the track. We ended up taking a wrong turn and climbed the side of this mountain. The climb gradually got steeper and steeper. Paul had gone on ahead of me and I ended up getting stuck on a cliff face. I couldn’t move up and I couldn’t move down. I could see two other climbers on a cliff face across the valley who looked as if they were stuck too.

I started yelling to get Paul’s attention but he was at the top of the mountain watching the bear we’d encountered earlier as it stalked the trampers and their dog. He couldn’t hear me because he was over the top of the precipice. I stayed on the spot crying hysterically, convinced I was going to slip down the cliff and die. I gripped on for dear life and realised that I had no choice but to try and climb further up. I managed to reach up and grab the next hand hold or I knew I would fall. Thankfully, I made the grab and was out of danger. Once I got to the top, I gave it to Paul with both barrels. He’d been oblivious to the whole thing, distracted by the incredible glaciers and the bear.

From the top we could see that the bear was still following the group with the dog. It was really aggressive and was acting pretty weirdly. When we got back to the base, we found out that the bear had followed them all the way back to camp. Incredibly, it didn’t attack them. The park rangers had the guys arrested for taking the dog into the park. They then had to shut the park so that they could go in and kill the bear because of its unusual behaviour.

When we got back down, we also ran into the two climbers I’d seen across the valley while I was stuck on the cliff. They said to Paul, ‘Bloody hell. We heard your girlfriend screaming from the other side of the park. We were miles away!’ They couldn’t believe that Paul hadn’t heard a thing.

From Kluane National Park we made our way to nearby Whitehorse. Once we got there we went to an adventure company who hooked us up with the gear we needed to embark on a new adventure. Sitting in the Prospect Yukon van to Johnson’s Crossing I felt nervous. Paul and I were about to take off on a huge canoe journey across the Yukon Territory and I’d never been in a canoe before. Paul’s canoeing experience was not much more than mine so it’d be fair to say we were a couple of greenhorns heading out into one of the most daunting pieces of wilderness in the world.

Accompanying us in the van were Heiko and Fabia, two German tourists who were also planning to spend the next two weeks paddling down the Yukon. They were heading for another river and they had quite a bit of experience. Heiko seemed to notice how frightened I was and tried to teach me some paddling techniques. Not the easiest thing to do in the back seat of minivan. He was pretty patient and he tried to teach me how to make the canoe go straight, how to land it on a bank and how to avoid tipping over in white water — in other words he was teaching me the very basics. Of course, I should have tried to learn all this stuff before I left Vienna but with everything that had been going on between Paul and I that was the last of my worries.

Oh shit, I thought to myself. What have I got myself into? Until now I’d thought that my experience on a surfboard in Taranaki’s famous breaks would stand me in good stead. I figured water was water, no matter where you were and if I could handle a surfboard then a canoe couldn’t be all that different, could it? Of course, that kind of thinking hadn’t factored in the enormity and ruggedness of the Canadian wilderness. Suddenly, the possibility of being tipped out of our canoe by a set of wild rapids and losing all our gear to the churning waters hit me. What if we have to make our way through hundreds of miles of wilderness to get back to town in just the clothes we had on when we tipped out of the boat? A bloke we’d met a day earlier in Whitehorse reckoned it had happened to him and it had taken him three weeks to get out. At the time we just thought it was another one of those tall stories that characters in bars the world over tell. But now I realised he might well have been telling us the truth.

I peered out the window of the van. It was pouring with rain and according to the weatherman on the radio the rain was set to stay for the next few days. This just made me worry even more. For once, Paul understood my concerns. ‘I must have been crazy to plan an 800-kilometre long tour for our first time up.’

I tried to reassure him that everything would be all right. ‘We’ve experienced a lot together, and have survived more than the odd difficult situation so we’re bound to survive this one, too, no matter how uncomfortable it might get. In any case it’ll be an adventure,’ I said half-heartedly.

Canada is a land where the horizon is endless, where bears, wolves and lynx wander through the forest. It’s one of the last great wildernesses of this earth and a land where one can experience heaven and hell in one day. I just secretly hoped it’d be more heaven than hell for us.

Finally, the van came to a halt and by a bridge across the Teslin River. We climbed out, got our canoe off the roof rack and piled our packs onto the ground. Heiko and Fabia shook our hands and wished us luck. They knew as well as we did that we’d need all the luck we could gather if we were going to make it to the other end of our journey. As I watched the van drive away and the sound of the motor disappeared I felt as if we’d been completely deserted. The rain had stopped momentarily and the silence was complete.

Paul and I then spent an hour packing and repacking our bags and the canoe. In a way I think we were putting off the inevitable but there’s only so much tinkering you can do before you have to face up to what’s ahead of you. We realised that we just had to get on with it and climbed into the canoe and pushed off into the river. At this point, the river was slower than I had imagined but the paddling was still tough. It took us a while to stop turning in circles and actually start moving forward on the river but even then we did a whole lot of zigzagging before we worked out what sort of paddling technique would keep us going in a straight line.

After just 1 kilometre I began to understand just how hard it was going to be to paddle 800 kilometres. My arms started to burn and my back was more than a little bit sore. At least we were finally underway and I started to enjoy being far away from civilisation. I started to enjoy the peace and quiet, but soon we managed to strand ourselves on a sandbank. We rocked and we rolled but nothing we did helped us free the canoe.

In the end, Paul had to get out of the canoe and into the freezing water to free us. As soon as he got in the water he was cursing and carrying on about the cold but the only other option was for us to sit there until the water rose and that could take weeks. It took us another couple of similar strandings before we worked out how best to avoid these sandbanks in the middle of the river. After that it was pretty smooth paddling.

Here and there, salmon jumped out of the water while eagles circled over our heads. Paul was in his element and made the most of the slow flowing water to spend plenty of time photographing the wildlife that we came across as we paddled. This was paradise.

After a few hours of smooth paddling we came across an island in the middle of the river. We decided it would be the perfect place to set up camp for the night. Being surrounded by water we decided, quite wrongly, that we would be protected from a surprise bear visit. If we’d thought about it we’d have realised that bears are very capable swimmers.

Before landing though we decided we’d follow the advice in one of our guidebooks that said you should make a lot of noise so you don’t surprise any bears with your unexpected presence. We must have looked hilarious as we paddled alongside the island yelling, ‘Hey Mr Bear! Where are you?’ and ‘Bear, bear, bear, here we come.’

Having scared off any potential company, we beached the canoes. I set about preparing camp while Paul went fishing. It only took him twenty minutes to catch three small fish for our dinner. Having learned something from Paul’s auntie about being a good housewife, I whipped up some bannock bread and spaghetti while Paul gutted the fish and wrapped them in tinfoil to cook in our fire. It was a divine meal and life with Paul was peaceful. This, I thought, was how I wished it could always be.

Feeling pretty happy and with a full tummy, I went and changed into my bear-safe sleeping gear. Yep, even the clothes we slept in had to be kept away from us so that the bears couldn’t smell any residual cooking smells on us as we slept. Pretty much as soon as I climbed into my sleeping bag I was fast asleep.

The next thing I knew, Paul was shaking me. ‘Lis, Lisa, wake up!’

I groaned and turned over to see Paul sitting up brandishing a can of pepper spray. It took me a few seconds to work out where we were and what was going on. Then I heard it. Loud footsteps outside the tent . . . Oh My God . . . I was so scared I hardly dared to take a breath.

‘Do . . . do you think it’s a bear?’ I whispered. I desperately wanted Paul to tell me it wasn’t.

‘I don’t know but it sounds big enough — judging from the amount of noise it’s making.’

I’d heard so many stories of the damage that bears could do and I was terrified. I started to cry. ‘I want to go home,’ I sobbed to Paul. Really rational, I know. Paul did his best to reassure me but I could tell he was almost as scared as I was. I tried to convince myself that Paul wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me but I knew full well that if the bear decided to climb into the tent with us there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

For a while everything went silent. I started to wonder whether we’d imagined the noise after all and I convinced myself that it couldn’t have been a bear. This worked sufficiently for me to go back to sleep but only briefly. SPLASH! I woke with a start on hearing something drop into the river. ‘What the hell was that? We have to get out of here. Let’s escape in the canoe,’ I squeaked. I didn’t care that it was still the middle of the night and if there was a bear out there it was just as likely to attack us when we were loading the canoe as when we were in the tent.

Again Paul tried to reassure me. ‘Shhh, it’s only a fish,’ he whispered unconvincingly.

‘Fish? It must have been a bloody whale then.’ I wasn’t having a bar of it. ‘It sounded more like a bear throwing a stone into the water.’

‘Ahhh, yeah, bears can’t throw stones,’ Paul replied starting to get frustrated. ‘Fleeing in the canoe is a stupid idea, too. Our clothes are hanging up a tree along with all our food and we certainly won’t make it far equipped in just our underpants now will we?’ Logical as ever, he continued, ‘Just stay calm. The statistics say that most people who travel to Canada return home again in one healthy piece.’

‘Yeah but most don’t sleep on riverbanks in the middle of the salmon season where bears love to roam at night,’ I countered. At this point Paul gave up trying to reason with me and we sat in silence for another half an hour, until we finally both drifted back to sleep.

The next morning we searched the riverbank for the footprints of our night time visitor. In a patch of mud near the tent we found what we were looking for. A footprint so big I could fit my whole boot in it. It turns out our fears had been justified and there had been a very large bear prowling around the island — and I still reckon he’d been throwing stones!

Paddling along the Teslin River a few days later I was struck by the way the weak late-summer sun sparkled through patches of heavy mist on the water. It was near the end of August and with every passing day, the sun took longer to win its battle against the morning cold. The leaves on the trees lining the river were starting to turn yellow and red and the first night frosts had started to set in. In a few short months, this river would be frozen solid but in the meantime the sun wasn’t giving us much warmth. I was frozen and my face was hidden deep in the hood of my jacket. We’d been paddling for two hours and had just decided to take a quick break.

On a nearby riverbank, we noticed a squirrel rushing around storing nuts for the winter. Huge salmon were lying dead along the water’s edge; having spawned and laid their eggs they died in the river where they had been born. This abundance of fish meant that the local bear population were gorging themselves to build up their reserves for the coming winter. This was a magical place and I felt so lucky to be here but I also knew we had another 500 tough kilometres ahead of us.

I picked up the paddle to get moving again while Paul scanned the riverbank for animals. ‘Lisa, check this out.’ He handed me the binoculars. I tried to focus where he’d been looking. ‘See? There. Three black points moving on the horizon.’

Bears. Oh, God. Not again. I gave Paul back the binoculars and carried on paddling. A little way down the river, I saw movement on the banks again. It wasn’t bears, as we had suspected, but instead there were three black wolves running across an island. ‘Come on, faster!’ yelled Paul, paddling to try and catch up with the wolves in order to photograph them.

Only 50 metres ahead of us, the wolves ran into the water and swam strongly through the water before running into the forest on the other side. Paul snapped away with his camera until they had all but disappeared. As the last wolf disappeared into the trees, Paul startled me by beginning to howl. I couldn’t help but laugh at how seriously he tried to call the beasts back to us. He was disappointed that none of them responded to his efforts to converse with them, but one of them did stop in its tracks and look back at us. He was probably thinking, what the hell is that guy on? Paul and I just sat there absolutely motionless. We both felt so privileged to have experienced such a rare moment. All that hardship back in Vienna seemed like a lifetime ago.

Later that day we reached the old Indian village of Hootalinqua. The village is right next to the point where the Teslin River joins the mighty Yukon River. From that point, we’d be paddling the Yukon and the river is wider and faster than the Teslin. To my relief, it meant paddling wouldn’t be quite so strenuous. Up until then, it had been a long slow fight for every single kilometre that we covered. Now we would cover more kilometres every day in the same amount of time with the same amount of effort, or less.

Late in the afternoon, having paddled along the Yukon, we made it to the village of Big Salmon, at the mouth of the Big Salmon River. All of this area would have been more or less unknown to anyone but indigenous people until the 1890s when the Klondike goldrushes began. With the discovery of gold, thousands of people flocked to this part of Canada seeking their fortune. During this time, Big Salmon became a supply town for the miners. Steamers would pull in here to bring supplies to the miners and all manner of private vessels plied the river bringing in men and supplies then taking out gold.

Now all that remains at Big Salmon from those days are a few slowly rotting huts and an old Indian cemetery. But out there in the middle of nowhere, we weren’t as far from other people as we thought. We rounded a bend in the river and there in front of us was a huge sign saying, ‘STOP — River Traveller Survey.’ We did as it said and landed the canoe just as a motor boat came roaring up with a smiling man in a green uniform at the wheel. It turned out that he was a river ranger and he asked if we’d mind answering a few questions. I thought it was incredible that even all the way out here we were still in the grips of bureaucracy. That said, we were happy to tell them what they wanted to know as anything that helped them look after this beautiful wilderness was OK by us.

By the time we were finished and free to go on our way, it was already quite late so we decided to set up the tent in one of the log cabins and stay the night. We hoped that the hut might offer at least a little bit more protection from the local bears than our flimsy tent would. With the security of having even a rickety, falling-down roof over my head, I slept well that night.

When I woke in the morning, the weather was absolutely foul. A storm had blown in during the night and by the time we got out onto the river; the wind was pretty much blowing us back the way we came. It took all of our energy to move even the slightest bit forward. And the next day it was even worse. We had hoped to reach the village of Carmacks in the next few hours but it didn’t look like it was going to happen. I was gutted as Carmacks was the only contact we’d have with civilisation along the whole route. And to make matters worse, I felt absolutely terrible. I just seemed to have no energy and was just getting weaker and weaker. I was fighting the idea of giving up the tour at Carmacks, which was only halfway along our planned route.

Up until now I hadn’t mentioned to Paul that I wasn’t feeling well. Partly this was because he was so excited about the whole tour and I didn’t want to disappoint him after coming this far. My doubts about finishing the trek evaporated as soon as the wind died down. Within three hours we saw a moose, three grizzly bears and a lynx. It was incredible. This was the real thing and Paul and I were both excited. But a couple of hours later everything changed again.

We landed the boat and were unpacking our lunch when the wind returned with a vengeance. When we grudgingly got back in the canoe, the wind was furious. The rest of the day was a fight against the forces of nature and it was all we could do to keep the canoe upright. The battle meant that I had to forget that I was feeling really unwell and just get on with the job at hand.

In the late afternoon we stopped just a few kilometres out of Carmacks. It looked like we were going to make it into town that night after all and I was stoked. While we were stopped having a bite to eat I noticed movement on a neighbouring island. At first we couldn’t work out what it was, maybe a lynx or possibly a wolf. We packed up our gear, got back in the canoe and decided to go and take a closer look.

We paddled in the direction of the island and decided it was actually a wolf we could see. But it was acting really strangely. As Paul and I got closer, it didn’t run away. It just stood its ground and watched us approach. Most wolves would have hived off into the forest by then.

With only 50 metres of water separating us the animal still didn’t move so we took the opportunity to take heaps of photographs. Paul was delighted at having such an amazing chance to capture images of such a majestic beast. In fact, he was so excited he clicked off our last roll of film. But as we got closer and closer, the wolf still didn’t move. We started to worry that maybe it had rabies or something. It should have been scared of us. Then we saw it. As we turned to paddle away we saw a canoe upturned on the riverbank about 100 metres away. Everything clicked into place. The majestic beast we had been so eagerly photographing was actually someone’s pet dog!

It was hilarious. I laughed so hard I thought I’d roll the canoe, but I reckon the dog’s owners would have been laughing even more if they had seen a pair of greenhorn tourists clicking off all their film taking pictures of their dog.

Paul saw the funny side of it, too, and we laughed so much that we had to land at the next island to get ourselves back under control. Eventually we stopped laughing long enough to get back in the canoe and paddle the last few hard-fought kilometres to Carmacks. We arrived there windblown and hungry, but in high spirits.

Having seen hardly any signs of human habitation for the last week or so, I was pretty excited to get to Carmacks. Anyone would think it was the big smoke or something but the truth is it’s a small village with a population of about 400 people! As soon as we’d pulled the canoe up alongside the town and the adrenaline of being out on the water had subsided, I started to realise just how sick I felt. For a couple of days I’d been feeling extremely weak and if I cut off the blood supply to any part of my body, for example by leaning my arms on something, the muscles would start to cramp and my fingers would curl into a ball. I also had pins and needles in various parts of my body which made me wonder if there was some problem with my blood supply. I knew I had to face the truth and tell Paul. He was pretty understanding. ‘Maybe we should wait here for a day and see if you feel better,’ he suggested.

‘I’m OK, but if I can’t continue, will you carry on alone?’ I ask.

He looked worried so I tried to reassure him that I’d be fine. ‘I’ll be all right alone. If you want to keep going you should. I only hope you can manage the canoe by yourself, especially over the rapids ahead.’

‘I hope so, too.’ I felt terrible for putting Paul’s dream of paddling the Yukon at risk but I’d also learnt to take my health seriously. Having suffered long-term side effects since getting back from Egypt, I didn’t want to risk being seriously ill out on the river. We pitched our tent for the night and were both pretty quiet, lost in thoughts of what we would face tomorrow.

When I woke the next morning, I wasn’t feeling any better and knew that my time paddling the Yukon was over. Paul was going to have to paddle from Carmacks to Dawson City on his own. I knew that I couldn’t go on. I could also tell that he was relieved that I hadn’t insisted on him staying with me. Even if I couldn’t finish the journey, he could.

As soon as we’d decided that I would head back to Whitehorse and Paul would continue on to Dawson City, it was all go. Paul needed to restock the canoe with food and water for the rest of the trip. I had to repack all my stuff and find a ride back to Whitehorse, which was 400 kilometres away. It didn’t take long before I managed to score a seat in a van heading there and as soon as that was arranged, Paul was happy to get back onto the river. I gave him a quick hug and we set off in opposite directions.

Sitting in the van on the way back to Whitehorse, I began to regret my decision to turn back. Maybe I should have carried on. On the other hand, I knew that something wasn’t right. I felt really weak and was having dizzy spells. After a couple of days’ rest in Whitehorse, I wasn’t feeling any better. In fact, I was sitting relaxing in a spa pool one afternoon when I blacked out. Even then, I didn’t think too much of it as I had been so tired. I figured it was part of recovering from so much physical exertion. I also had a funny tingling sensation in my arms and my muscles felt quite weird, but it wasn’t anything unusual for me. I just put it down to the muscle damage and circulation problems that I’d sustained while crossing the Libyan Desert.

All up, I spent a week in Whitehorse before catching a bus to Dawson City to meet Paul at our arranged meeting time. Dawson City is an amazing old goldrush town lost in the 1890s. All the buildings are Wild West-style, complete with swinging saloon doors and cancan joints. Everyone wore cowboy hats and the dusty roads were just like you see in the movies. At the same time that I stepped off the bus, Paul rounded the last bend on the river before Dawson City. Within an hour, we found each other on the main street, which wasn’t very difficult given only 1300 people live there.

Paul was burnt to a cinder and grinning from ear to ear at having achieved the goals he’d set for himself. It turned out that he had come across three fellow Austrian canoeists just after leaving Carmacks. They had paddled together across some of the worst rapids on the river before Paul decided to strike out on his own as they were going a bit too slowly for his liking. The Austrians had been very glad to see him. They were three total greenhorn would-be hunters who’d gone out on the river with no food, except carrots and potatoes. They were planning to catch and kill their food — Paul taught them how to hunt and fish.

Paul seemed happy to see me. Dawson City was a real treat for both of us and we splashed out to see a cancan show and paid to stay in a weird backpackers’ hut, which made a change from sleeping in our tent. I felt a bit better so we continued our journey as planned, heading up into Alaska. We hitched from Canada across to Alaska heading for Denali National Park, which is home to Mt McKinley, the highest peak in the United States. We got a lift with an old native American guy who was a wolf trapper. Paul was stoked as he’d always been fascinated by native American culture. The trapper spun us a few yarns about the old days when he hunted wolves for a living.

Sadly, the old trapper was more interested in getting into my pants than teaching Paul the ways of his people. We jumped into his four-wheel-drive and headed up a dirt track out to his village — it turned out to be pretty scary. He freaked us out by telling Paul he was a tepee creeper and it was my tepee he wanted to creep into. I reckon Paul slept with one eye open that night to protect me.

We were miles from the road and we had no way back except in the same truck we’d arrived in. These guys all had guns and we didn’t know how we’d get back. Thankfully, the next morning, we managed to talk the trapper’s mates into putting us into a boat and taking us back to the road. We were mighty relieved to get back to the tarmac!

Our next lift was with a fantastic family. The woman was of European descent and her husband was a native Alaskan. They took us back to their house, fed us and put us up for the night. It was wonderful to sleep in a bed for a night without having to worry about tepee creepers. We also loved having the comforts of someone’s home. Before we left, the man gave me a walrus bone pendant that he’d made, which was a really special gift.

The following day we finally made it to Denali. The mountain was majestic set among the autumn trees. It was a sight I’ll always remember. Denali National Park is absolutely huge. Because we only had a couple of days at the park, we did the touristy thing and took a bus ride far into the park. We hopped off the bus and disappeared further into the park to do some walks. It was magic. At 6194 metres, Mt McKinley is the highest peak in the United States and it’s more than twice the height of Mt Taranaki. I was glad that Paul didn’t suggest we climb it!

However, there was plenty to do in the park without tackling the mountain. There was wildlife everywhere with moose, bears and mountain goats in abundance. They didn’t seem remotely interested in us so we didn’t feel at all threatened being in their environment. Even though I still felt quite unwell, we weren’t really exerting ourselves over this time. It was such a special time for us both. From Denali we headed out to the Alaskan coast. It was the salmon season so there were fishermen everywhere and more salmon than you could ever hope to eat. It was smoked as soon as it came out of the water and we ate it not long after. It was absolutely delicious.

While we were staying on the banks of Prince William Sound, Paul and I decided to take a day cruise out to sea as a treat. While we were out there, a huge pod of orca whales — there must have been about 50 of them — joined the ship and played around its bow for a good hour. It was absolutely delightful. As a background to the whales, there were massive glaciers creaking and carving into the ocean. What I saw that day was incredible and will stay with me for life. Staying in a coastal town on Prince William Sound, we planned to climb a nearby mountain. We’d got as far as the base of the mountain before the weather got so bad that we decided to head back to the village we’d stayed in the previous night.

As usual we were travelling on the smell of an oily rag and there were no luxuries like hotels, even if it was freezing cold and miserable. Our tent didn’t offer any relief from the cold so we did what travellers the world over do when they want to warm up — we headed for the local public library. It was lovely being in the warm in a room crammed full of books. I curled up on a couch and was soon lost in a book. Before long, I noticed the tingling sensation in my arm was back. Only this time, it didn’t just disappear like it had before. After a few moments, it began to intensify and spread throughout my whole upper body. I was terrified.

‘Paul! Something is happening to me. Get help fast . . .’ No sooner had I managed to get the words out than my body went into a seizure. My muscles all cramped but it wasn’t like normal cramp. If felt a thousand times worse. Even my facial muscles contorted in a frightening fashion. I tried to call for help but my body was completely wracked by the spasms. The pain was excruciating and I remained conscious throughout the whole episode. I was absolutely convinced that I was going to die.

I had no comprehension of what was happening to me. Paul tried to stretch my arms back to break the cramps. This is a guy who could bench press 150 kilograms and he couldn’t open my arms — such was the intensity of the seizure.

Luckily, there was a repair man in the library who also happened to be a paramedic. I managed to whisper that I thought I needed sugar as I had a history of hypoglycaemia. He had a sports gel that he squirted in my mouth. It helped momentarily and the muscles began to let go — but not for long, the seizure returned moments later. Within minutes an ambulance arrived and I was taken straight to the local hospital. The doctors there managed to use medication to release the seizure. I still don’t know what it was but it must have been powerful stuff. They also did a whole raft of tests to try to find out what had caused such an extreme reaction.

When the test results came back, the doctor gave me some frightening news. He told me I’d had what was called a tetany seizure. He believed it had been caused by a combination of mineral deficiencies, an electrolyte imbalance, mild hypothermia and low blood sugar. It didn’t seem like there was much more I could have done wrong. The main reason for the seizure was the lack of potassium in my system. According to the doctor, my potassium levels were among the lowest he’d ever seen in a person still alive. His next words rang in my ears. ‘The only things that saved you from having a heart attack are your youth, your high level of fitness and the fact that you got treatment so quickly. If we hadn’t been able to release you from the seizure as quickly as we did it is quite likely you would have had a fatal heart attack.’

A heart attack! I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I just felt so grateful that the seizure happened when I was in town and near the hospital. I don’t even want to think about what would have happened if it had happened out on the river.

After the seizure, Paul was totally freaked out and was quite frightened for me. Thankfully, it was a problem that was easily fixed. I just had to take potassium tablets and make sure that I had good food and plenty of rest for a few weeks. It had been a very close call though.

We ended our travels in Anchorage, Alaska and from there we flew back to Vancouver for a couple of days before returning to Vienna.

Supplements, minerals and vitamins.

Something as basic as a potassium deficiency almost cost me my life. We didn’t have electrolyte drinks and stuff like that back then. It’s so important to take supplements when you’re doing intensive exercise. The food that most people eat now doesn’t supply them with all the vitamins and minerals they need.

There are plenty of supplements and vitamins available for athletes. The ones I think are vital are:

Calcium, iron and magnesium, which can be depleted.

BCAAs or branched-chain amino acids, which are vital for muscle strength. The body will break down muscles while you’re exercising to get stored BCAAs so if you supply your body with extra, muscles and other tissues are spared from breakdown.

Flaxseed and salmon oil are really important for lubricating joints, healing and circulation.

Electrolyte drinks are vital for any runner. Try to drink 800 millilitres of water an hour in hot climates — ideally at 200 millilitres every quarter hour. You should always drip feed the water rather than taking huge amounts with long periods between. You should try to keep your stomach full but not over-full. Even in lower temperatures you should be aware of keeping hydration constant.

My performance-enhancing secret weapons are:

In a long distance race, I should make sure that I start hydrating early on.

I always take jelly-type sweets with me for when I need a sugar hit, but I never have too many at once to avoid crashing down the other side.

Ginger ale settles my stomach, it tastes good and I get a sugar hit, but I make sure it is flat and just have sips.

Within 40 minutes of a training session, it’s vital I eat something because muscles’ uptake of vitamins and minerals is much faster within that time.