Inside Rat’s Nest Cave, a Canmore Fundraiser Brings Mental Health Into Focus

I’d spent most of the night imagining limestone closing in around me. I’d never considered myself claustrophobic, but now I wasn’t so sure. By the time I dragged myself out of bed on Oct. 25, I was exhausted and desperate for caffeine.

Driving along the 1A toward Grotto Mountain, I considered turning back.

I was headed to Rat’s Nest Cave for Into the Summit, a fundraiser now in its sixth edition. Through the Hamilton Gault Memorial Fund, it supports veterans and their families affected by post-traumatic distress disorder (PTSD), operational stress injuries and other mental-health challenges. I wanted to know why the organizers had chosen a cave to get people talking about mental health.

At the Canmore Cave Tours offices, owner and guide Adam Walker passed around a template of the smallest opening we would have to squeeze through. One by one, we slipped it over our heads and down past our waists like a hula hoop. We fit. How we’d feel inside the passage was another question.

Christian Stenner, the event’s director, seemed ready for that hesitation. During the opening briefing, he compared the unfamiliar setting to facing a mental-health struggle.

“It’s an unfamiliar place for most of us. And in that sense, it’s a bit of an analog for that struggle of dealing with a mental health issue or injury that you have to overcome.”

“And that’s okay. We’re all going to be in there together. We’re going to help each other.”

We paired up for the uphill walk, taking turns carrying bags of caving gear. The group included veterans and serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces, cadets, cadet instructors and participants from The Military Museums. One woman introduced herself and her daughter as newcomers to Canada and said she was grateful to be invited.

At a tarp-covered staging area near the entrance, we pulled on knee pads, harnesses, gloves and loose red coveralls over our warm layers. We’d already put on helmets and headlamps for the hike up. Guides untangled straps and checked the fit, including the safety lanyards that would tether us to ropes installed, inspected and maintained by Walker and his team.

Outside, it was about –3 C. The cave stays around 5 C year-round, roughly the temperature of a fridge. We switched on our headlamps and stepped into the relative warmth, the beams catching dust in the air.

Rat’s Nest Cave is a provincially protected historic site just outside Canmore, with pictographs near the entrance and bones dating back 7,000 years. It’s also home to bushy-tailed woodrats, or packrats, that give the cave its name.

Inside, we spent much of the time crab-walking or inching forward on our stomachs. My teammates lifted one another toward footholds and caught those moving over gaps. We shuffled into smaller crevices, sometimes uncomfortably close together, to give everyone room. Encouragement came from ahead, behind, above and even below.

At the Laundry Chute, guides explained how to lower ourselves into the passage and turn beneath the ledge: feet tucked underneath, knees bent, then onto our backs to work through feet first. Each person passed the instructions back to the next.

This passage was optional. Anyone who preferred another route could take it with a guide and rejoin us later. We were encouraged, but never pushed.

I’d started the day wondering whether I should turn around. In some of the narrower passages, there wasn’t room even if I wanted to. But I didn’t have to find the way forward alone.

Walker described caving as a team sport.

“There’s always people around you that can help you and coach you through that,” he said.

“But if you can convince yourself to try, often that’s all it takes to get through something like that.”

Walker studied cave geosciences at the master’s level in the United States before joining Canmore Cave Tours as a guide in 2007. He bought the company in 2013. For Into the Summit, he provides the cave experience, equipment, staff support and event website at no charge.

More than once, Walker took a more serious tone, explaining the hazards and making sure we understood how to move through the next passage. But there was room for humour too. Jokes about an underground transit stop and a pizza parlour came with the careful instructions, and between watching our footing and working around rock, we laughed.

Mushrooms growing on the wooden ladders made us stop. In the beams of our headlamps, pale threads spread across the wood. After so much limestone and mud, it was startling to find something growing in the dark.

At the grotto, pools reflected the rock so clearly that it was hard to tell where the rock ended and the water began. Soda-straw stalactites hung above us, and tiny mineral terraces called microgours stepped down the cave floor like miniature rice paddies.

During a group discussion, Stenner asked what might help someone manage anxiety. I offered box breathing and explained the four-part cycle. Someone else suggested music. The talk moved to grounding: using our senses to bring attention back to the present.

Stenner then suggested we switch off our headlamps and sit in the dark. Without daylight, there was nothing for our eyes to adjust to. The people we’d spent the past few hours crawling around with were still there, but we couldn’t see each other. Sitting perfectly still, we paid attention to what we could hear, smell and feel.

In a follow-up interview, Stenner said he wanted to introduce those ideas to some participants and remind others of the support around them.

His own connection to the outdoors came through cadets. He joined at 12, following his older brother, and stayed until he was 18. After 22 years working with cadets, he’s now the commanding officer of Calgary’s 1910 Royal Canadian Army Cadet Corps.

“It’s there that I learned the essential skills of leadership and of public speaking and of just having a love for the wilderness and the outdoors,” he told me.

“Without that I would be a completely different person.”

When I asked participants how they got involved, more than one gave the same answer: Alex.

That’s Alex Gault, a longtime organizer who has been part of the summit campaigns from the start. He’s the Hamilton Gault Memorial Fund’s fundraising chair, president of For the Soldier Institute and great-nephew of Hamilton Gault.

Hamilton Gault founded Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) in 1914 and contributed $100,000 to raise and equip it. The fund describes it as the last privately raised regiment in the British Empire.

Alex Gault said Barry Ashton, founder and then president of the PPCLI Foundation, created the original mountain-climbing campaign, Reaching the Summit, which took participants up Mount Buller and Mount Farquhar. Stenner’s caving experience, and the parallels he saw between a dark, unfamiliar environment and mental-health struggles, helped shape its next chapter: Into the Summit.

Gault now leads the event and relies on Stenner and Walker for the caving expertise. A conference on trauma among first responders and military members deepened his understanding of the issue and his interest in supporting that work. People affected by trauma, he said, should not feel “embarrassed or shamed or worried about it.”

He also wants younger people involved and sees an enjoyable challenge as a way to connect them with the military community.

“The huge benefit to the summit is that it’s just fun,” he said.

In an Oct. 26 interview, Stenner put this year’s fundraising at roughly $14,300, with the campaign continuing. He had announced cumulative gross fundraising of $236,914 across the series, with about $211,000 remaining after expenses.

Past campaigns have supported service dogs, equine therapy, counselling and the Outward Bound Veterans Program, Stenner said. The campaign funds non-clinical mental-health support for veterans and their families, with the Hamilton Gault Memorial Fund’s board choosing the programs.

Stenner said this year’s event was dedicated to those affected by the Oct. 17 training fire at CFB Wainwright. Four Canadian Armed Forces members died and 39 were injured, according to a National Defence release. He explained that the Canadian Armed Forces supports serving members, while the fundraiser’s purpose is to help veterans and their families.

On the walk down from the cave, retired major Kent Griffiths spoke about how that support has changed. We discussed veterans of the Second World War who came home without the mental-health resources available today, some turning to alcohol to cope.

Griffiths served 43 years in the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves, rising through the non-commissioned ranks to senior national leadership before becoming a major. He now volunteers as curator of the Calgary Highlanders Regimental Museum and Archives.

“Throughout my military career, I found that it’s always been about the people,” he said. “There’s lots of great experiences and places, but meeting the people is the most important part.”

Inside the cave, we spent hours relying on people we had only just met. We helped each other through.

Donations to Into the Summit can be made through the campaign’s fundraising page.

Canmore Cave Tours provided complimentary access for this reporting.