We wake up this morning and its quite a nice day. It was a late end to the day last night, but we want to get on the river early this morning as we have a really long way to go.
We wake everyone up at 8am and breakfast this morning is simple...granola and sausages. Everyone is being strongly encouraged to get a move on! Roll up your gear, take your tent down, get your barrel packed...have a coffee and a bite to eat and get your canoe loaded. We are trying to be on the river by 10am.
We generally do pretty well, we have our first boat out on the water by 10:02...unfortunately the next one doesn't get out until 10:22. Oh well, no harm done, the wind is in our favour today.
We paddle along and the sun is shining and it is spectacular. Today there doesn't seem to be the same vigour to staying in our allotted groups. We are all just paddling along, chatting with other canoes and having breaks along the way.
At one point when I'm up near Cedar (the guide at the front) I ask him if we can do a full 18 canoe raft up. He radios back to the other guides...and although I hear a little skepticism, Cedar and I agree that it should be able to be done.
We start to group up and in no time we manage a full 18 canoe raft. Its time for a GORP break (their nickname for a candy, chips, licorice etc. break...yum!). We all share around the ziplock bags of treats. It is so much fun. These will be some of the best memories that I have of this trip. As we are rafted together we just cruise along the fast flowing river...its amazing. No time lost at all.
After some additional paddling, we stop have a quick pee break on the side of the river...there are not many places to stop along this river, so you need to take your chances when you get them. Its a steep hill, but we all manage to do our biz. As soon as we push off its time for lunch...again, in order to save time today we do a floating lunch. This is tons of fun. We all raft up and then make sure that the 3 large lunch boxes are equally spaced among the raft...then we all start cutting up the meat and cheese and passing around sandwiches. We use our paddles to pass around food. Its a hell of a good time.
The rest of the afternoon is spent paddling down the last stretch of the Great Bear River. We are growing near the junction of the Mackenzie River. It has been a long day today. Despite not stopping very much, we don't land near the Mackenzie until quite late in the day.
We are all getting a little tired, and so when we stop at where we think is the end and determine that its not the end...its a little frustrating for many of us. Apparently we could get out here, but we will then have to shuttle the canoes from this point to the barge location, and then shuttle us to the airport. We understand that this will be an hour plus of shuttling, or the alternative is to paddle around the corner into the Mackenzie and a further 1/2 mile down to the barge. It seems to me to be an easy decision and so we continue to paddle.
Unfortunately once we get onto the Mackenzie River we are now moving against the current. We also have a head wind, and I switched off my bow partner Erik for my lovely Auntie. After a long day of paddling, and without my power house in the bow any longer, I'm soon totally exhausted and feel like we are making no headway at all. At one point we are barely moving. I pull close to shore for a break and ask my Aunt if she would be okay with walking. I then trudge along up the river with water up to my mid thigh down to the barge where I can see the other have finally reached and are starting to unload. I must be tired...as I'm slightly hallucinating my canoe as a old horse being dragged into the old barn! Maybe I'm the old horse...
Once we arrive to the barge in Tulita, I have to strip down and get some dry clothes on. The bugs here are terrible. I actually get my first mosquito bite of the trip. My one foot is sore from walking in the water and I'm very tired. Some of us were smart enough to offload some of the cargo back at the last stop before coming around the corner...that would have been a great idea...if only I'd known. I should mention that two of the guides had walked down to meet us as I trudged in the water and did offer to get our canoe for us, but to be honest, I'm too proud and after coming almost the whole way there, I'm not about to let someone else take the horse in for me! Sweet of them to offer though.
Everyone is working hard to unpack all the canoes and put the gear into the trucks, vans and trailer that we have to shuttle back to Norman Wells. We head up to the airport and unfortunately the gates into the runway are closed so we have to hand shuttle everything to our plane. We then unpack our personal barrels and put them back into our bags so we don't bulk out in the cargo area of the plane. With all our bags on the plane, we then load up as much of the remaining gear as we can.
The first plane ride carries all of us and our personal gear plus two of the guides from Canoe North. On the flight back to Norman Wells, I devise a spectacular shower (lol) to ensure that everyone can get cleaned up in a fair way. We truly stink...after so many nights on the water and camping...too cold to clean up and of course sitting by the fire...we are a disgusting bunch. Showers are mandatory, although we set some ground rules for the women...no shaving...turn off the water while you condition...max 5 minutes. They have instant hot water, but only so much water in their tank.
We make a quick stop at the Norman Wells liquor store for some good wine (we are all a little sick of the bagged wine) and then head back to the lodge for showers and dinner. Once back at the lodge, the shower is short but devine. The only clean clothes I have are a pair of shorts and a sleeveless lululemon shirt. The weather did not allow for me to wear these types of thing on the trip.
Dinner tonight is amazing. It's Bill's birthday, so we are going to have a celebration. We eat late, around 10-10:30pm. Steaks and salad etc. The Canoe North team put together a yummy cake for Bill with cupcakes and I had bought "6 - 0" candles for the top. We all sing him happy birthday and then we continue with the drinking and talking. It's well after midnight when its determined that some of us want to keep partying...but many are now trying to sleep in the lodge...so its off to the gear shed for us.
I have to say..."Gear Shed Night" turns out to be the best time we've had in a long time. It's mostly the young guns in attendance, plus Dave and myself....I'm not sure where we fit in anymore?? We get out the camping chairs and sit around in a circle yacking and laughing. I don't know how it really got started, but we did have a number of wine bags to finish. Before you knew it peoples names were getting chanted and then they had to drink from the bag of wine. Dave earned himself a nickname as Sexy Dave when his name was chanted and he quickly whipped a chair into the centre of the circle, sat on it and threw his head back and his arms out ready to receive the "teat" of wine. You can well imagine the debauchery than ensued. We had tunes, we had booze, and we had a great time. The guides hung in there with us until the bitter end. After the wine was gone, we moved onto other forms of alcohol and so it went a little downhill from there. Poor Robert had a hard time with the Alberta Vodka.
My stomach ached from laughing so hard, my cheeks were sore from smiling, and I wobbled back to my tent at well after 4am. It was a great last night to our canoe adventure!
Posted with Blogsy
No comments:
Post a Comment