Mike Roberts is not the same person he was a year ago.
For one, he’s in the best shape of his life and some 30 pounds lighter, a good thing when you’ve committed to hiking the Stawamus Chief every day, rain, sleet, snow or shine. The last thing you want on such a gruelling, thigh-burning climb, day in and day out, is excess weight. And I’m not just talking about the literal kind.
“Every ounce of weight carried on this hike is too much, so if your mind can shed things, it does,” Roberts says. “That is the lesson I’m sharing with everybody else: there’s no energy to hold onto this stuff. It’s liberating. All the trauma I’ve endured in my life, if I was carrying it like a backpack, imagine how much stronger I’d be if I could take it off and walk freely. I’d be a powerhouse, and that’s how I feel right now. I’m unstoppable.”
You would think the former Whistlerite and Squamish resident would have every reason to stop. After all, just this Thursday, March 24, he marked his 365th daily ascent of the Chief in a row, completing his mission to raise awareness of the mental-health services available locally after a stint in rehab and regular therapy pulled him from the abyss.
Early on, however, a voice kept telling Roberts something he didn’t exactly want to hear: You’ve got to keep going.
“I instantly said, ‘Shut up, man! What the hell are you talking about?’ I battled that for months. But listen, there is no stopping. I’m not stopping,” he asserts. “Now the goal is to share this with everybody else, because if I just continue on for myself, it would be selfish and pointless.”
Roberts has been documenting his daily ascents through his Instagram account, @mikefromontreal, and taken together over the span of a year, the short video clips form a collage of resilience that are as inspirational as they are nerve-wracking, at times. Often the videos are as simple as Roberts ringing the bell at the top of the Chief, his proof for the day that he completed the hike. Other times, you’ll see him speaking directly to the camera, offering a steady stream of positive affirmations to his followers, even as he battles the elements, trudging through waist-deep snow in the middle of the night.
“This is very hard. I should stress that. This is very hard but I’ve also learned to live with the madness of it all—because this is madness—and I’ve found joy in it. I’m the guy that does this. There’s no moments of pity, and you know what, if there are moments of pity, because they do come up, I try to find the positivity in it and share that,” he says. “Over the year, I haven’t posted one negative thing about my experience here. And I’ve posted pictures of me soaked, covered in snow, lost, injured, and I’ve found a way to turn it around.”
Roberts wants to be clear about another thing: despite his experience, he is no hardcore hiker, chasing down times. When people have accompanied him, they are often surprised at how slow he goes. Some days he gets to the parking lot at the base of the Chief and realizes he forgot a crucial piece of gear, but rather than head back home, he keeps going, refusing to let his positive momentum dwindle.
“You have no idea how many days I’ve been up here in a T-shirt, in the snow. It’s preposterous. People are like, ‘You should be prepared. You should have a bag,’ and it’s like, ‘OK, you do it. You pack a bag everyday.’ There are things that are going to slip by,” he explains. “Everything has to fire at the same time. If I show up to the parking lot and I didn’t bring boots or spikes, I’m not going home because if I go home, I’m not coming back. So I’ve had to walk up in the snow, in my shoes, in jeans. There’s a great video I posted of me in five feet of snow in Levi’s jeans. You know how hilarious that is?”
In his commitment to keep on keeping on, Roberts draws a parallel to his mental-health journey and the profound value of simply showing up. Over the year, he has ascended a total of roughly 256 kilometres elevation, the equivalent of climbing up and down a 77,576-floor building, or nearly 29 ascents of Mount Everest. But Roberts stresses this isn’t about “the grandness of the effort” being made, but the commitment you make to the routine, to yourself. To showing up. After all, the only way to climb Everest is one step at a time.
“You don’t have to hike the Chief. The simple act of having a ritual you partake in every day, rain or shine, day or night, ice or snow, like walking around the block, is the same benefit I get from climbing up this mountain,” he admits. “Everybody has their own Mount Everest and your Mount Everest is different than mine. It could be getting out of bed in the morning. It could be not dealing drugs that day. It could be phoning your mom.”
Hiking roughly the same route every day, Roberts has made a conscious effort to never take the same step twice.
“One of the things about mental health is … basically your mind can be grown. If you take the same route home every day, your mind kind of plateaus. But if you start to deviate just a little bit in your routes or the steps you take or the manner in which you approach stuff, it creates new neural connections, which expands your mind,” he explains. “So even though I’m taking the same path everyday, I’m never taking the same set of steps, so my mind is just constantly expanding. What that allows for is the opportunity to have bigger perspective on your problems, on your issues, on how to problem-solve. This mountain has resolved so many riddles or problems that I’ve had in my life.”
The Chief has held a certain magnetic power for thousands of years. Known by the Squamish People as Siyám Smánit, it refers to something that is to be deeply respected, like a mentor or elder that can impart many important teachings. For Roberts, those lessons were both personal and universal, and as his year went on, his relationship to the 700-metre monolith evolved.
“I had to ask for permission to be here, because I wanted to be a part of this and my mission was one of good intentions, so I let it be known. That in itself made me more spiritual,” he says. “There were moments when I was just really terrified and you just have to have faith and sometimes you have to yell out loud, ‘Please, help me!’ Now we have this relationship where it’s just known I’m coming and I’m here. I give it respect. I’m not treating it like a Tae Bo fitness class; this is my church.”
Now Roberts is ready to climb his next Everest: launching a YouTube channel to document his daily hikes and share the mental-health solutions that have worked for him. He admits he hasn’t the first clue about creating a content channel, but he’s committed to tackling it the same way he has everything in the past year.
“The new Everest I’ve got to summit is finding a way to be vulnerable and share it with the world—but it has to be shared. And I wouldn’t be saying that if I didn’t believe it. I’ve seen too much and I’ve learned so much from the simplicity of just going on a walk, and I want to share that because that’s a solution that everyone can do,” he says. “It’s the mindset that comes from here that gets applied to everything else in your life. I have to create a YouTube content page. How do I do that? You set your intention, you show up, you make the effort and you take it one step at a time. And believe me, it’s painful. But eventually you’re the guy and this is your thing.
“How else are you going to know you’re headed in the wrong direction if you don’t start moving?”
