Today we honour one of Squamish climbing’s great four-legged friends, whose passing will be felt by many, from climbers to non-climbers and everyone in between.
This is the life and times of Ginger Douglas.
For many, a dog is a required companion to your daily climbing, your day-in-day-out lives, your forest wanderings and your quiet moments. Among the hounds that the Squamish climbing community knows, loves and picks up turds for, none is so widely recognized or patted as Ginger.
You’ve most likely run into Ginger and her partner, Alan Douglas, in the Smoke Bluffs or around downtown, probably scratched her ears as Al is soloing at Burgers and Fries or out for a stroll down Cleveland Avenue.
Ginger was a sleek and refined little dog who snatched Al’s heart with one look 17 long years ago and they have been together ever since. I sat down and Al and he told me a little of Ginger’s tales.
“She was the greatest gift to come from a stupid comment,” Al said as he elaborated on Ginger. In Ontario on Nov. 22, 1999, Al looked at his neighbour’s dog, a mother dog, and commented “the dog is so meek – you must beat it.”
Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, the young daughter listened and told her mom of Al’s comment.
With the assurance that there were no beatings being doled out, the lady of the house gave the order to Al that he needed to help them out by taking one of the new litter of puppies.
Al took one look at the newborn puppy and, in his words, “my heart went crack.”
And 15 minutes later she was asleep in his lap as he drove home. The inseparable pair spent only a few months in Ontario before Al made a drastic life decision to end a hectic and unhealthy overworked life and head for B.C. It’s a change he believes saved his life.
Ginger, a four-legged hero
Once in Squamish the tales of Ginger and Al grew with each climbing season.
Bears seemed to be attracted to the Ontario-ite, something he’d never experienced. In 2001, Al and Ginger were walking along the trail behind the tennis courts near the Westway apartments when they stumbled upon a black bear cub and then the mother, eyes a rage filled red as she charged Al. All Al could do was yell “No!” as Ginger shot past, ran circles around the mother bear nipping her feet, bit her, dodged a blow and sent her running off. All this from a 40-pound short-hair.
To him, the partnership was sealed as he sat in the bluffs afterwards and shook with fear.
Wherever the duo went, Ginger made people smile twice because she was so cute.
Once a lady saw them and offered to buy her off him. The offers rose, $1,000, $2,000, $5,000, but his answer was always the same: “Look, no the dog is not for sale. I’m not selling my best friend.”
Where Ginger really came into her own was as a climber’s dog.
Al is an ardent climber, one who compares climbing to a daily moving meditation and not merely a physical act. Ginger would accompany him everywhere and anywhere he went to climb, and Al would climb hundreds and hundreds of pitches a year without a rope.
Ginger would curl up at the base of a climb or run around finding ways to the top.
At the top of Burgers and Fries, for instance, Al would reach the summit and Ginger would be waiting for him at the top. She’d give him a kiss and then down he’d solo. Lap after lap of this kind was shared devotion. When Al would solo in the Bulletheads, she would race around finding paths and scrambles to keep up with him as he went and then lead him down when he lost his way. On the Apron he would haul her a few pitches up in a sack and then as the angle relented on routes, such as Diedre or Slab Alley, he would let her climb ahead of him, sometimes connected to him by a cordalette and sometimes not.
They soloed together on routes such as Wise Crack at Burgers and Fries and Ginger surely holds several FCDAs, or First Clean Dog Ascents around Squamish.
New route named in honour
The years have left their marks on Al and on Ginger. With his countless broken bones from narrow misses falling while climbing and her perpetually filed down nails because of scratching up cliffs, they make a battle weary pair.
Why solo with your dog?
Al remained sincere and pragmatic when he said he’d long ago switched running away from his problems with soloing because the fear kept him coming back and attacking those issues.
Ginger’s role was to be his rope or maybe his conscience that kept him evaluating his own risk and making decisions that saw him coming home to her each night. Like the legendary mountaineering partnerships of old where partners need not even speak to each other to know their thoughts, Al and Ginger lived the climbing life for 17 years.
On Nov. 22, with Ashley Green of Climb On holding Al’s hand, Ginger Douglas was put to rest at Squamish’s Eagleview Veterinary Hospital. A new route, maybe Al’s last, to the right of Rambles on the Apron bears her name, “Ginger’s Journey.”
Rest in peace Ginger.
