On every great trip, there is almost always an epic day. I'd like to now tell the story of our epic day. It started out one cold and windy morning in August...we are on the Great Bear River in the North West Territories, north west of Yellowknife.
Amazingly I had a fantastic sleep and was toasty warm. Our tent stayed dry all night and the bushy terrain made for a pretty soft sleep. Not everyone stayed dry unfortunately, we had a rough night last night with rain and wind. Many said it felt and sounded like their tent might lift off because it was blowing so hard.
After a quick trip to the loo (it was way too cold to visit the loo in the night, and we are definitely in bear country). We have all the modern conveniences on this trip. We have two lovely latrines, outfitted with a toilet seat on three legs, a nice hole in the ground, hand sanitizer, toilet paper, bear spray and the spade for sprinkling dirt over your biz when you're finished. Way better than squatting over grass and vegetation and praying your legs won't give out or that you don't dribble on yourself.
Our "kitchen" was sort of out on a point of the area where we were staying. Once up, we headed there and were instantly greeted with a cup of coffee. A full breakfast was underway over the fire and camping stoves. The guides unpacked huge batches of bacon that we didn't think at first that we would possibly eat it all...we were later proven wrong.
In the kitchen they have every type of utensil and cup, plate, bowl, pot, pan etc. that you can think of. All of this stuff is stored in these dry barrels and are intricately packed for maximum efficiency. They have camping stoves, but also a really neat set of two grills that sit on rebar with little brackets that the cooking grills sit on. Its a really genius little cooking device.
In addition to bacon, we are also have french toast. Amazing! After the bacon is all cooked, we have 4 frying pans going over the fire and one over the stove for french toast...served with maple syrup and a mixed berry sauce (which Brendan - one of the guides - tells me is freeze dried...I never would have guessed). We demolish everything. Its an amazing first breakfast, even if its blistering cold outside.
Once breakfast is done its time for cleanup. We start boiling some post of water over the stove and get going on the dishes. Before we left on this trip we were under the impression that we would all be given duties for during the canoe portion. So far, we have not been given many tasks and the guides have been doing most of the work for us. The trouble is, there are 29 of us...and only 7 of them...and many of us (particularly me - who would have guessesd!) are not great with being idle, especially when you've done so much camping in your life. So, Ryan, Tom, Stu and myself get going on the dishes after breakfast while everyone else starting tearing down camp. I can tell you that I don't think anyone really enjoys camping dishes...and I'm sure you can imagine what its like doing dishes for 36 people. They have some really great foldable plastic bins that we fill with hot water and lukewarm water...one is for washing (my job), the other for rinsing (Ryan) and then we had our two dryers and stackers (Stu & Tom). I have never washed so many dishes in one go...and I have no real desire to do camping dishes again in the near future...scrubbing those greasy bacon pans was pretty disgusting. Poor Ryan actually had to start pre scraping the grease before it went into the washing bin. His hands were so gross!
Once we've got dishes done, we break down our tents and repack our dry barrels. The weather is windy and cold still and our lead guide tells us that she feels that the weather is not adequate for us to all paddle down the level 2 rapids that we need to go through at the end of the day. There is concern that it will be too cold if someone was to fall in and that they could become hypothermic. What this means is that they would like only the guides to go down the rapids with 6 of us in the bow. Apparently there is a trail (actually part of the winter highway) that runs from before the rapids to our camping spot. What this means is that the guides will need to make 3 trips down the river and walk back twice in order to get all 18 canoes and the gear to the camp spot. The information that we are given, is that the walk is about 1 hour. There is some talk about perhaps some people walking back with the guides and doing the run down the rapids twice in order to save people from sitting at the top of the rapids waiting for their run down.
Now I'll be honest...I sometimes like to speak my mind...and I sometimes have a hard time keeping my mouth shut, and part of me was a little confused about this entire turn of events. First of all, my understanding was that these level 2 rapids were completely acceptable for us given our ability level. Going into this trip we all had to fill out applications with our paddling skill level. We also had made additional adjustments to skill level and tried to pair up people appropriately with guides and more skilled paddlers so that we were as safe as possible during the entire trip down the river. The fact that all of a sudden this morning that we are being told that we cannot now do these rapids is a bit perplexing. I do press the issue slightly and am still given this business about the weather and not being able to warm up if someone went in. I understand that they are concerned for our safety. That is clear.
Loading the canoes up this morning is epic...there is no other words to describe it. There is absolutely mass confusion about canoes and pairings and so on. The reason that I come to comprehend is that the white water boats need to go down first with the guides, and we want to have the tents, food and the personal barrels of the people that will first be arriving at the camp so that they can get things started at camp while the guides shuttle back for more boats. I cannot begin to describe that chaos that ensues, and ultimately this results in many people standing around perplexed and frustrated...with no clear direction on what they should be doing. I believe it was Richard that finally said to me "can you please figure out what the hell we're supposed to be doing" or something along those lines. It's time to get things a bit more under control and get some direction. I ask the lead guide for some additional clarification on how the canoes should be packed and what we should be doing. With some basic direction, we manage to get enough direction to get some additional people moving and finally we are able to get all the canoes loaded up.
We push off from our campsite around 12:20. As we paddle down the river, it begins to get more and more beautiful. By the time we stop to eat lunch, its absolutely bright and sunny. We stop at a lovely spot after we had just spotted a huge eagle. We have our usual lunch of bread, summer sausage, cheese, cold cuts, apples, cookies, etc. Several people head down to the rivers edge to fish, and others just lounge around soaking up the much missed sun. The issue of the rapids is raised again. With the weathe being much nicer, we would like to know if we can go down them now. We are given the response that it needs to stay as planned.
And so, after lunch we keep heading down the river. We reach the top of the rapids at around 5:30pm and we pull off to unload and re-arrange canoes. It starts to get very confusing at this stage. A group this large in canoes and in groups is hard to communicate to in mass. The lead guide meets with the other guides for a final pow wow. It is decided that 12 canoes can go down the rapids. This includes 5 of the 7 guides, and 7 of us that will stern the canoes, and then we fill up the bows of the boats from there.
Unfortunately, there was a lot of miscommunication, misinformation and confusion at the shore.
1) First of all, we understood that it was not far along the rapids to the campsite. It ended up taking us 1.5 hours to paddle down the rapids.
2) It was understood that the campsite was only about a 1 hour walk from where we had stopped. It was supposed to be shorter than the rapids, so we should end up at the campsite at roughly the same thing. Hence the original idea of the guides doing 3 runs down the rapids being plausible. It turned out to be almost 3.5 hours of walking from the shore to the campsite.
3) People were asked for 12 volunteers to walk back to the campsite. Ultimately 4 of those 12 people that originally walked ended up walking 2 hours in one direction and then ended up turning around and walking all the way back to paddle with the returning guides.
4) None of the guides were with us at the campsite or had given us instruction on meals...so we were scrambling to put together something as dark was coming and it was getting late.
So, the 12 canoes & 24 people that were going down in canoes headed off, and the 12 people that were walking headed off. It wasn't until we got to the campsite that the error of what was going on started to become clear.
After paddling for 1.5 hours, we realized that the walk was ultimately going to be longer than the 1 hour that we were originally told. We still didn't realize how much longer though, so the guides tried to radio to the walking group to have 6 people turn around during their walk and go back to the canoes. Unfortunately, by the time they were reached, they had been walking for 2 hours.
When we reached the campsite it was around 7:15pm. The next major flaw was that no one that new anything about the meal for tonight was at the camp any longer. 4 of the guides plus Ross & Davis had gone back to get boats, and two of the guides were walking. The 7th guide was not a true guide from Canoe North - he was on loan from Summit. Although Shawn was incredibly helpful and resourceful, he had no idea what the dinner plans were except for a note taped inside one of the boxes with the menu.
So, armed with 18 people, we went about setting up camp without any guide support. We put tarps up, got the fire going, but up 18 tents, put the personal barrels that we had with tents, and got the frozen chicken out of the cooler and started getting it defrosted for dinner. We all did pretty damn good on our own. We really worked hard as a team and we were motivated to have things ready for those walking and canoeing a second time.
As time ticked on, the level of concern for those walking started to rise. We were very quickly doing the math and realizing that something was drastically off. It was now coming on 9pm and we had still seen nothing. There was an old truck up at a hunting lodge that we had a good look at as well as a motorboat parked on the shore full of gas. I was looking at options as if we were now at 3.5 hours of walking, then the second run of boats was going to be coming in potentially in the dark, or not at all. If these rapids were too dangerous for us to come down on in daylight, we couldn't imagine how they could do it in the dark.
Finally around 9pm, we see the walkers start to arrive. Understandably, they are tired and upset. What they were told would be a quick 1 hour walk, had taken them about 3.5 hours. We then learn that the guides that left us had reached them via radio and at that point they had been walking for 2 hours...once they were radioed, they turned around and started walking back to the canoes. What that meant was that the group of walkers ended up being divided, and only one group had the radio and bear spray.
Within the walkers was the lead guide. She was visibly exhausted by the walk, but everyone was incredibly upset with her for leading them so far astray. There was no question in anybodies minds...she had made a poor decision and many people were suffering due to this decision. Many were still out there suffering. We should have all paddled down that river.
Those of us running the kitchen and fire had not been able to find the ingredients for dinner, but with the lead guide now with us, she was able to produce these for us so that we could finish getting dinner done. We finished off making a really yummy chicken casserole dish with coconut milk, cranberries and ginger. This was served over rice. We only had a small cooler of beer left, the remaining beer and wine was in the last 6 canoes, heavy drinking would have to wait until they got in - they would deserve a toast!
Shawn, Robert and Brian went down to do some fishing in anticipation of us not knowing what we were having for dinner. We all sampled their amazing fish. We had found a little lemon pepper and they deep fried the fish in some oil with the seasoning.
Robert caught, filleted and cooked up his very first fish. He was so proud of himself and decided that he hadn't truly been a man until today.
We ate our dinner and watched the horizon for the remaining 6 boats. Given the distance and time that it had taken the first group, we anticipated them to be in past midnight...but to our amazement, we saw them coming down at just after 11. They obviously had hussled. We learned that the 6 that had gone back had almost run in order to get back to the canoes, so they had made much better time than the first group.
As everyone went down to greet them and help unload the canoes, we go the dinner onto the fire again to warm it up for them. We knew they would likely be cold, tired and hungry. We cheered our amazing 12 crew mates as they came in!
With bellies fed and drinks now replenished, we busted out some dessert and enjoyed our evening. In the end, everyone was okay...but I can't help but ask why this had all gone down this way...I do understand that our safety was at interest here, but this was a mess and not well thought out or planned.
The rapids had not been difficult. If there was concern over certain paddlers then surely we could have re-arranged the boats to ensure safety. The rapids had required some concentration, but in broad daylight, with the sun shining, I had not felt under any particular threat as we had made our way down.
The other thing is that the secondary option of walking was a complete unknown to everyone. They had a gps map of some sort, but no one had been down the road or known how far it was on foot. By avoiding the obstacle of the rapids, people had inadvertently been put into another type of danger. I hate to think what would have happened if the original plan of 3 sets of boats and 3 walking trips had been stuck to. We would have had people stuck out in the dark, or we would have been making trips the next morning. In my opinion, you should stick with what you know and manage the potential dangers within that choice. The dangers of the rapids were known, and a solution could have been worked out by moving people around within the canoes, or giving more instruction to us the day before and the morning of to make everyone better paddlers. Instead, people were shipped off down a road with no idea of where it went or how long it was. There were people that walked over 4 hours and then paddled 1.5 hours. Better communication and planning in advance would have avoided all this mess. This could have all been discussed the night before with a core group of us and the guides and we could have devised a plan that made sense for our group.
The bottom line is that the people that we had on this trip were a great team. We banded together and we made the most of a tough situation. I'm proud of what we all accomplished that day, and I'm incredibly grateful to those that walked, and especially to those that paddled down the river twice and into dusk.
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