A journal of a trip into the far north of Canada.
All the men and women stood around our sledges and wished us luck on our journey. There the parting word is always, “May you get to the place you are aiming for.”
-Knud Rasmussen, Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, 1921-24, Volume VIII: The Netsilik Eskimos (sic) of Pelly Bay.
Prologue
It was during the exceptionally cold, harsh Montreal winter of 2017-2018 that I had spent the usual few months anguishing over where in the north I’d end up exploring the following summer. Curt had an ambitious (crazy?) plan to paddle the Firth River, hidden in the mountains of northwestern Yukon – the barmy part was not the Firth itself, but the plan to get to there. It involved paddling the arctic ocean from Inuvik westwards, across the Mackenzie delta (the easy part), then ascending a squiggly little river (called the Babbage on the maps), and finally crossing the height of land (translation: A mountain range) into the Firth watershed. Scrutinizing the topo maps and google earth, my heart beat with fear – the fear of the unknown. How much of the Babbage was paddlable? I envisioned alternating between dragging the canoe up a bony little creek and when that was not possible, portaging the rest of the way. What about getting from the Babbage to the Firth? On the maps, close to the top of the Babbage there was a sinew of water that drained into something called Muskeg Creek, which pierced the mountains to end up joining the Firth, but instead of a paddlable stream, I foresaw tramping through sucky muskeg for kilometers. Was the Firth safe to canoe? It is located in a National Park, and to my understanding, canoeing had been banned on the river by the Park authorities years ago. Googling the Firth yielded a few hits – videos of rafters in glorified rubber duckies bouncing along seemingly endless rapids swathed with steep, rocky banks with no easy option to line or portage if necessary. That footage finally did it – I didn’t want to swim down a cold river after toiling so hard to get to it. Therefore I preferred Lee’s suggestion of a “float and bloat” on the Horton River in the Northwest Territories. The Horton is the most northerly river flowing in mainland Canada but, for such a remote location, is often visited by canoers as it is both beautiful and technically not difficult. It is often thought of as being a trip for old fogey canoeists, but so what? Most who have paddled it rave about its pulchritude, it’s on my “to-do” list, so why not this year?
Next thing I knew, in February, something had changed Lee’s mind, and I had been volunteered for an expedition on a river called the Kellett. I had never heard of this river before the prior year, when another group attempted an exploratory trip, supposedly a first descent (by white dudes – or Qallunaat as Inuit like to call us). But they ran into bad weather and low water, requiring an airlift due to time constraints about 80 km from the mouth of the river. The other volunteers for this trip were the usual suspects – Jenny from Washington State, Curt from New Jersey, who got over his disappointment of having to put off the Firth for yet another year – and newcomers (to our group) Kate and Mike from Minnesota. The Minnesotans had a lot of canoe experience, especially long distance racing, so I already dreaded the thought of trying to keep up even before paddling with them.
Why the Kellett River? It had been on Lee’s radar for a while, one of the few decent sized rivers in the Canadian North that he hadn’t paddled yet, and as the group from last year hadn’t completed it, there was the challenge of successfully reaching the mouth of the river. The river is in the northeast corner of Nunavut, flowing northward from a low, unnamed mountain range that separates the south flowing rivers from those that flow into the Arctic Ocean. It ends at Pelly Bay, a 25 km wide and 100 km deep bay that harbours the small Inuit village of Kugaaruk. It is named after Sir Henry Kellett, a British (actually Irish) naval captain, oceanographer and arctic explorer. He twice was part of the British naval search for the lost vessels of Sir John Franklin, the second time as Captain of the HMS Resolute, which spent two winters (1853-1854) embedded in the arctic ice during its mission. This was the last and largest British Admiralty expedition sent to search for Franklin, under the command of Captain Sir Edward Belcher. Kellett obviously didn’t find Franklin (he still hasn’t been found), but did manage to rescue the starving and scurvy ridden crew of the previously dispatched search vessel HMS Investigator, which in fact had actually “discovered”, albeit unbeknownst to them, the Northwest passage, but itself was ice bound off Banks Island in the western Arctic Ocean. After contact had been made, to reach the better supplied HMS Resolute, the Investigator’s sailors had to trek through the bitter cold for the 260 kilometers that separated the two ice bound ships. In the spring, Kellett was instructed by Belcher to leave his ship and take both the Resolute’s and Investigator’s crew on foot over the sea ice to a supply depot on Beechey Island, where they were taken back to Britain on supply ships. Kellett had protested that his ship was still seaworthy and should not be abandoned, but nevertheless followed orders. On returning home, Kellett was court martialed for abandoning his ship (this is automatic for any Captain that has “lost” his ship), but was exonerated when he produced the written orders that he had followed. Of interest, his ship was found a year later, drifting unmolested in Baffin Bay, by an American whaler. It was sailed to Connecticut, refitted, and given as a gift by the United States congress to the Queen, as a token of “goodwill and friendship”. To this day, a table made from the ship’s oak when it was finally broken up sits in the White House as a British thank-you for returning it – the so-called Resolute Desk. Of all people, Donald Trump currently uses it as his oval office desk! The thought of Trump using such a historic desk to send his inane, childish tweets from, must have the bones of the adventourous Captain twitching in his grave.
Cartographers ended up naming a river after Kellett, another almost forgotten colonial arctic explorer’s name becoming embedded on the map of the Canadian North. Recently, there has been some action by the government of Nunavut to rectify these colonial names – for example, the former Ellice River (named after Edward Ellice, a British politician/fur trader who helped merge the North West Company with the Hudson’s Bay Company) is now called the Kuunajuk River on the new official Canadian topographical maps.
Sir Henry Kellett by Stephen Pearce, National Portrait Gallery, London, bequeathed by Jane, Lady Franklin, 1892. This artist painted a boat load of arctic explorers, mostly unknown to modern day Canadians, even though their names adorn features on maps of the Canadian Arctic (which may as well not even exist as over 75% of us live within 100 miles of Trumpland, and only few venture to the arctic or even consult arctic maps) . The paintings can be seen on the webpage: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/set/10/Arctic+explorers%3A+paintings+by+Stephen+Pearce
The Kellett, lying wholly above the Arctic Circle, is about 260 kilometers long if you trace the source to its most southerly little puddle on the map. The first 30 km consists of a chain of small lakes, ponds really, connected by tiny, rocky creeks, essentially unpaddlable. For the next 15 km it resembles a small river, but the group that explored the river last year attempted this section and was beaten (literally, from their account) by very shallow water, with rocky shin-bashing drags through boulder gardens, before reaching a small canyon where they decided to portage the gear and run/line the boats down some “class 3-4” rapids. They suggested that starting the river after this canyon would be wise, whereupon a major tributary substantially increases its flow. So we planned to drop in there, avoiding the shallow “mess” upstream, leaving us with about 215 km of river to travel, plus a 27 km paddle on Pelly Bay, to get to Kugaaruk. We budgeted 18 days from the bush plane dropoff to make it to the village, so we had to average only 13 km a day – which we thought would be long enough to tackle any obstacles.
Canada sure is a big country. The river looks tiny when put to this scale…
So, how does one get to the Kellett River? Not easily! The southern gateway is Winnipeg, from there you fly to Churchill on the south side of Hudson’s Bay for a short stop, then fly to Rankin Inlet. Then it’s a change of planes for a short flight to Baker Lake with an interim stop at Chesterfield Inlet. All for the princely sum of $2,943 each, return. Heck, I can fly from Montreal to Europe in business class for that! What was I thinking? But wait, we did manage to get a bit knocked off that fare as Lee managed to convince two of his buddies, Brian and Jim, to also come on the flight (to paddle a different set of rivers), as we could get a somewhat discounted group fare if we were a minimum of eight flying. From Baker Lake, to get further north, the only option is a charter from Ookpik Air, owned by the Baker Lake Lodge people, flying two turbo otters on tundra tires. The flight from Baker to the start of the Kellett is 410 km. I won’t tell you how much that cost… Ookpik told us that they could fly our group of six plus gear, for a total payload of 2100 pounds, as long as we also paid for a prior fuel drop (an extra $3,000) so that the pilot could land and refuel “somewhere” on the way back to Baker. But we were hoping that they could do us a little favour and stash this fuel while one of their planes was flying some cargo up to one of the mining camps in the area, to save us a bit of money, something other charter companies have done for us in the past. But it turned out this outfit was not like most other charter companies, so wishful thinking in the end.
I decided to drive to Winnipeg, mostly to avoid the security people at the Montreal airport, who don’t seem to like people flying with camping gear. I knew I couldn’t avoid security at Winnipeg, but was hoping that they weren’t going to be as anal as the Montreal guys. I also knew that I would have four pieces of checked baggage, some of them overweight, which would increase my flying cost by over $500, but of more concern would add to the anxiety of possible lost or delayed essential luggage. It’s possible to jury-rig it if they lose your food bag or personal gear bag, or even the paddles as others will have spares, but if the folding canoe doesn’t show up in Winnipeg, it’s game over before it begins. So driving it was, again. 2,400 kilometers worth. I could at least commiserate with Curt, who was driving about the same distance from New Jersey, whilst the Minnesotans had a much shorter drive and Lee and Jenny would fly from Portland. I found a website that facilitates leaving cars at an airport hotel for the princely sum of $5 per night, so leaving them in Winnipeg for three weeks was not a problem. The plan was to all meet at the Winnipeg hotel on Sunday evening, July 8th, then fly to Baker Lake the next day. On July 10th we would charter out to the Kellett.
Saturday, July 7th, 2018. Podcast after podcast.
The night before I set off, last minute packing and fiddling kept me up until two in the morning, but I still managed to get up at six and was on the road by six thirty. My plan was to stop somewhere just after the halfway point, doing all the driving in daylight to avoid moose on the road in Northern Ontario. My route was the same as last year, via Ottawa – North Bay – Cochrane – Thunder Bay. I was nervous because England was playing Sweden in the quarter finals of the world cup that morning at ten, and was wondering if I could get the game on the radio. This had been my main disappointment with the timing of the trip, it clashed with the last phase of the soccer tournament so I wouldn’t be able to watch the games live. And, of all years, this was the one in which England looked like they actually had a chance to win the whole thing for the first time since 1966, and I am English by birth. Their new coach had, unexpectedly (to me at least, as in his previous club coaching career he had led my hometown club of Middlesbrough to relegation from the Premier League in 2009), managed get his players believing they could win, and not choke like some of the more highly fancied English teams in the past. To his credit, he had picked an almost completely new team of mostly young players, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves instead of playing with the usual English nervousness. They easily qualified from an admittedly weak group, then squeaked by Columbia on penalty kicks, exorcising their demons because they almost always lose penalty kick shoot-outs. Now they faced a beatable Swedish team without any superstars following superstar Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s retirement. And here I was, sadly, on the road driving. I had thought about trying to find a sports bar that was showing the game on TV, but decided I would probably just waste time driving around looking for such a place and not find one. Soccer is not hugely popular in Canada, and probably less so in the small towns north of Ottawa that I was driving by. I fiddled anxiously with the tuning control on my radio, and presto, found an AM channel that was broadcasting a BBC-5 feed of the game – with the bonus of getting to listen to the much preferred English commentators, not the rather drab American ones. I drove on, enraptured, imagining the plays in my mind as the game was narrated, until the signal faded to noise about half an hour into the game. Damn. England 0, Sweden 0. I would have to wait a month to find out if my beloved English team was going to advance. I was recording the game (and all the subsequent games up to the final) for watching when I got home in early August, hopefully still unaware of the scores. This was not such a stretch as we would be on the river during the semi-finals and the final, with only our Inreach satellite communicators to connect us to the civilized world, and everyone had instructions not to send us any world cup updates. It is so much better to watch a game not knowing the final score…
The drive was going well, listening to podcast after podcast of “Long Reads” from the British newspaper, The Guardian, thirty to forty five minute editorials on a wide range of subjects. I had downloaded a years worth of the eclectic stuff and was being educated one topic at a time, from why “diving” (faking a foul or an injury) had become so prevalent and accepted in soccer (blame the Brazilians), to why researchers are giving old people “young” blood transfusions (it may slow the aging process), to when will London’s anachronistic gentlemen’s clubs allow women to join (most have had to for financial reasons, but there a few notable holdouts), to how bottled water has become such a hot commodity (paying money for something you can get for free from a tap – why, it’s all marketing!). A highly recommended way to not get bored on a long drive. And of course, many cups of coffee, which actually work when one usually only drinks decaffeinated coffee. Before I knew it – well, okay, that’s not true, it was a long, hot, grueling drive – I had reached the little village of Longlac in Western Ontario, and had had enough for the day. 1,348 kilometers. I found quite a nice little motel, the L’Oree de Bois (“Edge of the Woods”), and settled in for the night. No roach infested fleabags this year, $90 got me a clean, modern abode. I was careful not to tune into any sports channels on the brand new big screen TV in the motel room lest I found out the result of the earlier soccer game, but on the guide channel I found out that TSN was supposed to rebroadcast the England-Sweden game the next day at 4 pm – which gave me a reason to get to Winnipeg before that time.
Sunday July 8th. Winnipeg reunion.
I was up at seven and on the road ten minutes later. Although I hate getting up at the crack of dawn, I actually love driving this early in the morning – there was no traffic on the slightly misty road as I sped through the quiet boreal forest. Soon the road turned south towards Lake Superior, passing the shores of Lake Nipigon and the spectacular palisades overlooking its southeastern aspect. It looked like there was some really good hiking here. An informative plaque by the roadside described how the palisades came to be.
I made it all the way to Thunder Bay before stopping for the holy trinity of a long road trip: Coffee, food and gas. Especially gas, making sure not to repeat last years scare when I almost ran out of it about a hundred kilometers north of Thunder Bay. Many more Guardian “Long Reads” later, I was crossing the border into Manitoba. Amongst other fascinating topics, I learned all about how Pope Francis was cleaning up the corrupt Vatican Bank, and was disgusted by the tales of wanton excess that had come before. This guy was a breath of fresh air compared with the stodgy popes that had come before him. Still, there has got to be something wrong with an organization that hoards so much wealth in a world with so much poverty.
Boy was it hot in Manitoba – over 30 Celsius, and apparently it had been even hotter the day before. I had been looking forward to escaping the oppressive heatwave I had just left in Quebec, which had been blamed for 70 deaths already, but it looked like I would have to wait until I got up north before I would get relief. Cruising into Winnipeg under a bluebird sky at about 4 pm, I was in my hotel room watching the soccer game by 4:30. It ended England 2, Sweden 0, and a semi-final date with Croatia a few days later. The dream remained alive. Still high from the victory, I went down to the car to bring more gear up to the room and bumped into Curt, who had been in Winnipeg since the day before. Together we went and found Kate and Mike’s room, knocked on the door, and introduced ourselves to our new paddling companions.
An hour later the four of us were downtown at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, at a place called The Forks, former horse stables that had been turned into a trendy market with an upscale food court – and, more importantly, a beer joint that served all sorts of microbrews from various places in North America. We thought that we might as well have a few IPA’s as there would be no more beer for the next three weeks! We were so into chatting that we almost forgot that we had agreed to go meet Jenny and Lee at the airport when their flight arrived in the early evening, so off we went. It turned out to be perfect timing as they came out of the terminal with all their luggage about five minutes after we got there. It had been a close call for them making their flight connection in Calgary (only five minutes to spare!), but they squeaked through and amazingly so did their luggage. So far, so good – all six of us had made it to Winnipeg with all our gear. Lee looked like hell – he said he was seriously sleep deprived from a hectic work schedule before the trip, but also very dehydrated and hungry from the flights. But we had work to do – we had to reorganize our gear packs to try and even things out to respect Calm Air’s baggage rules. The canoe packs would weigh 70 pounds, the maximum the airline would allow, and all the other packs and barrels could be up to 50 pounds. We were “allowed” only 120 pounds in total each, so we knew our total baggage would be over a little. Of more concern, a year earlier, the same airline had lost some of the luggage of Lee’s friends, Brian and Jim, taking five days for it to appear at Baker Lake, stranding them and delaying their trip until it arrived. We did not want a repeat of this, therefore a month before we flew, Jim had contacted the airline’s customer service and explained how such lax baggage handling could seriously jeopardize a wilderness trip. Under a mild threat of bad publicity if it happened again (such as this diatribe), the agent assured us that she had spoken to their baggage people and that there would be a note in our file that they would do their best to make sure all our stuff made it to Baker Lake. As we would find out from the agent when we checked in the next morning, apparently Rankin Inlet is somewhat of a “black hole” when it comes to airline baggage. That is where the bags are transferred from a 737 jet to the smaller turboprops that splay out into the many little villages of Nunavut.
Another problem was Lee’s wanigan. For those of you who don’t know what a wanigan is, to a canoeist it is a box that the kitchen supplies (pots, pans, cutlery, stoves, dishes, etc) are carried in. The word is apparently a corruption of the Ojibwa waanikaan, meaning “storage pit,” and in the old days was mainly used to carry supplies to lumber camps. They are traditionally made out of wood and carried with a tumpline -this is a strap attached at both ends to the wanigan and used to carry it by placing the strap over the top of the head. Sound uncomfortable? Perhaps, but the tumpline utilizes the spine rather than the shoulders to bear the weight as standard backpack straps would. It is a cheap and efficient way to carry a load and the preferable one in many parts of the world. I was introduced to this fact years ago while climbing the Ruwenzoris in Uganda. To trek these moutains (famously known as the “Mountains of the Moon” and the legendary source of the Nile River) you have to hire local tribesmen as porters to carry your gear, plus fresh food, along with a guide and a cook. Feeling somewhat sorry for these guys (who were paid only $5 a day in wages), I had brought a proper alpine backpack with fancy shoulder straps and a padded hip harness thinking it would make their climb a little less miserable. Hmmph. The first thing my porter did was stick that high tech backpack into an old burlap sack, attach a cloth tumpline, and unceremoniously take off, hunched over with the pack balanced on his back, tumpline around his forehead, at twice my speed up the trail, while wearing only flimsy rubber boots. At the end of the trip, that guy (and all the others) got a huge tip plus a whole bunch of warm clothing, as well my old down sleeping bad, none of which I would later need in equatorial Africa.
Tump lines in action. Porters on my expedition to climb Mt. Stanley, 2008. I haven’t really complained about a portage since seeing these guys in action.
Snow at the equator in Africa. Our cook and head guide, with Mt. Stanley in the background .
Lee’s modern wanigan (JJ photograph).
Getting back to Lee’s wanigan, his is a modern one made of hard plastic with rather insubstantial appearing shoulder straps instead of the traditional tumpline. Fully loaded, it was a 50 pound beast and awkward to portage, the flat hard plastic digging into ones back, the straps uncomfortably thin. The immediate problem was that it would only fit into the canoe slotted in with soft packs, and Lee’s canoe partner Curt had brought his food in an uncompromising 60 liter plastic barrel. Together the wanigan and barrel simply would not fit in the allotted space. Finally, I led Lee and Jenny off to the Denny’s down the street so that the poor famished souls could eat, leaving an exasperated Curt to transfer his food into an extra plastic waterproof pack he had brought, “just in case”, then managing to jam the filled pack into the removable portage harness that had come with the barrel. Problem solved. At Denny’s, Lee looked like he was about to collapse at any minute, he was so tired. Practically a walking zombie. My burger was pretty good, not what I expected from such a maligned restaurant chain. Off to bed at around eleven, with all alarms set for an early wake-up.
Monday July 9th. Baker Lake or bust.
I hate alarm clocks that go off at five in the morning, but we had a 7:30 flight and lots of baggage to check in. We loaded the three cars with gear, dropping it as well as Lee, Jenny and Kate at the terminal, then returned to the hotel with the cars to leave them at the long term parking. We took a taxi back to the airport where Lee had already started the battle with the check-in agents. Why can’t flying be a pleasant experience? Why does it always seem like the people we’re paying lots of money to fly with are somehow against us, not on our side? Who’s paying who here? Yes, we had lots of baggage, but we were heading north on an expedition, we needed all our stuff. Yes, that makes us a pain in the butt to check in, but I still think the agents should be more accomodating and helpful rather than adversarial. Although we had weighed our bags the night before with a portable scale, on the airline scale several were slightly heavier than allowed (we’re talking no more than a kilogram or two), neccessitating some gear shuffling between bags. Yup, these things take time and yup, the line was getting longer behind us. But we did get there early and were trying our best to follow the airline rules, what else could we do? Well, okay, Curt could have packed his ammunition in a separate bag instead of leaving it in his gun case, which is a no-no in the firearms transport rulebook, and required some more repacking and relabelling. But otherwise I think we did a pretty good job of trying to facilitate check in. After about 45 minutes we were finally checked in with surprisingly little excess baggage fees – about $300 in total. The next obstacle was to get the bags through the X-Ray machines at the oversize luggage drop off, where they X-Ray everything right in front of you, ready to pounce if they see anything “suspicious”. As you can imagine, we probably had a lot of suspicious looking stuff to X-Ray eyes, although none of it really dangerous, so it is a nervy experience. It just depends how anal the security personnel staffing the machine that day, as they have final say on what can go and what can’t. And in reality, the bottom line is we are not terrorists, we mean no harm to anyone, but we have expedition stuff that we really need. My gear all got through without inspection, as did most of everyone elses. The exception was Lee who held up the line as the security guy questioned a metal container that Lee had to dig through his bag to find and show the guard. It was a can of Pak canoe repair adhesive,which he had labelled with a “new and improved flavour” sticker and put in his food pack. The guard recognized that it wasn’t a dangerous explosive, used common sense and let it go. Whew. Now we just had to get through the regular security screening, which we did without a problem.
The first leg of the flight was on a rather tired First Air 737, a 27 year old ex-KLM jet that the airline rescued from storage and put back into service in 2013. Hey, at least it wasn’t the ex-Nordair (anyone remember them?) 737 built in 1979 that First Air flew until 2015 (I flew on that one a few times before, to Kuujuaq and Iqualuit). Or one of their two 737’s that crashed, the most disastrous in 2011 at Resolute Bay, tragically killing 12 people including all 4 crew, only 3 people surviving. The Transport Canada Safety Board report of that incident is scary to read for anyone who flies commercially in the Canadian North:
The apprehensive co-pilot signaled to his captain to abort the landing in the final minutes before their Boeing 737 slammed into a hillside, but the first officer’s objections weren’t assertive enough and went unheeded until it was too late. The flight was doomed by a variety of factors, including a scrambling cockpit crew that started their descent late into the Resolute airport and a captain who might have accidentally hit his steering yoke and inadvertently changed the mode on the autopilot.
Investigators also expressed concerns about the airline, saying among other things that it needs to provide better guidelines to its crews for when the first officer can take control from the pilot. Ouch. The other 737 was “written off” after a “heavy landing” at Yellowknife in 2001. Not a great flight record – the airline has only ever operated ten 737’s and two have crashed. Mercifully our flight was quite boring, with friendly, “old time” service offered by an attentive flight crew complete with a nice hot breakfast. Well, okay, it was the standard rubber egg breakfast, but it sure beats the “snacks” you get on most airlines these days. I actually kept the plastic knife that came with the breakfast to use as my dedicated peanut butter scooper for the upcoming trip, that way I wouldn’t have to keep using the knife in my lifejacket. Bonus!
Two hours later the abandoned giant grain elevators at Churchill came into view, the port being declared not commercially viable several years ago. The town was now surviving on the tourist trade, hoping that people would come to ogle the polar bears, belugas and northern lights, but the one way plane tickets from Winnipeg were a little expensive at $709 each. On our flight we had some such well heeled Americans from the Sierra Club doing just that. At that time this was the only way to get to Churchill since the Hudson Bay rail line had been washed out from massive flooding the year before. But some good news came later this year, in September the government pledged $117 million to help a consortium buy and repair the tracks, so hopefully the town won’t disappear. While on the subject of the rail line, there is a really interesting display about the difficulties of its construction in the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg, with lots of details and old photographs, well worth a gander if you have the time. Construction was started in 1883 but complications including a change in the final destination port lead to it not being finished until 1929. During the First World War some 200 miles of the track were even torn up, with the rails and sleepers shipped to France by the Canadian government to be used by troop supply trains. The terrain that it was built on was not really suitable for railways – especially the muskeg and shifting permafrost. The weather was also pretty tough – for example, work often continued in the winter, where temperatures were recorded as low as -72 and blizzards scoured the land. Working conditions in general were apparently quite poor – notoriously, many workers died and others had serious injuries such as crushed arms and legs, health and safety not being a priority. Hundreds of miles north of any government inspectors, the railway contractors felt free to force their largely immigrant workforce to labour in quite unsafe conditions . One infamous mile of track has 50 grave sites along its edge, workers who had died while building the line. Author Doug Smith, who has written extensively about labour history, described the story of the Hudson Bay Railway construction as “one of incredible endurance, hardship and exploitation.” The workers were also lied to – they were lured to the construction camps under false claims that they would be well taken care of with food and lodging. But rooms that were made to hold 17 people were packed with 40 or more. The men were offered work at 20-30 cents an hour but not told ahead of time that they had to pay $1 per day for room and board, and for their own transportation to the camp. Capitalism at its ugly best. In addition, the blackflies were terrible during the hot summers. “Some of the men would be bitten so badly that their eyes became infected and eventually they had to be hospitalized”, states an account by Leonard Earl, a Winnipeg Tribune reporter at the time, whose writings are held by the Archives of Manitoba. An American novelist, Courtney Ryley Cooper, wrote a book in 1931 based on the construction of the railroad called “End of Steel”, described as “Adventures in the wilderness of Canada near the edge of the Arctic Circle”. Perhaps another good read, if you can find a reasonably priced copy, although I wonder if the author romanticizes the sordid building affair – he certainly uses a playboy-style smiling caucasian on the cover instead of a minority immigrant with a crushed leg…
“End of Steel” by C. Cooper
The real thing. The Hudson Bay Railway under construction, circa 1920. This looks like the “easy” section being built in the southern boreal forest. Still, it’s a pretty dodgy looking rail-bed (Archives of Manitoba).
A section of the washed out tracks. (Canadian Press Photo).
The Churchill airport terminal is relatively modern, but understandably small, looking like a corrugated steel shed. Inside, they had some interesting photographs of the town’s history on the walls, including the American base established by the US Army Air Corps in 1942 which was eventually repurposed as the current airport. Can you imagine what some Yankee from New York thought about being posted to this place in the dead of winter? Or a southerner from Alabama?
Churchill itself has an interesting history. The first European explorer to visit the area was the Welshman, Sir Thomas Button, and if ever a northern explorer has been forgotten it’s this guy. Even his name has been expunged from modern maps of the bay area. In 1612, eight years before the Pilgrim Fathers went ashore in Massachusetts Bay and just seven years after the establishment of the very first Canadian settlement, Port Royal in Nova Scotia, Button spent a year in the great unknown of central Canada, supposedly both looking for Henry Hudson and the Northwest Passage. He overwintered at the mouth of the Nelson River, just to the south of Churchill, erecting a cross there after claiming the West side Hudson’s Bay for the British, and subsequently, Canada. Back then all you had to do to steal land from its current inhabitants was plant a flag, or in this case, a cross. I guess the modern equivalent is the mining prospectors who drive stakes into wilderness to “claim it” for their own eventual profit. Of note, Button was the first explorer to lose a ship in the ice of the Canadian Arctic, the Resolution, but luckily he had two vessels under his command so he was able to retreat to England in the Discovery.
Part of Jansson’s fantastic map of North America from 1666 showing the west side of Hudson’s Bay as “Buttons Bay”. And what may come as a shock to most modern day Quebeckers, what is now Northern Quebec is noted as “Nova Britannia”!
Better remembered, especially by Manitobans, are the Danes who followed closely after Button, led by Jens Muncke in 1619. They got stuck in the ice at the mouth of the Churchill River, where they overwintered. He named the area “Nova Dania” (don’t tell the Canadian government!) but it didn’t treat them very well as only 3 of 64 expedition members survived a brutal winter, perishing in the cold, starving and scurvy ridden. Muncke himself was one of the survivors, managing to sail back to Denmark in his sloop, the Lamprey, having to abandon his larger ship, the frigate Unicorn, as there was no-one left to sail it (I like the Danish name better, the Lamprenen and Enhiörningen). Reading about their trials and tribulations is fascinating…
June 4 found Munke giving up all hope. “There remained only three beside myself, all lying down unable to help one another. The stomach was ready enough and had appetite for food, but the teeth would not allow it. Not one of us had the requisite strength for going into the hold to fetch us a drink of wine. The cook’s boy lay dead by my berth, and three men on the steerage. Two men were on shore and would gladly have been back on the ship, but it was impossible for them to get there as they had not sufficient strength in their limbs to help themselves on board, so that both they and I were lying quite exhausted, as we had now for four entire days eaten nothing for the sustenance of body. Accordingly, I did now hope for anything but that God would put an end to this misery and take me for Himself and His Kingdom.” Four days later the overpowering “smell and stench of the dead bodies” permeated Munke’s cabin so badly that he “managed to get out of the berth as best I could” and force himself out of the cabin – “I spent that night on deck, using the clothes of the dead.” On the next morning “when two the men who were ashore saw me and perceived that I was still alive – I, on my part, had thought that they were dead long ago – they came out on the ice to the ship and assisted me in getting down from the ship to the land, together with the clothes I threw to them.” The Lamprenen had been beached some seventy feet from shore, which distance they crawled and found cover under a nearby bush. Fire was made and nearby was discovered some “greens growing out of the ground,” which roots they sucked – “as with the warmth now commenced to increase nicely, we began to recover.”
More days passed and as the offshore ice began to break up, schools of fish were spotted. A makeshift weir was set and on the first try, “God gave us six large trout which I cooked myself, while the two others went on board the Lamprenen, to fetch wine, which we had not tasted for a long time, none of us having an appetite for it.” Since scurvy had loosened their teeth, they were unable to chew the flesh, so instead they made a thick broth of the catch. Shortly afterwards, they “got a gun onshore and shot birds, from which we obtained much refreshment; so that day by day, we got stronger and fairly well in health.” Three weeks had passed since Munke wrote his last testament and in that brief period he and his few companions made remarkable progress in the recovery of health. So much so that it was decided to prepare for an attempt to return home. June 26 proved arduous for the men: “In the name of Jesus, and after prayer and supplication to God for good fortune and counsel, we now set to work to bring the Lamprenen alongside the Enhiörningen and worked as diligently as we could in getting sails ready for us. But therein we encountered a great difficulty and much anxiety, because the Lamprenen stood high on the shore, having been carried up by the winter flood. We were consequently obliged first to unload all that was in her, and then look out for a high spring tide in order to haul her out. In this we succeeded, and brought her alongside the Enhiörningen. When we got on board the Enhiörningen, we were obliged first to throw overboard the dead bodies, which were then quite decomposed, as we could not move about or do anything there for had smell and stench, and yet were under the necessity of taking the Enhiörningen and placing on board Lamprenen victuals and other necessities for our use in crossing the sea, as far as we three persons could manage.” For three weeks the small group toiled in the preparations for sailing. On the afternoon of Sunday, July 16, after prayers in the morning, sails were set and the Lamprenen moved out slowly from its winter imprisonment into the bay’s relatively open waters. Initial progress was slow because of the incessant ice floes. In addition, gales were encountered and then fogs, and the rudder was once broken by jagged ice and had to be repaired. A month later they found themselves hugging the north coast of Hudson Strait, making their way east under favourable winds at a rate of twenty-five to thirty miles a day. On September 11, “towards night a gale sprang up and our foresail was torn from the bolt-line, so that we three men had plenty to do to get it in, and then the ship was half full of water.” Three days later they passed the Orkneys and on the 20th Norway was sighted. Five days later the sloop sailed into Bergen; it “had returned into a Christian country. We poor men could not hold our tears for great joy, and thanked God that He had graciously granted us this happiness.”
-From “Arctic Obsession, The Lure of the Far North”, by Alexis S. Troubetzkoy, Dundurn, 2011, page 113.
The remains of the Unicorn were discovered by the Danish historian/writer Thorkild Hansen in the tidal flats near the mouth of the Churchill river in 1964, who also wrote a book about Muncke called The Way to Hudson Bay: The Life and Times of Jens Munk (the modern spelling), which sounds like a good read except it is hard to find. An interesting anecdote in several history books is that a party of “Indians” (probably Cree or Dene) discovered the expedition camp and found a number of unburied bodies of “strange appearance”, and Muncke’s abandoned stores. Not knowing what gunpowder was, they apparently set it alight and many of them were killed. How the historians deduced this hundreds of years later is however quite baffling to me.
I would be remiss to not talk a little about the granddaddy of Hudson’s Bay exploration, none other than Henry Hudson himself. In 1610 he entered the bay, but only the eastern part. He got caught in the ice in James Bay, the southeastern extension of Hudson’s Bay, overwintering there. Interestingly, his ship was the Discovery, the same vessel that Button commanded a few years later. This first (but far from last) forced overwintering of an exploration ship in the bay didn’t go well. Most of his crew had had enough of the harsh, foreign land and wanted to go home, whereas Hudson wanted to keep looking for the Northwest Passage in what would turn out to be a blind bay. The crew mutinied and cast Hudson, his son and some loyal members of his crew into an open boat, from which they were never seen again. The tragedy was heightened as only eight of the thirteen mutineers made it home, where interestingly, probably because of the information of the new land they possessed, none were hung, as would be the custom for such scoundrels. So, in the end, who was more foolish?
The Last Voyage of Henry Hudson, by John Collier (Tate Gallery, London). This amazing Pre-Raphaelite painter shows the explorer as a tired old man with his son, cast adrift in the bay named after him. No trace of them was ever found. The artist is thought to have raised the taboo of cannibalism by posing Hudson, eerily staring out at the viewer, similar to the pose in Dante’s ‘Ugolino’ by Joshua Reynolds (1773). In Dante’s story, Ugolino is incarcerated with his sons, eating them in an attempt to survive, although the act is futile and all eventually die. Perhaps this specter of cannibalism was because Collier’s painting was executed not too long after John Rae brought back to England the Inuit stories of discovering such behaviour from the Franklin expedition survivors (mutilated bodies and body parts in cooking pots…). I hope I never get that hungry on a northern trip. The curator’s notes about this painting also dramatically mention that “the vast, Arctic landscape remains impassive to a terrifying human drama”. I wonder if that curator has ever been to the Arctic, or is just full of BS?
For the next fifty or so years, Europeans stayed away from the supposedly jinxed Hudson’s Bay. The next player in the area was the Hudson’s Bay Company, originally led by the French-turned-English allies Radisson and Groseilliers, who managed to convince the British Prince Rupert, Charles 2nd’s cousin, and some English merchants, that they could open up new fur trade routes on the bay. They sailed into the bay in the ketch, the Nonsuch, in 1668, successfully obtaining many furs (for those who don’t know, you can visit and walk aboard a full sized replica of this ship in the Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg, another must visit). This first foray was such a success that the HBC was soon after officially created by royal charter in 1670. The first attempt to set up a trading post in the Churchill area in 1688–89 failed, but in 1717 they built a permanent settlement, Churchill River Post, a log fort a few kilometers upstream from the mouth of the river. The trading post and river were named after John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough, a brilliant British general who led allied forces to victory in many battles of the War of the Spanish Succession, which allowed Britain to become the leading military and commercial power of the early 18th century. He also had an eye for business, in 1685, before his military success, he was the Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company . Using his connections and influence he managed to arrange for British marines to protect Company vessels on their annual transatlantic voyages and for several Royal Navy ships to actually help defend the Company’s northern domain. In 1731 the original wooden fort at Churchill was replaced with a more substantial stone fort, named Fort Prince of Wales, on the western bank of the river. It has been restored and is now a National Historic Site. Check out this amusing vignette from the NFB of Canada: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_x5LPMBQTo
Churchill airport terminal.
We had about half an hour at the Churchill airport until the plane continued its journey to Rankin Inlet. It took all of five minutes to case it out. Aside from the historical photographs of Churchill, the other major attraction in the airport terminal was a display case with a huge polar bear mounted inside. A sobering highlight was the menacing claws protruding almost four inches out from the huge feet, which can be up to a foot wide, an adaptation to spread their impressive weight out as they strut on deep snow or thin ice. The heaviest polar bear ever recorded was shot in Alaska, weighing 1,002 kg (2,209 lbs), although males more typically weigh 450 kg and females 260 kg. These big feet also allow the bears to be impressive swimmers. For example, in 2008, the United States Geological Service tracked a radio-collared adult female polar bear in the Beaufort Sea on a continuous swim of 687 km over 9 days! Another scary fact is that they have been clocked running at speeds that would catch Usian Bolt, so there is no use trying to run from one. An Inuk once told us that if a polar bear charges you, wait until the last minute, drop to the ground with a knife in your hand, then thrust it up into the bear’s belly as it passes over, or, more likely, collapses on you. I hope to never have to find out if this maneuver would work or if I would simply be crushed to death before one of its paws rips my head off. One day it would be nice to be able to safely watch a polar bear in its natural environment, but this rather dead version behind glass was the only polar bear I wanted to see on this trip! Such magnificent creatures, but we would be intruding on their territory, and if they decided we were going to be their dinner, the only thing standing between them and us would be a shotgun, and that would be a shame.
Polar bear in the airport terminal. I think Curt could have taken it…
On the approach to Rankin Inlet, there was still ice on Hudson’s Bay.
Back on the plane, we flew over the bay to Rankin Inlet. I peered vainly down at the water, hoping perhaps for a glimpse of a pod of beluga whales, to no avail. An hour later we landed at the small town, population 2,842. Despite its size, the town boasts a paved runway big enough to land jets, but the terminal was pretty small and crowded as people waited for various flights. Remembering the reputation of Rankin being a “black hole” for airline baggage, I stared out of the terminal window to watch if our bags made it from the 737 to the ATR turboprop that would take us to Baker Lake, amazed at the single baggage guy standing on the tarmac heaving the heavy bags into the cargo bay of the plane by himself. Content that I was seeing our packs and barrels being transferred, I cased out the terminal. That took less than the five minutes it took in Churchill. Lee was flaked out on one of the terminal seats, looking uncomfortable but snoring. He had also slept on most of the flights up to now, complaining that it might take him days to get over his pre-trip sleep deprivation.
Lee looking uncomfortable in the Rankin Inlet airport terminal.
The rest of us gathered around a nice big map of Nunavut ogling rivers and possible canoe trips. Lee’s friend Brian showed us where he and his buddy Jim were planning to travel this year. Later today, after landing at Baker Lake, they were going to be dropped off at Kazan falls on a short charter flight with Ookpik, then make their way via small rivers and streams back to the Rankin Inlet area. Brian explained their rationale – they have paddled many rivers in this area, ending up at most of the little hamlets on the west side of Hudson’s Bay, but never at Rankin. It looked like a really interesting trip, crossing many watersheds to hop into the river that would finally take them to Rankin. He told us that they had spoken to a local and asked about the water flow of this last river, and had apparently been told they’d better get there before early August as the river dries up if you wait too long! Very adventurous, I must admit I was a little jealous as it sounded like a real unknown, planning a route solely from maps and then actually traveling it, hoping the terrain would be forgiving enough to complete the trip in the allotted time.
Rankin Inlet really became established as a town in the 1950’s when a nickel/copper mine was opened nearby, although it only operated for five years. It is now known for its artists, and the little shop in the terminal had some nice small carvings for sale. It is also the home town of the first Inuk professional hockey player to play in the NHL, Jordon Tootoo. The other thing Rankin is somewhat famous for is that, in January 2008, it endured the longest recorded blizzard in Canada with wind speeds of 74 km/h and wind chill values as low as −58 °C, the storm lasting 7 days and 5 hours.
Two hours at the Rankin Inlet airport is too long – not enough time to go out and visit the village, but nothing really to do inside the tiny terminal. We are now truly in the north, so when we were called to board the flight to Baker, there was no security screening at all, just a stroll out on the runway to the plane, which had “first come, first choice” seating. I grabbed a window seat so I that could ogle the terrain below during the flight, but not to worry, there were the eight of us and three Inuit as passengers, and that was it. The plane soon reached Chesterfield Inlet, another small hamlet on the bay, only thirty minutes flying time, where it landed to discharge some passengers. And I thought Rankin Inlet had a tiny airport terminal! This one was positively titchy.
A forty foot trailer makes do as the airport terminal in Chesterfield Inlet.
The Inuktitut name for this village is Igluligaarjuk, meaning “place with few houses”, which it certainly is, currently with a population of only 437. it is the oldest permanent settlement in Nunavut and lies on the southern side of the actual inlet, right on Hudson’s Bay. The Hudson’s Bay Company established a post there in 1911 which then became the main supply center for other posts in the area. It soon also became the main Royal North West Mounted Police outpost, being moved in 1914 from the original location further north at Cape Fullerton, the site where the steamer Neptune, commanded by A.P. Low on his 1903 expedition to the bay, overwintered. The inlet itself got its English name in about 1749 courtesy of Philip Dormer Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Chesterfield, the British Secretary of State at the time. This guy is more famous for the “Chesterfield Letters” though – more formally known as “Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman”, published by Eugenia, the wife of his illegitimate son, also called Philip Stanhope. The father had tried to educate the bastard as best he could from afar, via more than four hundred letters written over thirty years. Chesterfield wrote mostly instructive communications about geography, history, politics and diplomacy in multiple languages, trying to make sure the young fellow would do well in the world. Alas, he didn’t amount to much and died before his father. Lord Chesterfield was so pissed off that his illegitimate but only son had married a woman of “humble social class”, not following his father’s advice on the topic of marriage sent in the letters, that he cut the poor widow out of his will, so she got him back by selling the letters to a publisher for fifteen hundred guineas, enough to buy her a nice house and live well (about $500,000 today). Why you may ask, did these letters sell for so much? Probably because Chesterfield also instructed his son about the “good manners of a gentleman”, such as this excerpt:
“However frivolous a company may be, still, while you are among them, do not show them, by your inattention, that you think them so; but rather take their tone, and conform in some degree to their weakness, instead of manifesting your contempt for them. There is nothing that people bear more impatiently, or forgive less, than contempt; and an injury is much sooner forgotten than an insult. If, therefore, you would rather please than offend, rather be well than ill spoken of, rather be loved than hated; remember to have that constant attention about you which flatters every man’s little vanity; and the want of which, by mortifying his pride, never fails to excite his resentment, or at least his ill will.”
Apparently this stuff about how the ruling class actually lived was scandalous at the time, thus a best seller! Samuel Johnson, the great English writer, commented that the letters “teach the morals of a whore, and the manners of a dancing-master” as means for getting on in the world as a “gentleman”.
Chesterfield Inlet itself extends inland for about 160 kilometers, where it then narrows and winds, river-like, around the Bowell Islands, finally connecting to the rather large Baker Lake, 90 km long and 30 km at its widest. Baker Lake itself is fed by the iconic Thelon river to the west and the equally historic Kazan river to the south.
They wouldn’t let us out of the plane to look around the hamlet of Chesterfield as no passengers were boarding, so within no time we were back in the air. The sky was clear and we had a good view of the terrain below, at first following the Inlet, then flying over Baker Lake itself. A big island on the east side of the lake is called Christopher Island, presumably named by Captain William Christopher, who in 1761 was the first westerner to reach Baker Lake, naming the lake after Sir William Baker, the Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company at that time. Curious about this Captain Christopher, as I had never heard of him before, on further research I was startled to find out that he was born a mere 10 kilometers from where I was born in England! We are both Teesiders, he born in Norton, north of the river Tees, and myself in Saltburn, south of the river. The world gets smaller every year! Christopher was an officer in the merchant navy of the HBC, in command of the sloop “Churchill”, when he sailed up the inlet to the lake, apparently, as like countless others, in search of that elusive northwest passage. This event was recorded by Ferdinand Jacobs, Chief Factor at Fort Prince of Wales, who reported to the HBC Committee in London:
“We have joy in Acquanting Your Hon’rs that Mr Christopher in the Churchill Sloop this Year has found the Straights or River Call’d by the Indians Kis-catch-ewan up which he Sail’d 100 Miles; is a fine River & View farther up, but the Wind would not Permit him to Proceed any further… We now Promise your Hon’rs we will Prosicute the said Discovery to the Utmost’ and will Let nothing be wanting to Compleat it.”
This is the first western historical mention of Saskatchewan (Kiscatchewan apparently means “swift flowing” in Cree). This area is well north of the current province of Saskatchewan, but the Kazan river does begin at Kasba Lake which is right at the Saskatchewan – Nunavut border . Christopher returned the following year to see if the west end of the lake lead would indeed lead to the northwest passage, but sadly for him, it did not. Here is the report he sent back to his superiors:
“I rec’d your favour of 25th May, in Answer to which am sorry to Aquaint you, that the Great River which I Mentioned in my last, have been thoroughly Search’d this voyage by Mr Norton and self, in Churchill Sloop and Strivewell Cutter, and in my opinion Produces nothing that can Either be for your Honrs Interest, or the benefit of the Nation, the Shores and Land as far as we cou’d see, have nothing upon it better than Shrubs of Birch and Willows, Which not being sufficient shelter for the Natives, nor at the time for Animals, Deer Except’d. I refer your Hon’rs to my Journal and Draught for Particulars, and am heartly sorry our Discovery has not Answer’d your Expectations, but at the same time can truly say, we’ve not been wanting in doing our Utmost. As we’ve Completed the discovery of this River, or Inlet, I think next year of Searching an opening in 62° 37′ and rather to the westward of Whale Cove, Making What other Discoverys may be in my power.”
-William Christopher to HBC London – Fort Prince of Wales, 28th August, 1762.
(For this information, I am indebted to Geoff King of the Captain Cook Society, https://www.captaincooksociety.com, with thanks to the HBC archives in the Archives of Manitoba).
As we flew over Chesterfield Inlet its waters were largely ice free, but Baker Lake was still mostly chock full of ice, at many places right up to the shore. Excitedly I spotted the mouth of the Kazan River, wondering if one day I would have the time to paddle this one thousand kilometer colossus of a river. Maybe when I retire, perhaps?
The Kazan River enters ice choked Baker Lake.
Within an hour of taking off from Chesterfield we were at the west end of the lake, flying over the town itself before looping back towards the airport, located on the land just to the north of the mouth of the Thelon River. This location gives the town its Inuktitut name, ‘Qamani’tuaq’ , meaning “where the river widens”. In no time we were in the airport terminal, waiting anxiously for our gear, hoping that it all did indeed escape the “black hole” of Rankin. And, as it all piled in on the tiny luggage carousel, yes…success!
As we gathered our stuff, a smiling woman was talking to Brian and Jim, welcoming them and telling them that their charter would be ready to fly them to start their expedition in a few hours. This was Helen, the logistics person from Ookpik. We wandered over and introduced ourselves, after all we were about to plonk a heck of a lot of cash in their coffers, and were wondering what the plan was for our flight, scheduled for sometime the next day. After a brief chat, curious about her accent, I asked what part of England she was from. Turns out she is a northerner as well, but from the west coast whereas I am from the east. Apparently her English aunt had married the owner of the airline company and she had been over helping her uncle out for a number of years. I thought this would foster some sort of kinship – an unlikely English “connection” in the Canadian north, but it didn’t appear to warm her up to us. She strolled over to our gear, took one look at the pile, scowled and immediately sputtered – “You have a lot of gear. I’m not sure we can get it all out on one flight”. Hmmm. We had brought the “standard” gear for a six person canoe expedition – three folding canoes neatly in their packs, the size of hockey bags, one food pack and one personal pack each, one wanigan, the paddles and daypacks. Canoeists know what can fly on these planes because we have done it many times, with many different charter companies. And these guys fly canoe trippers out every year, plus they had given us a quote for the distance we needed to fly based on six passengers and a total payload of 2100 pounds, so why the immediate negative attitude? It’s not like we showed up with the kitchen sink! I wondered if something else was going on, but wasn’t initially too concerned knowing that our stuff would indeed fit in the plane, chalking it up to either inexperience or being overly conservative.
We managed to store much of our gear in the Ookpik hanger at the airport, ready for our scheduled charter out the next day, then hopped into their pickup truck with only camping gear and food for the night. At our request, they took us to the town campground, about half way between the airport and the town, sandwiched between the road and the lake. Hotels in these towns are crazy expensive, especially for what you get. For example, Nunamiut Lodge, when we enquired at the desk, quoted $275 per person per night, plus tax, for a simple room. So camping it was. The campground boasted a wooden cabin, four tent platforms, and the remains of a metal picnic table. The door to the cabin showed signs of attempted forced entry, one external padlock mechanism being broken off, but the internal lock was still operational, denying us entry. The picnic table had been trashed – the metal top was missing and the metal base with attached seats was mangled. That had taken some serious vandalism – I’m still not sure how someone managed to trash it. One of the tent platforms was sagging, the supporting two by ten wooden beams broken, but we were to later find out that this platform damage had been caused by a heavy snow load the past winter, not vandalism. Although cooler than in Winnipeg, it was still relatively hot and sunny in Baker Lake, well over 20 degrees , and with the mosquitoes having hatched the week before, they were out in force to bother us, neccesitating setting up the bug shelter. The Baker Lake mozzies are quite large and persistent, but we hoped that when we got further north they hadn’t hatched yet and we would have a few bug free days, perhaps even a week. Now wouldn’t that be nice!
Welcome to Baker Lake.
The famous Baker Lake campground, where many veterans of the Thelon River have spent the night at the end of their trips.
Lee decided to hang out at the campground and sleep, while the rest of us headed off to town. We needed to buy camp stove fuel, lighters, and if we were lucky, some bear spray. The gravel road leading into town wasn’t as depressing as the roads in some some northern communities, I only saw one broken vodka bottle and there wasn’t much garbage strewn in the ditches. Pretty flowers were blooming everywhere. Reaching the town one turns right onto the rather mundanely named “1st Avenue”. Indeed, most of the streets seemed to have similar unimaginative monikers. How boring! Pretty soon we passed some of the white painted, red roofed old wooden buildings typical of northern villages – in this case a church, but often these are the ruins of old HBC buildings. The waterfront properties surrounding these buildings were strewn with the usual junk – abandoned snowmobiles, vehicles, sleds, etc, as well as lots of trash. Wandering a little further, we found the Northern Store and entered, mildly surprised to find KFC and Tim Horton’s counters. Wow. Globalization is hitting Nunavut. What next? MacDonalds? Is this the kind of food everyone wants now? How depressing.
We found the camp fuel, a pricey $36/gallon, and picked up three metal cans of it. There was no bear spray – usually when you ask about it in these Northern stores, they laugh at you and say something like, “Aren’t you bringing a gun?”. Curt checked out the shop’s selection of gloves as he couldn’t find one of his paddling gloves, without which he would have a big problem if we had to paddle through clouds of vicious biting flies. Not finding anything satisfactory, he turned into a gambling man, hoping he would still find the glove somewhere amongst his gear. Continuing our walk down the main drag, dodging the ATV’s tearing down the road, we passed what looked like another old, abandoned church, except it was round, possibly built to mimic an igloo? It looked completely out of place standing in front of a large, modern building, the town school, perhaps?
Old red roofed buildings in town.
Old and new – ancient church in front of a modern building.
Back at the campground, Lee was crashed out, sleeping in the bug shelter, protected from the bloodsuckers zipping around. I made dinner, a new risotto recipe (Mediterranean chicken) that I was trying, but I just couldn’t get the rice to soften properly on the camp stove. I’m still not sure why it wouldn’t co-operate, but I kept stirring and stirring the darn stuff as anxious, hungry eyes watched me. Thankfully a local Inuk, seeing us strangers as he drove by the campground, stopped to chat, deflecting attention from my failing attempt to make dinner. He was a young guy, very chatty and friendly, telling us all about the gold mine where he worked. This would be the Meadowbank Mine, operated by Agnico-Eagle and opened in 2010 to mine the local gold bearing archean greenstone. It is 80 km due north from Baker, connected by a new all-weather road. The opening of the mine was a long process needing Inuit approval, with a guarantee of work for locals. Apparently it was a hotly contested decision, but our new friend was all for it. He worked two weeks on, two weeks off, for $4,000 a month. He said that they worked under a “big dome” and were not allowed outside. So they spend their two week working shifts either in the company quarters on site or in the dome. He may think the mine is a good thing, but there are two sides to every story. The downside of the mine? It’s a huge open pit mine visible on satellite images as two ugly scars, ten by two kilometers in total size.
The Meadowbank mine (Google satellite image).
The mine has an estimated yield of 3.7 grams of gold per tonne of ore – that’s an awful lot of earth to dig up for such a piddly yield. And think about the energy needed to dig all this up and then actually extract the gold. And where does this gold end up? Mostly in bank vaults as ingots (40% of the total), or made into jewelry (another 50%) – what a useless waste! Kind of like the whole deal with diamonds. Destroying the planet for “investment” and wealth-flaunting vanity instead of finding something actually useful. I wonder what many of the town elders really think, the people who were brought up on the land, not in these new little towns. Well, at least some of the locals are happily being well paid while their fragile land is being excoriated, their earnings supporting the town economy. Just as our new friend left, I had finally had enough of stirring the rice and just served it. I topped each portion with a handful of chopped almonds, which was brilliant as the crunchy nuts hid the fact that the rice wasn’t fully cooked.
After dinner, one the town’s conservation officers showed up thinking we were the first canoe tripping group off the Thelon River this year, although he was baffled at the early timing. They don’t get many people starting canoe trips at Baker Lake, usually just those coming off the Thelon and Kazan watersheds. So he was there checking to make sure we had fishing permits, presuming we had fished on the Thelon. Taking the opportunity to legally fish since the officer was right there, the two keen fishermen in our group, Mike and Curt, paid their $40 and got their licenses. At that point, it looked like a small price to pay for fresh fish daily…at least that was the thinking at the time. Luckily, the guy also had a key for the door to the cabin, which he opened for us, offering a nice relief from the burning sun and bugs as it was cool inside. Helen from Ookpik also showed up to tell us we should be ready at eight the next morning for a pickup for the airport, our charter flight would be leaving soon after. We retired to the tents around 10 PM, the hazy sun still well above the horizon, giddy that everything seemed to be working out. Despite the sound of those interminable ATV’s roaring up and down the road fifty meters from the tents, I nodded off until around one in the morning when a banging sound woke me. A peek outside the tent revealed two young kids fishing in the twilight, their boat just offshore, the banging was their paddles on the side of the boat. Life sure is lived differently up here, you wouldn’t see kids fishing in an ice choked lake in the middle of the night down south!
Tuesday, July 10th. Disappointment day.
As requested by the air charter company we were up early to be ready for an 8 am pickup. We had the gear packed and ready when Helen showed up at ten before eight to tell us that she had “bad news”. The plane that was supposed to fly us was “undergoing maintenance” and she “couldn’t tell us anything else”. Well that was quite a shock – what a letdown! We insisted on being allowed to access our stuff left in the Ookpik hanger, we would need more food for today, and who knows, maybe tomorrow too. Also, Curt was adamant that he had to find his lost glove, thinking it might be in his gear in the hangar. At the hangar, we gathered some food but more importantly noted that the plane was nowhere to be seen – not in the hangar, and not at the airport. Maintenance? The plane was supposed to have returned the night before after dropping off Brian and Jim. What was going on? We also picked up some drinkable tap water from the airport washroom as the campground had no water and we didn’t trust the lake water, being so close to town. So, what to do? We had at least another day in Baker Lake. Five of us decided to go back into town to explore, except for Lee. Lee was having a bad morning. He was still exhausted, so much so he had not bothered to take his contact lenses out the night before, then had trouble extracting them with his grubby “campground” hands. He ended up really irritating his left eye, it was quite red and painful. Worried that he had scratched his cornea, I put a drop of antibiotic ointment into his eye to protect from infection and patched it. So while the rest of us went back into town, he said he would keep his good eye on the gear, now stashed inside the campground cabin, and sleep.
“Patch” Sessions resting.
At the Northern Store I gave in and had a coffee and scone at the Tim Horton’s in the lobby of the Northern Store. The only other customer was an elderly Inuk gentleman, alternately snoozing and greeting all the shoppers who walked by. I was really tempted to go over and talk to him, I was curious what great stories he might have to tell. He may have been born on the land and now, here he was, sitting in a very modern Tim Horton’s. Eventually I decided that, being in his territory, I didn’t want to impose myself, being seen as rude or too forward. I wasn’t even sure if he spoke English, and I don’t speak Inuktitut, therefore I limited myself to a friendly nod as I passed him on the way out. I crossed the street to the Jessie Oonark center, the others had gone to check it out earlier.
Oonark is one of the most iconic Inuit artists of the twentieth century. She was Utkuhiksalingmiut from Chantry Inlet (Back River estuary area), living a traditional life on the land until she was in her 50’s, only then moving to Qamani’tuaq (Baker Lake) and starting to create art. The move was necessary as a shift in the caribou migration in the 1950’s led to a period of starvation for her family. Her eldest daughter, Janet Kigusiuq, is on record as saying, “My grandmother, Natak… used to cook caribou skins. She would take hair off the skin and cook it. We would drink the broth. My grandmother used to even cook wolf meat. That was how we survived.” Oonark’s strong, bold and colourful compositions – drawings, prints and wall hangings – have delighted generations and hang in many museums, including the National Gallery of Canada.
Hunters with Caribou, Jessie Oonark, 1978.
In the center my companions were in an animated conversation with the couple who run the center, David Ford and his wife Cheryl Cook. David had pulled out some folios full of black and white photographs of his ancestors. One of his grandfathers was British, and another was Inuk, from Nachvak Fjord in Labrador. I was intrigued, as I have been to Nachvak while hiking in the Torngat Mountains on a Korok River trip in 2004. He told me that this ancestor was on A.P. Low’s 1903-4 expedition, the same one I alluded to earlier, that had wintered in the ice off Cape Fullerton north of Chesterfield Inlet. The expedition left Halifax in August 1903 on the Neptune, the largest ship of the Newfoundland sealing fleet, and was officially called the “Dominion Government Expedition to Hudson Bay and the Arctic Islands”. Low, a geologist at the Geological Survey of Canada, headed the junket so nominally its mission was scientific, but more importantly, it was Canada’s first serious overt exercise of its authority over the Arctic islands and waters. Although Canada had received the rights to the Arctic Archipelago from Great Britain in 1880, it had done little to oversee the territory. Politicians in Ottawa were aware that ships from other countries had been kind of doing whatever they wanted in what is now Canada’s Arctic, and wished to take control before it was too late. The first attempt was in 1897, when Dr. William Wakeham was sent North on the SS Diana with a mandate to “declare and uphold jurisdiction in all these British territories you may visit of the Dominion of Canada”, but that mission was one without teeth. A little later, in 1903, Canada essentially lost it’s boundary dispute with the United States over the Alaska panhandle and the government of Sir Wilfred Laurier (the guy on the front of those pretty Canadian $5 bills) was anxious to avoid further loss of territory. An official of the Department of the Interior wrote,
“It is feared that if American citizens are permitted to land and pursue the industries of whaling, fishing, and trading with the Indians [sic] without complying with the revenue laws of Canada, unfounded and troublesome claims may hereafter be set up”.
Thus this new expedition was hastily given some teeth – on board the Neptune were six North West Mounted Police officers, commanded by a Major J.D. Moodie. They were tasked to actually bring Canadian law to the North, informing all they met that they were on Canadian territory and would now have to pay duties and taxes on everything they took. They also explored further than Wakeham, for example, in 1904, they raised the Canadian flag at Cape Herschel on Ellesmere Island, taking formal possession of the island for the Dominion of Canada for the first time. The Mounties first chance to wield power came on Baffin Island when they came across a Norwegian ship about to leave with quite the bounty – oil and bone from two whales, oil and pelts of 3,000 seals, and some bear, wolf, fox and walrus skins. You wouldn’t believe why whale “bone” was so valuable – in fact it was the baleen of the bowhead whale that was prized, the giant strainer that it filter feeds with. According to Low, an average bowhead carries nearly a ton of this material, which in 1906 was worth about $15,000 a ton. It was used mainly in fashionable garments, “to stiffen the bodices of the better-made gowns, and to weave into expensive silk fabrics”. Unbelievable! Killing whales for fancy clothing! Again, such waste for human vanity. The only other part of the whale usually kept by the whalers was the oil, worth about $100 a ton, with each whale yielding 20-30 tons of the stuff. The carcass of the whale was usually discarded and left to sink to the bottom of the ocean. But, as noted before, the biggest concern to Canada’s Northern sovereignty were the Americans (how little has changed in a hundred years!), and in Hudson’s Bay and the Arctic ocean the main worry was the American whalers. Indeed, when the Canadians set anchor at Cape Fullerton, they met the infamous Captain George Comer and his American whaling ship, the Era, ready to settle in for the winter. Comer had been going about his business unmolested in Northwestern Hudson Bay for years, and didn’t take kindly to now being policed. But from the Canadian perspective, he had been making a fortune taking whales and skins without paying one cent to the Canadian government.
On reading Low’s book, he mentions stopping at Nachvak in Labrador to secure the services of Harry Ford as the expedition’s interpreter. However, Ford had since moved to the whaling station at Port Burwell on the south side of the eastern entrance to Hudson Strait. Picking up Ford was not straightforward – as Low puts it, “Some little trouble occurred in securing the services of Ford as interpreter, he being under employment at the station; but the matter was finally satisfactorily arranged with the agent.” This Harry Ford was David’s, the man I was standing face to face with in Baker Lake, grandfather. History!
Their ship locked in the winter ice, the crew of the Neptune pose in their winter costume. From “Report on the Dominion Government Expedition to Hudson Bay and the Arctic Islands on board the D.G.S. Neptune” by A.P. Low, 1906, photograph courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
The photographs David showed us were as equally fascinating as the one above, taken by Low. He told us that his grandfather had also taken photos, which have apparently been made into a book. David graciously showed us around the Oonark center, full of all kinds of art and crafts, with a printmaking facility in the back. He showed us a table full of fascinating Inuit artifacts that he and his wife owned, including ice knives to make snowhouses (igloos) and kakivaks (traditional fishing spears). We could have stayed longer talking to this fascinating couple, but they excused themselves, having to leave and go home to feed their kids lunch – I think they had eight between them.
We wandered around town, taking it all in, hoping to get into the old Hudson Bay Company building which is apparently set up as a museum, but unfortunately it was closed and no-one seemed to know if it would ever open again. On the way back down the main drag we stopped in at the Baker Lake Lodge, also the Ookpik headquarters, to see if there was any news on the waylaid plane. It was brutally hot and sunny outside, it had hit 29 degrees Celsius, a new local record for that day, so we were also hoping for a bit of shade and perhaps some water. The place was deserted except for Helen, her uncle Boris, who owned the whole operation, and a cook. They did their best to ignore us, but we insisted on getting more information about our flight. “How is the maintenance going on the plane?”, we asked. Helen answered, in these exact words, “I don’t know about that side of the business”, and “I’m not a mechanic”. What the heck? If that was really an honest response, what kind of business were these people running? We were too stunned to push the matter any further. Boris, the owner, refused to tell us anything, then walked right by without looking at us, his only words a low grunt, “How you doing?”, obviously not expecting an answer. When we asked, Helen grudgingly fetched us some water to drink from the kitchen, after which, feeling unwelcome, we set out back to the campground.
Arriving back at camp, Lee was nowhere to be seen. He must have finally recharged his batteries and gone looking for some adventure. Either that or he had gone to the local hospital to have his painful eye enucleated! He showed up a little later, with, of all people, David who we’d left not too long before. Turns out these guys know each other quite well, Lee ending up at Baker Lake quite a few times dating back to the 1990’s, having canoed the Thelon, Arrowsmith and Quoich rivers amongst others. David had previously welcomed him into his home, regaled him with stories about his father and grandfather, and Lee had even met David’s father. One of his grandfathers was the original HBC trader for the Baker Lake post, which he started on the lake at Two Hips Island by the mouth of the Kazan River. They later cut that building in half and hauled it across the ice with dog teams to its present location.
David and Lee soon took off again, David was going to take Lee to the hospital after all to have the eye looked at, hopefully through “the back door” with no wait. Ah yes…the great Canadian medical system. Free and equitable – ? First of all, it is not “free”, it costs a hell of a lot of money – the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) estimates that Canada spent approximately $228 billion on health care in 2016. That’s 11.1 per cent of Canada’s GDP and $6,299 (Canadian dollars) for every Canadian resident. All paid for via taxes. But that’s kind of typical for most Western nations that have a universal health care plan and about half of what Americans pay per person ($9,892 “real” dollars), even though about a third of Americans have no or inadequate health care insurance. So the Canadian system wins when it comes to cost. Now, about the equitable part. Although not really recognized as such, Canada’s health care system has always been a “two tier” one – those who know how to get in the “back door” (such as people who work in the health care system, politicians, rich people, especially hospital donors, professional athletes, etc), and those who have no “connections”. So the system is not perfect, but serious illness is treated relatively quickly no matter who presents, and no-one will lose their house or life savings if they need to be hospitalized. When Lee got to the hospital, apparently it was so busy the doctor didn’t really examine him and the “back door consult” was that he should just go get some polysporin and eye lubrication drops to avoid getting the irritated eye infected.
After dinner Helen showed up with more “bad news”. The plane, again her words, “needs parts that will take days to get”. But then she threw us a bone, saying that she was “trying” to get Ookpik’s second plane to Baker Lake to take us, maybe the next evening but more likely the day after that. Bummer, we were really hoping to get out the next morning, and with all their opaqueness were seriously worried that we may not get out of Baker Lake for a week, if at all. Baker Lake is a nice, typical northern town for a short visit, but we had paid a lot of money to come up here and canoe a northern wilderness river, not sit for days in a campground at the edge of town with no running water or even a pit toilet. Yup, we were reduced to crapping and pissing in a garbage bag, then disposing of that in a bear proof garbage bin behind the cabin. You can’t have wells or pit toilets in permafrost country. When she left, all the conspiracy theories came out – my take on it was that the plane was needed for mining camp runs, which probably get priority over a canoe trip group who are not regular repeat customers, even if we had pre-booked and pre-paid. Lee cracked open a bottle of rum to commiserate with, after which we set up the tents again and turned in around eleven.
Wednesday, July 11th. Finding paradise.
Not being able to sleep in due to the hot sun, I was up the next morning when Helen made an appearance around nine with, finally, good news. Ookpik’s second plane was expected this morning, and they wanted us at the airport at eleven. It was almost too good to believe after the run-around we had had. Look, Northern travel is difficult, delays are expected, either weather, mechanical or illness related. But we expect to be kept in the loop as to what was going on, what the real cause of the flight delay was, not an opaque “I don’t know what’s going on because that’s not my side of the business”. Believe me, if it truly was a mechanical failure (not “maintenance” as we were initially told, which is usually scheduled and known beforehand), I would happily wait until the plane was repaired. I don’t have a death wish – heck I would move to the campground at Baker Lake and live there forever rather than die in a plane crash.
We were ready, packed and waiting in front of the campground cabin at eleven, roasting once again in the unrelenting hot sun, there being no trees for shade up here. And waiting. At noon the pickup truck arrived to get us. Then the funny stuff continued. First we had weigh ourselves on the cargo scale – six of us, 996 pounds. Then all the gear was placed on the scale for its weigh-in, with Helen, smugly looking on, clearly expecting it to be well over the 1,104 pounds agreed to on the charter booking (a total payload of 2,100 pounds, us and our gear). If so, then they could force us to discard stuff, or charge us for a second flight. Well, the gear came in at 1,060 pounds, so they had no choice but to take it all over to the otter sitting thirty meters away and load it on the plane. We offered to help, but were told to stay back and let the experts do it. About twenty minutes later we were told that all the gear wouldn’t fit in – we would have to leave some equipment behind, and they would fly it in on a second flight. We kind of looked at each other, then offered to help them re-pack the plane but they would have none of that. The whole tail section was empty, understandable for a bush plane landing, but we had a lot of light, bulky stuff that could have perhaps gone there, such as paddles and PFD’s (lifejackets). And the back passenger section still had space but we were told, “it’s illegal to block the exits”. Heck, there are two exits adjacent to the pilot’s seats, two in the back in the passenger compartment, and one on the roof. That’s as many emergency exits as on many small commercial passenger jets, and for a lot fewer people. But it was obvious the decision had been made days before that they weren’t going to get us up there on one flight, so the next thing to do was to try and lessen the financial impact. We protested that we weren’t going to pay for a second flight, and to her credit, Helen just said “we’ll work it out when you get back”, which we took to mean that we wouldn’t be on the hook for another $10,000. What else could we do? They only take cash, wire transfers or certified cheques , we didn’t have that much cash on us, the plane was (mostly) loaded and we were anxious to finally go. A quick decision was made – we would leave the canoes at the airport and fly with all the camping gear and food. Then if worse came to worse, and no canoes showed up on a second flight (maybe they would have more “maintenance” to do), at least we could hike out! Great, now it was time to board the plane and actually go. Beforehand, we had discussed who would get the coveted co-pilot seat, as single otters only need one pilot to fly. This seat allows the best views, as well as being more comfortable. Well, surprise, surprise, the old guy, Boris, who had been hanging around (why?, I had wondered) climbed as best as he could into the co-pilot seat. Hmmm. That’s another perhaps 150-160 pounds of deadweight. Our canoes weighed not too much more, about 200 pounds, although they were bulkier. But taking one extra passenger seat out might have taken care of the bulk problem that they said we had. Now confused, I really didn’t understand – we might be charged for an extra flight so that “the boss” can go out for a joyride at our expense? But I bit my tongue. I just wanted to be in the air and gone.
Economy class, same as cargo class. No overhead bins to fill.
We finally took off at 1:30 in the afternoon, heading slightly northeast for 415 km. After 85 km we crossed over the Quoich river, more or less following it for 40 km, then it was mainly flat barrens with lots of small lakes. We were cooking along with a tailwind, pushing 185 mph.
Rough map of the flight from Baker Lake to the Kellett.
The Quoich River, 105 km north of Baker Lake.
For the next little while we kept criss-crossing upper tributaries of the Quoich, then we flew over a true barren land for many kilometers, an area with no flowing rivers and few lakes. I would not want to have to cross that watershed on foot carrying a canoe!
A truly barren area.
About 350 kilometers out we crossed an east – west flowing river, then another at 370 km – these were the headwater branches of the Hayes River, which ends up at Chantry Inlet, further west of where the Kellett drains, meaning that we had crossed the north-south height of land. The rivers would now flow into the Arctic Ocean and not Hudson’s Bay. Minutes later we were flying over a small range of hills, and at 395 kilometers a northeasterly flowing river popped into view – we had crossed into another watershed, the one separating the Hayes River from the Kellett and the Arrowsmith. We were now flying over the headwaters of the Kellett, which we followed for about 20 kilometers to our proposed landing site.
Finally the Kellett. And it looked like it had lots of water in it.
My heart pounded as I looked down at a beautiful small, narrow canyon, a thin squiggle of white water roaring down its gullet. The plane turned and followed the canyon – this was the one that the group the year before supposedly found little water in and had to portage.
The canyon. Our landing site was near one of the riverside snowbanks in the distance.
I glanced at Curt. He was glued to the window so I couldn’t see his face, but he must have been licking his chops, the water was roaring this year. We passed over the site that we had marked on the maps as a potential landing spot, banked sharply to the left, then circled three times over the area. Coming in low on the left river bank after the third circle, the pilot did a test run to see how solid the tundra was, bouncing the wheels off the ground while still under power, then gaining altitude again. Good news, we could feel that it was a solid bounce. He circled once more, came in low and slow, and bam!, we were down in probably a hundred feet. Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah! Finally. We were here and it was beautiful! Secretly, I had worried that this northeast corner of the mainland tundra was going to be an ugly starkness – an unsightly flat barren, void of wildlife. I couldn’t have been further wrong. As I stepped out onto the tundra, which was dry and cushy, I looked around and saw that we were on a small flat plateau, about ten meters above and three hundred meters from the river, surrounded by small hills, with tens of caribou about fifty meters away, standing and staring at what must have been an odd sight for them. It was noticeably cooler than at Baker Lake, overcast, a slight breeze – and no bugs. Big patches of snow still coated the hills and the river banks. Paradise.
We quickly unloaded the plane – interestingly, the pilot, Mike, didn’t mind us helping to unload the plane, unlike at Baker when we were told we couldn’t be near it during loading. Meanwhile Boris wandered off towards a small herd of caribou. While the boss was off on his walk, I asked Mike if he was taking the plane straight back to Baker Lake. I was curious if they would indeed have to refuel, and if so, where the fuel drop that we had paid $3,000 for was. He said that they were stopping in at “the mining camp close to here”, that there was “lots of fuel there”. That must be the exploratory camp near the Hayes River – which this plane apparently supplies regularily. This made us wonder whether they really did make a flight solely for a “fuel drop” in preparation for our trip that we paid for – it would have made more sense to fly it up as part of a shared cargo drop. More funny stuff with Ookpik? Once all our equipment was on the tundra Mike kindly took a few group photographs of us at our request, then he and Boris climbed back into the plane, started the engine, gunned it with the brakes on and wing flaps almost vertical , and after releasing the brake were quickly in the air. They headed straight south, the lonely drone gradually diminishing, leaving us in this silent, big land, all we could hear was the lovely sound of the river gurgling along in the distance. That type of silence is easy to get used to!
The landing strip. First time this one has ever been used.
Our welcoming committee.
The first thing we had to do was portage all the gear close to the river. We decided on the shortest route, then lugged everything down to the edge of the river bank, on a low ridge overlooking a small island. A fifteen meter wide band of deep snow lay at the bottom of the ridge, Curt ambled down to test the summer snow-pack, waddling across without breaking through the crust. If the snow was dense enough to hold his weight, it would certainly hold ours.
Paradise camp. That’s snow on the left, lining the river.
After setting up camp Lee started to make dinner, Mike went off to try fishing, and Curt, Jenny, Kate and I went off to the south to explore, heading upstream towards the canyon that we had flown over.
Looking upstream from the campsite, the canyon that we had flown over is in the distance.
Caribou fording the river.
I really wanted to climb the ridge overlooking the rapids in the canyon, but pretty soon it became evident we didn’t have time to get that far, especially if we wanted to eat a hot dinner. It would take a while to re-calibrate our sense of distance – everything seems closer in this land of giant terrain and endless horizons. After one and a half kilometers we reached where the river branches in two, each branch probably contributing equal to its volume. At this junction of the two head-water tributaries, we were truly standing at the start of the main river. The west branch probably was the prettier but tougher branch, passing as it did through the canyon upstream. We tramped over the snow field on the river bank then wandered over the rocky shoreline, marveling at the wonderfully patterned, weathered stones underfoot. The river was fast flowing, shallow and rocky, but had more than enough water to float our boats. Looking further south, it would be at least another three kilometers before we would reach the start of the canyon, over hilly terrain, so we reluctantly turned and wandered back to camp to a waiting dinner.
Dinner on the tundra.
Thunderstorms passed in the distance as we ate, but thankfully none came close to camp. After dinner we all hiked up the hills behind camp, the sun came out and we were treated to a wonderful sky with puffy white clouds, still brilliant at 10 pm. We were now in the land of never-ending sun and would be for the next three weeks. Several of us hiked further north to a high point to have a look at what was to come on the river the next day. It looked good, the river meandering through steep, perhaps fifty foot banks, but becoming relatively narrow, meaning deeper water. In the other direction lay our camp, set on a golden tinged plain, then the river, followed by more flat, straw coloured tundra, with low hills in the distance, covered with rock strewn slopes. It was a yellowish land, glowing in the evening sun, with a blue ribbon of river running through, and spotted with many patches of white summer snow. Isolated thunder storms made their way lazily to the south of us, adding persistent, brilliant rainbows to the palette of colours. Making our way back to camp, we turned in to the shelter of the tents, wondering when (if?) our canoes would show up. But at least we were finally here!
Looking down from the hills behind camp at the tundra, aglow in the golden sun. A simply gorgeous primeval landscape.
Rainbows light up the sky (bottom, JJ photograph).
Thursday, July 12th. On the river at last.
At 8:30 I awoke to the sound of a plane buzzing in the distance. Yes! We were going to have canoes after all. Ookpik pilot Mike circled and landed even closer to our camp, west-east, on another flat piece of firm tundra. Flying solo this time, I wondered where his joyrider was now that there was no weight issue with the payload. We quickly unloaded the canoe packs, and lickety split, he was gone, taking off directly over the river this time. After breakfast we got about setting the canoes up, then sorting through our gear, readying it for canoe mode. It was a sunny and warm day, t-shirt weather, the air balmy and delicious, with the counterpoint of a brisk, cooling wind. No-one mangled any fingernails during canoe construction, and thankfully no parts were forgotten at home. And unlike the year before, nothing broke during assembly! After finishing the canoes, we humped them over the snow shelf to reach the river, and were off by 2 pm.
Assembling a canoe.
The first obstacle is trekking through the snow to get to the river. This is July?
We started with a small rapid, after which the river, with good current, meanders through ten to fifteen meter banks cut out of the mixed rocky/sandy banks, some of which were covered in thick snow. We surprised a gaggle of flightless geese, who waddled comically on a steep snow bank right in front of us. Geese undergo an annual “molt”, shedding and regrowing their wing and tail feathers over a period of about a month each year, leaving them vulnerable to predators. We often run into them on northern rivers, sometimes in flocks of hundreds. If they are on the river, as they try to get away they often beat their temporarily flightless but still strong wings on the water, and if there is enough of them, I’ve often mistaked the white water they brew up with this flapping to represent a rapid in the distance. There were also quite a few caribou on the river banks, either singly or in groups of up to six. Some had nice big racks growing.
Hmmm, no campsites here.
But relative safety for the flightless geese…
Another local wonders about the strangers on the water.
The water level in the river was high – it was right up to the grass on the banks, with no rocks showing. We passed a small lake on the right that, on the maps, shows no connection to the river. But it was now connected to the river with a broad mouth, we could have paddled right into it. I had been following the local weather all spring, it had been much colder than usual for most of June, but this broke about two weeks before we left with a hot spell that we were still experiencing, but even that hadn’t melted all the snow yet. So we lucked out – we were still riding the last of the spring melt while avoiding the often dangerously high water found earlier in the season. We would find out that if we had started a mere week or two later, finishing the river might have been much more difficult.
After about ten kilometers, the river widened a little and entered a big, open plain. The wind had picked up a bit more, blowing in our faces, but wasn’t too bothersome. We stopped for a late lunch on a beautiful beach where a fair sized stream came in from the left. Mike, thinking it would be a good fishing spot, pulled out his rod, catching a nice little trout. But I was worried – this looked like a prime fishing spot, yet there didn’t seem to be much in there. And he had failed completely, not even a bite, the day before at our first campsite, another prime fishing spot. While Mike fished I wandered up a small mound behind the beach, spotting a waterfall about a kilometer upstream of the tributary and then convincing the gang to go on a small hike to check it out. The waterfall was at the point where the stream tumbled over the bedrock off the huge flat plain to drop to the level of the Kellett. Its northern aspect was a huge sandy bank, the bottom half covered with a thick belt of snow.
Looking upstream, a tributary (on the right) joins the Kellett. Such “big” skies up here!
Unknown Falls.
As I marveled at this small but very pretty feature seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I wondered how many human eyes had surveyed it. This land may be empty now, but of course, until the 1950’s it was criss-crossed by many Netsilik Inuit, eking out a living on the land – the Natsilingmiut on the west side of Pelly Bay and the Arviligjuarmiut on the east side. And guess what Jenny found on a small knoll about thirty meters from the falls? Old tent rings. So this must have been a functional site as well as being picturesque, the tent rings indicating an old campsite, implying that nearby there was probably good hunting or fishing. Tent rings are circles of stone used to stabilize the skins used for the sides of the tent, the rocks rolled onto the bottom of the sheet of skins to keep it in place. You can tell how long it has been since the stones have been used by looking at the lichen pattern on the rocks, and also by observing how much they have sunk into the tundra.
A tent ring beside Unknown Falls.
Inuit tent rings, Prince of Wales Sound, 1883. Photograph courtesy of NWT Archives
According to Knud Rasmussen, the Dane who lived among Inuit in this area for seven months in 1923 as part of the Fifth Thule Expedition, tents here were made from pieced sealskin (called an “iktaq”), not caribou. Jenny and I had read the comprehensive book that he subsequently wrote, detailing Netsilik culture and customs, in order to give us some historical background of these resourceful people. For example:
“Wood was so scarce that the tent poles were often made of caribou antler – they would straighten the antler in hot water and join the pieces together until the proper length was obtained. And because of this lack of wood, they would often have to use the tent seal skins as sled runners in the winter, when they lived in snow houses and no longer had use for the tents. This, to me, shows incredible ingenuity. When winter came, they would place the skins in a lake or river until thoroughly soaked, fold them together a number of times, then allow them to freeze in the shape of a sled runner. They also used musk ox skin the same way. These runners of frozen skin were reinforced by laying trout or slices of meat in between the folds and allowing the whole thing to freeze into a firm block. In the spring, when mild weather came and the sled runners thawed and fell apart, the dogs were fed the skins and the humans ate the fish and meat. The sled cross slats were mad of caribou antler. When these frozen sleds fell apart in April, they would switch to using bear skin or bearded seal skin, stuffing their load within the skin with the fur outside. Then they would tie the bundle up and the dogs would drag the skins over the snow and ice, the hair gliding easily over the snow”.
–From Knud Rasmussen, The Netsilik Eskimos: Social Life and Spiritual Culture, Vol. VIII of the Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition, published 1931, page 25.
The only current signs of life around the falls were some pretty good wolf scat, complete with crunched, partially digested bones, a few noisy birds, and some flies scarfing on pollen on the mountain avens. Avens were used by the Inuit to help indicate the seasons: When summer is coming they fold out in one direction (mannik, or spring, when birds start to lay eggs). When they are curled tightly it means it is midsummer (saggaruut, the winter coat on the caribou had moulted and been replaced by thin hair). When winter is coming they they start to uncoil, fold in and twist in the other direction (akkulliruut, fall). Practically speaking, when the seed heads are tightly twisted, caribou skins are too thin to make clothing. As the seed heads untwist, the caribou skins become suitable for women’s clothing. When the seed heads are fully open, caribou skins are then suitable for men’s clothing.
A pretty good sample of wolf scat, bones included.
A fly enjoying Arctic Dryas (mountain aven).
A semipalmated plover with a mouthful of flies.
Hiking back to the canoes amongst breathtaking scenery.
We pushed on for another four kilometers and decided to stop where a small stream joined the main river from the left, there being a high ridge a little further downstream above the river bank that looked like good hiking. But we had other plans first – Mike, Curt and I fished, and fished…the spot looked good, but we were skunked at first. I moved a bit upstream, on the calm side of where the creek entered the river and bam!, I hooked a good one, but before I could land it, it spat the hook. Mike moved over to where I was and hooked two moderate sized fish, and I landed a small one. I think we either fished the spot out or spooked them, as there were no further bites. I even went upstream on the little creek and tried fishing its small deep pools, to no avail. We fileted the fish and brought them over to the stove to cook, but while I had been engrossed in the fishing I hadn’t notice the change in weather – a bank of low clouds and fog suddenly hit us, it was like an opaque wall had just moved over our camp, the temperature dropping precipitously which together with the cold gale bit to the bone. As we hadn’t set up the kitchen shelter, this put the kibosh on cooking the fish and also the planned hike, instead we gobbled a quick supper, had a shot of rum and crawled into the tents. The fish would have to wait for breakfast. As we retired for the night, fog blew briskly through the camp, ruffling the tents, and big whitecaps shuffled ominously upstream on the river, dragged by the stiff wind.
A wall of cold fog moves in as the balmy weather rather quickly became more “Nunavut-like”.
Traveled 18 km today.
Friday, July 13th. Entering the canyon.
The cold wind continued all night. Curt woke me up with a cry of, “want to go for a hike?”, but he was just teasing to try and get me out of my warm sleeping bag. The skies had cleared, but the chilling gusts had us huddling behind a small bluff where the creek meandered into the river. After I fried the fish the “breakfast crew” took over and cooked up one of their egg-based monster feasts as well, so they were well fed for the coming paddle. During trip planning there had been a bit of a disagreement about how to do breakfasts. Lee wanted big group breakfasts, whereas I wanted easy, quick ones, I don’t eat big breakfasts at home and didn’t want to break that habit. Also, I can’t stand oatmeal, which usually gets served a few times with group breakfasts on these trips, ever since the disgusting gruel I was exposed on an Ungava trip several years ago. Jenny also can’t stand oatmeal and wanted simple breakfasts, and elite athlete Kate wanted to stick to her own breakfast routine. Curt and Mike were on board for the big group breakfasts, so we had a minimalist group and a bacon and eggs group. While the breakfast crew were doing their thing, Jenny and I crossed the stream to explore. She had been observing the terrain and had a hunch that turned out to be correct – there were tent rings over there, and a whitish rectangular rock sitting on a boulder, that, when closely observed, was clearly a marker stone. By the time breakfast and exploring were over, the wind had dropped a bit, so we broke camp, loaded up the canoes and paddled.
Discovering another tent ring (foreground) as the bacon and eggs crew huddles behind a rocky outcrop to escape the wind.
The first few kilometers of paddling were tough, the wind was from the northeast , never a good thing when the river also runs northeast, blowing at about 30 km/hr. It was actually sunny and warm out of the wind, perhaps 20°C, but with the wind blowing from the direction of the icy Arctic Ocean, it felt cold. The river was wide, cutting through ten meter high banks, turning north, then presenting us with our first real whitewater, an easy, short class 2 rapid. We passed an otherworldly (for July!) ice covered lake on the left, its waters spilling over the bank into the river. The river then narrowed, turned to the right in a U-shaped bend, the banks got higher, and suddenly we were zipping down a fun, long R2, not marked on the maps, ending with a boulder sieve. These sieves can be a problem, they are the result of eons of rocks rolling down the rapids or being dragged there by the spring ice, then depositing just before the water becomes still or almost still. In this example, the rocks had formed a ledge, with most of the moving water spilling off the right shoulder of the sieve through one relatively deep channel, funneling into the right river bank which was essentially a steep rock wall. We flew through the deep channel and maneuvered out of the water before it bashed the rocky bank. What a fish pool that must have been! And what a campsite this would have made, the river widening and surrounded by beautiful beaches. But it was too early in the day to stop and play, I didn’t complain because I thought that surely we would find some big fish later in the day.
Satellite map of the boulder sieve at the end of the rapid. You can see where most of the water spills at a right angle over a ledge (yellow arrow). If you miss this “right turn”, your canoe would barrel straight into the rock piles at the end of the sieve and get stuck, possibly tearing a hole in the boat or, even worse if the canoe tips and water enters it over the gunwales, it may “wrap” around a rock and bend – eeek!. Note that the water levels on the river were VERY low when these images were taken, probably late in the fall. The amount of white water we experienced was considerably greater than what you see here.
We turned northeast again, the topography completely changing with the river now running through very hilly country, and we again encountered rapids not marked on the maps. The first section was easy class 2 that could be run from the boats, but when the river turns slightly northwest it widens into a football field wide, rather messy, 500 meter long class 3 rapid (also not marked!). This one we were prudent enough to get out of the boats and look at, which is just as well since we were entering the big canyon section of the river. Looking down at the raging water from a high ridge on the left bank, the left side of the river was a rock strewn, shallow “boneyard” that would be a tough, boat scratching (bending?) grind, and the right side was full of ledges with big waves and submerged boulders followed by holes, although there were paddlable lines through it. The right river bank rose steadily until it became a sheer, red lichen covered cliff, with a very pretty stream cutting through the bedrock and spilling off the plateau above into the river. The big problem was at the end of this rapid, the river bends acutely to the right and severely narrows where it cuts through the cliff. As the water curves around, there is a safe tongue of water followed by big waves in the middle of the current, but on the far left it drops about two meters as it flies by the cliff wall, the water churning into a white cauldron. The left is not the side where one wants to be in a canoe – it would submarine into the frothing madness and that might be the end of the boat.
The start of the canyon section.
Scouting the scary river bend. Note the water piling up against the rock cliff on the left, followed by an abrupt two meter drop. The “safe” channel is the tongue of green water in the middle.
We stood and looked at this obstacle for quite a while. Meanwhile, an irritated falcon screeched overhead as it soared over the bluffs. It would be possible to scrape (line and drag the boats) down the boneyard on the left side of the river, take out before the bend, and portage up the ridge on the left side of the river, but then we would be faced with a two kilometer long, steep walled canyon, before the river disappeared as it curved to the right again in the distance.
The view from the top of the left side of the cliff after the scary bend. Wary of the wall of whitewater in the distance (yellow arrow), we took out before it (white arrow) and portaged up to the top of the ridge.
The upper section of the ensuing canyon looked definitely paddlable, but several kilometers in the distance there was quite a bit of white water. So starting a portage here may have meant continuing along the left canyon rim for at least two kilometers, followed by who knows what. It may have been possible to lower the boats from the ridge back down to the river, but I didn’t spend much time checking this out as I was feeling queasy. One of those uneasy feelings – did I feel comfortable trying to make the acute bend without getting too far left and swimming in the washing machine? Or did I want a long, grueling portage? Curt of course thought that making it around the bend was absolutely not a problem – he and Lee would pick their way through the right side of the approach rapid, maneuver left around the partially exposed rocky obstacles just before the turn, hit the smooth tongue of water and flash through the wave train, missing all the danger. I looked at Kate, she confided that she, like me, wasn’t sure what to do. But Jenny had a different plan – to reduce the danger of overshooting the turn and being dragged into the left sided mess at the bend, we could stay far right at the end of the approach rapid, pick a route inside the exposed rocks, then slip into the central channel. We must have spent two hours walking up and down the river bank scouting this feature, mulling the options. It would take less than ten minutes to run the whole thing and enter the canyon, versus many hours to bump down the left of the boneyard then portage over the cliff to maybe be able to lower the boats down the other side into the canyon…and since we have to do things as a group for safety, we all more or less had to do the same thing. So…a fearful quick ride versus a lot of hard work. Finally, we all agreed to paddle and enter the canyon in style, hopefully not the freestyle swimming type.
We walked back to the canoes to prepare for this, what would one call it? For me, a scary but necessary ordeal. For Curt, fun, fun, fun… I was so spooked I didn’t turn the camera attached to the canoe on. It reminded me of the feeling I got on a prior trip, in Northern Labrador, when, on a layover day, my trip companions wanted to snooze on a rocky beach and I wanted to hike up a mountain, so off I went. At that point, the river had cut through a deep canyon, with fairly dense boreal forest at the bottom of the valley, even though we were generally well above the treeline. While still in the trees, all of a sudden I got this feeling that I was being watched. Startled, I stopped dead in my tracks and looked around. About ten feet away from me stood an enormous black bear, standing on its hind legs, chewing on a branch, probably stripping the bark to eat the sapwood. It looked at me, and I looked at it. I thought about pulling my camera out and taking a picture of this magnificent creature going about its business in the wilderness. But then I thought…hmmm…if this thing gets pissed at me and attacks, they’ll find my mauled body and my camera with pictures of a huge bear charging. I’d be known as that stupid tourist! So instead, I spoke softly to the bear and slowly backed away as it looked at me nonchalantly and continued to grab tree branches. Needless to say, that was the end of my attempt at a solo hike that day. I hightailed it back to the river and snoozed on the beach in the glorious sunshine like my companions, happy to be alive. The exact same reasoning here on the Kellett told me to keep the camera off – I was so worried about this rapid that I didn’t want my last recorded moment to be a spectacular dump and drowning.
What a mistake! This would have made spectacular footage! We set off ducky style, Curt and Lee leading, Kate and Mike in the middle, and Jenny and I in the loser boat. The lead and trailing boats stuck to their plans, the lead boat went more to the middle near the bottom of the rapid in order to miss the partially submerged rocks, followed by Kate and Mike, although I was a little confused as they said that they would try the route that we were planning, more to the right side. But Jenny stuck to our plan, we peeled right and she barked orders to maneuver us through the rock obstacles. We flew along, finally executing the turn into the safe tongue of water flawlessly, then bounced through the big but harmless splashy waves into the calm pool at the bottom, cradled within the cliff walls. I hollered and hooted, I was so happy. But I think I mentioned something about crapping my pants as well, not literally of course. Boy was this a stunning place to be, I would bet that not many people have bobbed through this crack in the ancient rock in a boat before.
A better view of the ancient rock forming the cliffs at the river bend. The rocks are volcanic, a type of flood basalt. When it formed, a huge flux of magma flooded the preexisting rock, most likely as an intrusion. The upper-most surface layer of the magma cooled rapidly, and this is the layer that is exposed. It is called an “Entablature” basalt layer, and underneath this would be the spectacular hexagonal columnar basalt, famously seen at such places as the Giant’s Causeway in Ireland. So, if we could time travel into the future when these rocks are much more eroded, we would see the deeper columnar basalt. The difference between entablature and columnar basalt is solely because of the faster cooling rate of the upper layer, meaning more brittle behaviour and fracturing during rapid cooling. The lower columnar basalt has a slower cooling process because it is somewhat insulated by the upper entablature layer, and therefore has more time to form the hexagonal cooling crystal patterns that form the columns (explanation courtesy of Louise Rush, my helpful geologist niece).
We were lucky that day with glorious weather,with crystal clear visibility as we drifted through the cliffs, falcons screeching overhead, rounding the bend to come face to face with the next two kilometers of canyon. We sailed through the class 2 rapids, then pulled out on the left bank as planned before the bigger stuff started. After securing the canoes we hiked up the canyon wall to scout ahead and look for a possible campsite. We knew that we were now going to have an unavoidable long portage, and it was getting late. High up on the rim we found a few good spots for tents, with tiny streams for drinking water running through the muddy tundra nearby, so we went back down to the river and carried most of the gear up to the rim, leaving the canoes and a few heavy packs at the bottom for the following morning. The views up and down the canyon were jaw dropping, and in the late evening light the endless rocks around us glowed orange in the low sun. What a spectacular campsite! Lots of curious caribou, most of them solo travelers, visited us as they traversed along the ridge line, undoubtedly checking out the weirdos invading their territory.
One of our camp visitors.
The temperature had dropped to about 7°C, but after a hot, invigorating dinner we all headed off, eager to scout what lay ahead. The hope was that we would find canoeable water round the next river bend. Sadly, when we reached the high point and gazed down, those hopes were dashed. Big waves churned around the narrow bend, followed by what looked like a ledge with a good drop – a straight wall of white water. We knew from the maps that the river did a triangular jig at this point – a hundred meters below our feet it turned right, where the big waves were, then traveled in a straight line for 700 meters, next turning acutely left for another 700 meters before bending right again. So we could at least “cut the corner off” by portaging straight across the base of the triangle. And guess what we found at this high point above the beginning of the river triangle? A nice tent ring. We were obviously not the only people who found this a grand site to spend a night or two.
Satellite view of the canyon. The river cuts its way through the northern part of the Canadian Shield, the exposed Precambrian igneous and high-grade metamorphic rocks that form the ancient geological core of the North American continent. The portage route is the white dotted line.
Curt thinks he can see a line through the first bend to start the triangle section of the canyon. Curt sees things no-one else can…
Jenny isn’t sure…
The large tent ring at the high point, looking back upstream.
180° panoramic view from the tent ring knoll. On the right is the upstream canyon section, on the left the first leg of the triangle section.
Checking out the portage route at the base of the triangle. The river is in a deep cleft right before the first rocky slope in the distance.
We kept on scouting until we found a reasonable path down to where the water becomes paddlable again. Finally satisfied, we turned back for the long trek over rough ground and crawled into camp after midnight, collapsing into the tents at one in the morning.
The welcome site of the tents bathed in twilight after a long scouting mission.
Into the tents at 1 am.
Traveled 15 km today.
Saturday, July 14th. Portage day.
I woke up at nine in the morning knackered. After my quick breakfast, yet another delicious protein bar, I headed down to the river to bring my food barrel and the canoe up to the canyon rim, something I had not been looking forward to. But, hey, it needed to be done, I had the time, and hopefully my arthritic knees would hold out. I struggled up the slope with the heavy barrel on my back, with some wobbles on dodgy rocks as the steep, uneven terrain slowed me down. For the canoe, I decided to try a different route a little further downstream that Mike had chosen. Indeed, it was easier as it was mostly grass covered and not as treacherous as the rocky slope, so I zig-zagged uneventfully but slowly up the slope. Mission, part one, accomplished!
Mike carrying his canoe up the “easy” route.
At the campsite we prepared everything for the long carry. It was dry, sunny, about 15°C with a mild breeze and very few mosquitoes…perfect portaging weather. I decided to wear my rubber Wellington boots as I wanted to portage along the more flat, swampy terrain to the left of the ridge, rather than the rocky outcrops that would have an increased risk of rolling an ankle or tripping. Most of us staged the portage, carrying one load for about five hundred meters, dropping the load, heading back to get another load, dropping that at the same point, then heading back again for the final load.
Lee dropping a load at the first staging point of the portage. A tent can still be seen erected at the campsite in the distance on the far right.
Fully loaded Curt making his lonely way through a desolate landscape.
Packs and canoes adrift on the rocky barrens waiting to be taken to their destination.
We were early in the trip so the food packs were still quite heavy, and I am at the age where I cannot portage a seventy pound canoe on my shoulders while wearing a sixty pound pack on my back. The portage was 1.9 kilometers as the crow flies, translating effectively into about 2.5 km one way as we had to continuously plot our way around small obstacles. With three carries, that translates to about 12.5 km, 7.5 with a heavy load. It took about five hours to get everything over to the little cut in the ridge where a tiny stream had forged a path back down to the river, the slope steep but definitely navigable with packs on our backs and canoes on our shoulders . The portage was a tough slog over variable terrain – including smooth bedrock, loose rocks, caribou trails and muskeg, in the latter my boots sometimes sinking a foot into the smelly muck. I kept telling myself that it was just like hiking, to look around and enjoy the views – except on a hiking trip you don’t have to carry a canoe! We were like ants in a giant panorama, with raw endless vistas to soak in, but the ground underfoot also revealed a fascinating mini world that I became enamoured with as I slumped on the ground grabbing momentary respite between portage carries. Many areas were rife with enchanting mosses and lichens, with but a few small flowering plants, albeit the ones I found were stunning.
Northern firmoss amongst cladonia lichens.
Lichen and moss micro forests.
A solitary early flower on a tuft of moss campion.
Very pretty Labrador tea flower amongst wiry green witches hair lichen.
My shoulders and back were killing me by the last carry. I was the slowest portager, as usual, so much so that Curt went and fetched my canoe and carried it the last few hundred meters before I had time to return and grab it myself. He was then kind enough to even take it down the steep cleft right to the edge of the river, ready to be launched. My pride may have been stung, but I was so knackered that I was instead grateful, marveling at how strong the old bull is.
We all needed a rest and a shot (or two!) of rum before continuing, therefore we decided to stay put and camped up on the canyon rim for a second night. This of course meant that it was another outstanding campsite with amazing views up and down the canyon, with a serenade of low rumbling from the rapids below.
Campsite at the end of the canyon portage.
While dinner was cooking, I went down to the river to try fishing as it looked like a very promising spot, a deep pool in a little cove right after a rapid. Surely there must be big monsters lurking right here waiting to gobble up the little fish that get flushed down the long canyon rapids? Amazed, I caught nothing, not even a bite. I began to wonder – could it be that the fish we had for breakfast yesterday would be the last we would eat? If there were no trout in the river we were in trouble as the char don’t begin to run upstream from the ocean until the following month. After dinner I finally took my boots off to an unfortunate sight…my toes had started to hurt while walking about halfway through the day, but I had ignored it and pushed on. Now I saw why they hurt – my big toenails were turning black! I had bashed them against the front of the boots repeatedly on the rocky part of the portage, causing bruising under the nails. Both toes were tender but not painful as long as they weren’t touching anything, so I changed shoes and let it be. The arches of my feet were also aching, the insoles of the rubber boots not offering much support. Although I did have dry feet, this outcome definitely wasn’t worth it. No more wearing wellies on long portages!
The nice weather didn’t last the evening, it turned cloudy, the wind picked up and we were all chilled to the bone. A short hike up a ridge behind the tents fully exposed me to the biting wind, quickly chasing me back down. To bed early at half past nine.
Traveled 12.5 km, but actually only progressed 2.5 km closer to Kugaaruk today, none on the water!
Sunday July 15th. Sharkfin Falls.
After breakfast we broke camp and carried the rest of our gear down the tricky, steep slope to the tight little cove where we had to load the boats one at a time. We had suspected that the water level on the river had been dropping fast and this was confirmed by Curt, who had been placing marker rocks on the shoreline each evening. The river had been dropping an impressive four inches every night, something we predicted would continue if there was no rain. We had been lucky so far as the late spring had left the upper river flush with water, but we began to wonder if we would run into trouble downriver. From the canyon rim at the launch point, looking upstream at the second leg of the triangle canyon section of the river we could see where it squeezed through a narrow cleft in the bedrock, tumbling over three river wide ledges of white water. Despite this spectacle, Curt still thought he could have run this canyon “if I had two strong boats with me”, although he did end up saying that he was trying to “be safe” on this trip, or his wife would kill him (thank you, Denise!).
Carrying a canoe down to the put-in at the end of the portage. Yup, that’s snow on the right.
A telephoto picture of the rapids upstream. Looks good for a raft…a canoe – ?
In contrast, the view downstream looked much less challenging.
A few hundred meters from the put-in the rapids started, first a class 2 rapid ending in a boulder sieve that we all found a route through, crashing into a calm pool of water as the river turned left. It then curved north again, with an interesting almost continuous three kilometer class 2/3 rapid. About a kilometer into this rapid there was an almost river wide wall of big white waves that we had to stop to scout, finding one slot that we could run through. After that, the river was exciting – narrow and fast as it cut through ten meter high rock and gravel banks, tossing wave after wave at us. We literally flew along in the current, boat scouting our way downriver.
The start of the exciting 3 kilometer long rapid.
Then it gets challenging…
Definitely needed the spray covers on the canoes on this rapid!
At the end of this section the river gradually widens, then all of a sudden we realized that we were on the wrong side of the river – it was “split” into two by a long spit of shallow rocks, we had stuck to the left but our chosen channel gradually got shallower and shallower, the boulders and rocks, both submerged and sticking out, becoming harder and harder to maneuver around. It was like playing pinball. Finally the lead canoe, with Curt and Lee, wedged between some rocks and came to a dead halt. Kate and Mike’s canoe tried a little further to the right and also wedged. Jenny and I in the trailing canoe had no choice – there was nowhere else to go, so we too wedged just to the left of the lead canoe, playfully cursing Curt and Lee for blocking our way. Everyone jumped out to haul the boats off the rocks and drag them to deeper water. Looking around it was now obvious to us that the deep channel was on our right, with big frothy waves that caromed off underwater rocks, but the narrow funnel entrance to this channel on far river right was easy to miss. Dragging the fully loaded canoes over the line of rocks separating us from this deep channel and relaunching was not possible. We would just have to work our way down the boulder garden that we had become stuck in.
Jenny helping Kate and Mike free their canoe from the clutches of rocks.
In retrospect, looking at the satellite map it is clear that the correct channel is on the right (red arrow), we ended up getting hung up on the rocks on the left (yellow arrow).
Freeing our canoe, we jumped back in, again playing pinball with the obstacles until the water got a little deeper, but it was still quite the maze. What fun! A foot less water, perhaps even six inches, and we would never have made it down that left channel. As it was, Kate and Mike kept hanging their canoe on the boulders, struggling to get downstream. After a bit of tricky maneuvering, we bounced down the left side of the river on another wild run, finally pulling over as Curt and Lee had stopped to wait for us. Looking back upstream, if we had indeed stayed on the right side it would have been a really madcap ride. This run of rapids suddenly ended with the mother of all boulder fans, about 500 meters wide, with the whole left section (about 300 meters) bone dry. Luckily we found a small deep channel with enough water to get through on the far right.
The mother of all boulder fans, most of it dry. The only navigable channel through is on the far right (yellow arrow).
The river now calmed down, widening and meandering through “soft” walled banks, mostly sandy on the right and grassy on the left. We stopped for lunch on one of the big, sandy esker banks where I amused myself on the top of the bank photographing the sparse, lonely but pretty flowers, while the other guys chomped on their sausages and cheese down by the river.
The showy multi-faceted flowers of arctic thrift, also known as sea pink.
Arctic poppies.
The river becomes serene and relaxed…kind of like the calm before the storm.
This genteel section of river continued for about six kilometers until we reached another one of the river’s spectacles – Sharkfin Falls. The river narrows dramatically as it cuts through the exposed bedrock once again, the spring melt water having polished the stark rectangular rocks that form the river banks bare. This is an “S” shaped complex of four separate features. First, as the river narrows, are the approach rapids, which need to be taken on the right to set up for the portage. To keep on this side you have to negotiate a small but potentially dangerous ledge on the far right side through a one meter wide slot squeezed tight against the chunky riverbank, and it has to be run perfectly, which we all managed. The water was crystal clear as poured over the submerged rock shelf forming the ledge, its brilliant colour patterns shimmering and wavering in the dazzling sunshine. This was absolutely unpolluted water, the pure stuff like it used to be all over North America before we mucked it up in most places.
Curt and Lee run the ledge by squeezing between the rocky shelf and the bedrock lining the shore.
Colourful rock patterns dancing in the sunshine under the crystal clear water.
Second, the river is split into two by a huge chunk of bedrock that juts up, with a central “sharkfin” sticking out, the water raging and boiling around the rock as it drops about four meters.
Sharkfin falls. The fin looks like it would slice a raft in two.
Third, after a very brief calm stretch of water, the river drops into a mini-canyon with sheer walls and boils through another few meters of elevation loss.
The girls relaxing between portage carries and enjoying the scenery in the mini canyon after the third drop.
Fourth, after another but longer calm section, at the end of the “S” bend, is a one hundred meter class 3 rapid. The portage was the kind I like – relatively short, about 400 meters, relatively flat, over pretty even terrain, with a relatively easy put-in, breezy conditions with few bugs, sunny, dry, and with beautiful views, especially enjoyable while hiking back upstream without a load. The nasty part was that, while walking back after dropping a load, I ventured close to the river and while admiring the view, I slipped on a loose rock and went flying, bruising my hip on the rather hard landing, only avoiding lacerating the skin on the palm of the hand that broke the fall because I had been too lazy to take off my paddling gloves. My right thumb was contused near the nail, which would have been ripped off if I hadn’t had the gloves on.
The Sharkfin Falls complex. A definite portage for anyone in a canoe, including Curt, although he and Lee ran the last set of rapids (on the top of the satellite picture) in their empty canoe just for fun.
Shortly after getting back on the river the rapids start again, an entertaining wide, shallow 750 meter class 2 rapid full of submerged but easy to maneuver around obstacles. The surprise came at the end when , as we were all steaming along at a vigorous pace, a nasty boulder sieve suddenly appeared and there was no way to avoid it, so we all made split second decisions and took slightly different lines through it, bouncing safely into the eddy at the bottom. But I wouldn’t want to have to run through that sieve in another weeks’ time unless we were in for a deluge of a downpour to refill the watershed. The river was now clearly becoming harder to run with respect to water levels as we moved downstream, the opposite of what is usually expected on rivers that should swell with tributary flow the further one travels. After the rapid, the waters calm again, the banks “soften” as the river flows directly north, which was unfortunate because a bitterly cold northerly wind had picked up, dramatically hindering our forward progress. Pretty soon Lee was looking for a sheltered place to stop and camp and escape the wind. It was a shame we hadn’t stayed at Sharkfin Falls which would have made an exceptionally esthetic campsite, and we’d only made about 6 or 7 kilometers of progress since leaving the falls. The river bank to our left, which we had been following, was pretty ugly and boggy looking, but the other canoes pulled over anyway to have a look. It was a grim looking spot to camp at, depressing even, but perhaps it had some shelter behind a small cut in the river bank. Scanning for alternatives I could see a dry looking elevated shelf close to the river on the opposite shore, about half a kilometer further up, with a small bluff to protect from the north wind, so I suggested moving on. My comments were met with a surprising resistance so I resorted to calling the spot we were at as a “shitty campsite” and again pleaded for us to try the opposite shore. Everyone finally acquiesced, probably just to shut me up, but in the end I think it was the right choice – we found nice flat, dry camp spots with good views, some shelter, and, what else but an old tent ring! So someone else must have thought that this was the best spot in the area to camp at. I later found out that Lee had been quite cold and Kate was “hangry”, which was why they had wanted to stop back then and there at the shitty site, making me feel like a bit of a cad for insisting on looking for a better place to stop. Ouch, my apologies.
A panoramic campsite, with a tent ring (center foreground).
After a bourbon appetizer and a huge dinner, both courtesy of Curt, everyone was feeling better and was ready for a long hike up the hills behind camp. It was a zig-zag kind of hike, dodging obstacles such as small creeks that needed to be hopped over, as well as many marshy areas that required detours. The wind had dropped so the mosquitoes were a little bothersome, but just a little. In general we had been very lucky so far, the voyage had been relatively pest free. The only sound we could hear on our hike was the chirping of birds. Imagine that – none of the traffic noise of the city, or of the subtle mechanized sounds ubiquitous in modern houses and apartments.
One of our hiking companions, a Lapland longspur.
Another frequent sight, a Harris sparrow.
The light was gorgeous again – that seemingly never ending warm, golden gleam of twilight, with our bodies casting sharp, long, long shadows, making us look like giants! At the top of the hill we marveled at the view up and down the river. There is nothing like these tundra rivers in Southern Canada, as they cut their way across an endless untouched landscape, the eye being able to follow them for miles in each direction, all the little features marked on topographical maps clearly visible – every little stream coming in, every tiny pond, large lake, all the hills. Often you can pick out a downstream feature so far away that you only canoe by it the following afternoon. Sure, there are some prairie rivers and desert rivers in the south that may demonstrate comparable vistas, but if you look hard enough you will probably make out a road, or a trail, or see someone driving a 4 x 4. Part of the lure of where we were was the remoteness of it all, the wildness, not really knowing what we may bump into or what we may find.
Telling stories on top of the tundra world in the golden gleam of the northern summer sun at eleven at night.
The serene river as we head back to camp at midnight.
By the time we made it back to camp it was midnight, the sky was glowing with a light orange tint, and the clouds had started to move in. To bed late.
Traveled 22 km today. We are well ahead of “schedule”.
Monday, July 16th. Meeting prehistoric creatures.
Waking to a bitterly cold morning, we were greeted by low, grey clouds and fog on the river. It was 5°C but felt colder, leading to a miserable breakfast, everyone trying to get warm. Lee had brought six insulated plastic mugs in his monster wanigan for hot drinks, which is fine if you like to drink your tea or coffee slowly, but darn it, you can’t warm your hands by holding the cold hard plastic! It looked to be the type of day where you might as well paddle just to warm up, the alternative being to slip back into that nice, cozy sleeping bag. Hmmm, if that option had been proposed…
Early morning fog.
Still cold when we set off all bundled up.
On the river there was a light wind blowing from the north as we paddled. It was otherwise easy going, the river wide, no rapids, sandy banks ten to twenty meters high, often with small gravel covered hills behind them. We had begun passing somewhat odd appearing isolated grey mounds lining the river – looking like little clay hills, leaching fine grey sediment into the river. At first, there would be a thin strip of grey water running close to the shore with a clear line between it and the still crystal clear water in the middle of the river. Gradually, as the grey mounds became more frequent, the clear water began losing its battle with the grey stuff. Some streams drained small watersheds fed with water solely from these grey mounds. It was a sign of what was to become – in a few days the entire river would be opaque. These grey mounds are ancient marine silt and clay deposits, indicating that the area where we were, 250 meters above the current sea level, was an old sea bed that appeared after the massive sheet of ice that covered this area in the last great ice age melted. As the bedrock slowly “rebounded” after losing the enormous weight of the overlying ice, in a very slow time lapse, the Arctic Ocean would have appeared to retreat as the submerged surface slowly rose, much slower than Lazarus rose from his grave. Studies have estimated that the clay mounds that we were seeing began to be exposed about nine thousand years ago, and the rate of surface rebound (“isostatic uplift”) was about ten meters/century. The practical consequences of this phenomenon were two – we would be drinking silty water from now on, and fishing would officially become useless, but not from lack of trying.
Clay banks meant the end of crystal clear river water.
It became downright miserable. The drab grey continued to crown the sky as we struggled through the seemingly lifeless, desolate landscape. Everyone had extra clothing on to fight the chill, with the northerly wind being a double devil as it also slowed our progress. The two canoes in front had been swapping the lead, the canoe racers sometimes heading out in front but usually finally yielding to the boat paddled by Lee and Curt. Curt is like a big Cummings diesel engine with gobs of torque, and I don’t think he likes not being in the lead. Meanwhile Jenny and I were dropping slowly back, a combination of our slow boat and me stopping to take photographs. Our canoe has some serious, tough miles on it, translating to a bent frame resulting in a reverse rocker bottom, which meant my heavy butt was dragging the back end of the canoe through the water, akin to a sea anchor. So we were well behind the other boats when we were unexpectedly reminded that things can live up here when a small herd of musk ox popped into view on the left river bank. The other guys had also seen them, beaching their canoes river right, just past the oxen. The beasts in turn knew they were being watched and were spooked – most were now on their way up the ridge, at one point standing majestically, looking down at us.
Musk oxen on the ridge.
Jenny and I decided to go investigate. I have encountered musk ox previously, there being many herds on Victoria Island, northwest of where we were, while canoeing the Kuujuua River. But Jenny had never had the pleasure of meeting these incredible creatures up close, so we quickly decided to pull our canoe up on the left bank and start up the hills for a closer look, cameras in hand. We snuck up to the top of the hill just downstream from where the oxen had been, to discover that they had high tailed it inland and were now far away. But, luckily for her and my camera, a solitary bull had stayed and was lying down ruminating on the hilltop opposite us. We crept closer, wanting to a better view without bothering him too much, finally standing about thirty meters away, with the little valley between the hills separating us. As we took pictures he stood up, stared at us as if he was saying, “give me a break, I’m just trying to digest my food”, then finally ambled off along the ridge away from us. If I had been a hunter, it would have been no sport to shoot this fellow – it would have been a very, very simple task. So if you meet any trophy hunter who has bagged a musk ox and boasts about how he or she is such as “great white hunter”, you should not be impressed. In fact, if you are hunting them and see one and don’t manage to shoot it, you should either get eyeglasses or a new prescription for your current glasses.
The magnificent bull wanders along the ridge above the river.
Musk oxen are truly fascinating creatures, so well adapted to the arctic environment. Despite their name, they are more closely related to sheep and goats than cattle. The name “musk” comes from the fact that the males have glands near their eyes that manufacture a smelly secretion resembling that produced by the musk deer. This musk is abundant during the mating season when fighting bulls rub their periorbital glands against their forelegs while bellowing loudly, then displaying their horns, before charging to head butt each other to determine who is dominant. That is, which one will get all the babes! They also display this behavior as an aggressive gesture when they feel threatened, something we would personally experience at a later encounter. Although not small animals, they look larger than they actually are due to their hairy appearance, consisting of both the outer shaggy long guard hairs and a very fine inner wool called qiviut. Qiviut is amazing wool – stronger and much warmer than sheep’s wool, and softer than cashmere. You have to experience it to believe how warm it is, if you are lucky enough to find some on the tundra after the ox sheds its winter wool, usually stuck to low vegetation. When you pick it up and hold it in your hand, your hand will feel very warm and often actually starts to sweat, even if it is cold out. And these beasts really need that warmth during the wickedly cold arctic winters as they don’t migrate south like the caribou do. At -40°C, these incredible woolly coats allow them to go about their business as normal.
Musk oxen have a unique defense when hunted by wolves, grizzlies or humans. Instead of running away like most herbivores, the herd (usually ten to thirty strong) forms a circle with their menacing horns facing out and the calves in the center or under their mother’s bellies. I have seen the adults swing their heads at the curious little ones that don’t obey orders, butting them back into the safety of the circle. Occasionally a bull will dash out from the circle to do battle with the attacker, swinging their horns to try and wound whatever is attacking them. Otherwise the oxen keep their eyes on the predator, seemingly daring them to mess with the wall of thick, hard skulls crowned with horns. Humans came up with the same defensive concept many years later – think of a Greek phalanx, but circular, or a similar modification of the famous British infantry square used in the Napoleonic wars, defensive techniques that were uniquely suited to their times. These military formations have fallen by the wayside with the advent of modern firearms as, unfortunately, has this musk ox defense when confronted with hunters with high power rifles. As a last resort, the herd will bolt and run – and boy can they run fast, up to sixty kilometers per hour. It is an amazing experience to see a herd thunder off over the tundra.
Although muskoxen may be thriving in the Eastern Canadian Arctic, they are not doing well in the Western Arctic where their numbers have been declining. Researchers from the University of Calgary have found several factors that are thought to be contributing to this decline. The parasitic lungworm, Umingmakstrongylus pallikuukensis (the first parasite to be named in Inuinnaqtun, an Inuktitut dialect) is thriving because warmer temperatures are helping the larval worms thrive in their intermediate hosts – slugs and snails. The musk ox eat the infective larvae deposited on the tundra by the slugs/snails, which then “drill” through their intestinal wall blood vessels and make their way to the lungs, embolizing them before maturing into adult larvae that grow to form cysts. A local immune response in the lungs causes the animals to form copious mucous, in turn making them cough and wheeze. A second pestilence thought to contribute to their decline is the bacteria, Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae, which has been found in many carcasses. This bacterium is typically found in pigs and poultry in the south, but it can infect everything, including people, and appears to be moving north. Third, the researchers have found a surprisingly high rate of broken incisors among dead muskox, which could be linked to changes in vegetation and grazing conditions as a result of abnormal weather and climatic patterns. Disgusting ways to lose animals that have survived the ice age. Hopefully ways will be found to limit the effects of these scourges as it is truly a highlight to bump into muskoxen on an arctic “safari”.
The Inuktitut name for a musk ox is “umingmak“, roughly translating to “the bearded one”. The indigenous peoples of the North have a special relationship with these animals. This is an excerpt from the American explorer Caspar Whitney’s classic 1904 book, “Musk oxen, Bison, Sheep and Goats”:
“There is nothing in the appearance or in the life of the musk-ox to suggest romance, yet the Indians and the Eskimo surround it with much mystery. They say it is not like other animals, that it is cunning and plays tricks on them, that it is not safe to approach, that it understands what is said. The Indians among whom I travelled have a tradition that long years ago a woman wandered into the Barren Grounds, was lost, and finally turned into a musk-ox by the “enemy.” Perhaps this accounts for the occasional habit these Indians have when pursuing musk-oxen of talking to them, instructing them as to the direction of their flight, etc.”
According to Rasmussen’s book, the Inuit have magic words that they used to help hunting muskoxen. He translates the magic words of the hunter, Nakasuk, into English, as such:
“Your flanks, your flanks, a little old woman’s breathing, with that you shall breathe, well up into the wind, properly up into the wind”.
Think of that what you will, but Nakasuk clearly is thinking fondly of the animals that were thought to give spiritual gifts to the Inuit.
In a traditional story, the people of western Hudson Bay tell how two muskoxen provided hunters with a song.
These muskoxen had taken off their skins and were standing rubbing the skins to soften them and singing praises of their country. They sang of how beautiful the land was and how in summer they could always see the sun. While they were singing they heard a pack of dogs. Quickly they put on their skins and went up a hill where they thought they could defend themselves. Soon after they reached the top, the hunters came and killed both animals, and took the song for their own.
–Recounted from Hinterland Who’s Who.
Back in the canoes we continued our paddle north. The river was still quite wide, sometimes with sandy cut banks, at other times lined by expansive beaches transitioning smoothly to tundra, framed by far away low hills. There were more and more grey clay mounds, some forming part of the river bank and eroding directly into the river, others more remote but still feeding their fine suspension into now cloudy water via small, murky streams. We glided by some majestic lesser snow geese, almost pure white, except for their primary flight feathers which are black and can be seen to “poke out” from underneath all the white when not flying. These geese are so much more regal than the rather drab, ubiquitous Canada goose. Snow geese can also have a dark (“blue”) phase, but these birds are usually seen further south. Snow geese are one of the few birds that seem to have benefited from humans – they have thrived as we have developed huge industrial farms growing monocrops – the geese gorge on our cultivated corn, rice, and grain, especially the agricultural waste that they find on their spring migration routes. Much easier eating than having to grub for tender plant roots in the thick mud of marshes, their usual food source. There are now estimated to be over five million lesser snow geese, and about a million greater snow geese, which breed more northeasterly than the slightly smaller geese we were seeing.
Snow geese on the river bank.
Wide, gentle river rippled by the wind, as it cuts through gravelly banks.
About twenty kilometers into our day the river takes a sharp 90 degree jig to the left, heading due west for five kilometers. On this stretch, just to the north of a small gravel island, we spotted a big stack of obviously man-made rocks on the right shore, on top of an elongated knoll. This kind of discovery is just the thing to entice one to take a break from paddling, stretch the old legs out and investigate. It turned out to be a huge inuksuk obviously marking an historic major camp, complete with multiple tent rings. Looking around the site, we wondered, why here? What was special about this place that led multiple families to stay here? It was on an elevation, so was perhaps windy enough to discourage the scourge of biting flies, but there must have been more. Food gathering was always the most important thing on the minds of a people that lived off the land, and inland the two most abundant food sources were caribou and fish. So perhaps this site may have been on a caribou migration route. But looking down at the river, we thought it may have been a good site to build a stone weir in the late summer when the arctic char ran upriver.
The large stone cairn. The river section just to the right of the cairn looks like it may be a good site for a stone fishing weir.
Lichens growing on the cairn rocks, signs of old age. Experts can date how long rocks have been exposed by using Lichenography, a geomorphic technique accurate up to 10,000 years.
One of the many tent rings at this site.
Unlike today, the Inuit did not have fancy fishing rods or even simple nets, they caught fish with an ingenious spear called a kakivak or leister, but needed to round the fish up so they could have a good chance to actually lance them.
Jenny with some leisters that we found near the mouth of the river at the end of the trip.
Stone weirs were built to facilitate this, funneling the fish into “dead end” pools where they were trapped and could be speared. This is a description of such a weir that the Netsilik used on nearby King William Island, on a small river between two lakes, from Rasmussen’s book:
A stone dam had been built in the little stream, blocking it completely. Out in the middle was the “qagjge”, a round weir of stones forming a separate enclosure, ten meters long, parallel with the flow of the river, four meters wide measured at right angles, from the course of the river. This qagjge had a gateway in the end facing the lake from which the river flowed. The trout that followed the stream…had necessarily to pass through the gate into the qagjge, for both to the right and left of the gate ran a stone wall about ten meters long right into the banks of the river…everybody fished at the same time…the “superintendent of the fisheries” shouted, “now we’ll all go down”…this cry was always greeted with joyous howls from all the tents…it was a wild race of men, women and children, from the most decrepit, hobbling and stumbling old veterans to the youngest fleet runners, some fully dressed, others half naked, most of them bare legged despite the fact that the water was icy cold and the air more than chilly. They seemed oblivious to cold…four or five men suddenly rushed out into the river and then walked downstream, waving arms and leisters, wading towards the opening of the qagjge…the many fish that had accumulated shoaled hurriedly towards the qagjge, only here and there did one leap over the stone dam…when there were no more fish in the river a man sprang to the gateway and closed it with a large flat stone, then all the trout were shut up in the weir. The closing of the gateway was the sign that the fishing could begin and, careless of the cold water or their clothes, which would become saturated, the whole impatient flock of people tumbled into the river and into the qagjge where they began to spear the fish.
Diagram of the stone weir used by the Netsilik on King William Island, as drawn by the hunter, Inutuk. Adapted from Rasmussen, The Netsilik Eskimos, 1931.
This traditional method of fishing by the Netsilik was one of the topics captured on film in the mid 1960’s by a combined National Film Board of Canada and MACOS (“Man: A Course Of Study”) production. The MACOS course was an enlightened attempt at alternative learning for grade 5 students in the United States, using films, pictures and student interaction rather than standard textbooks, on subjects such as salmon, gulls, baboons and the daily life of people of a very different culture, in this case the Netsilik Inuit. I think that in picking the Inuit, the hope was that the students would see cultures other than their own more sympathetically. It ended up being a very controversial course that garnered quite a bit of opposition from conservatives, at one point an Arizona congressman angrily denounced it, wondering why children were being shown footage of people harpooning seals, spilling blood all over the ice, and eating raw meat, especially fish eyeballs. The films are still available for viewing on the NFB website and for those interested in the history of the North, are a must-watch. (https://www.nfb.ca/subjects/indigenous-peoples-in-canada-inuit/netsilik/). In a 2004 documentary (Through These Eyes) presenting both sides of the controversy, some of the Inuit from Kugaaruk, now elders, who were actually in the features, clearly state that although they are “staged” films, they are authentic as it was easy for them to slip into a way of life that they had either just left, or were still actually practicing. One elder says near the end of the documentary, “I was disappointed to hear that some Americans were so offended by our traditions”, and another, “What those people down south say never surprises me, they don’t know us, the fact is, that’s just how we lived.” You can also watch this documentary on the NFB website: https://www.nfb.ca/film/through_these_eyes/
As we examined the large stone cairn we wondered if it could have been used as a food cache as well as acting as a marker for the site, as it seemed hollow. Both caribou meat and fish were stored under large piles of rocks in times of plenty to be used when food was scarce. After being gutted, fish were otherwise stored whole in these caches, each family having two or three caches of up to two or three hundred kilograms each. These food stores could be revisited months or even years later as needed. Yes, years later, as recounted in Rasmussen’s book:
“Right alongside the spot where we pitched our camp we found an old cache of caribou meat – two years old I was told. We cleared the stones away and fed the dogs, for it is law in this country that as soon as a cache is more than a winter and a summer old, it falls to the one who has use for it. The meat was green with algae, and when we made a cut in it, it was like the bursting of a boil, so full of great white maggots was it. To my horror my companions scooped out handfuls of the crawling things and ate them with evident relish. I criticized their taste, but they laughed at me and said, not illogically, “You yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots but live caribou meat? They taste just the same as the meat and are refreshing to the mouth.”
Today, when we visit the villages on the coast at the end of rivers that we have traveled down, we see Inuit now catching fish using gill nets, filleting them and hanging them to make jerky, or storing them in freezers for later use.
While at the archeological site the skies had cleared and were now a gleaming azure. The previous weather induced gloomy mood thus lifted, we enthusiastically resumed paddling, wondering what else we would discover that day. The river soon turned north again, a mild rapid at the bend changing our mindset and putting us on alert as the maps showed a narrowing ahead surrounded by contour lines, indicating more challenging rapids. Indeed, a class 3 rapid barreled down the narrows, framed by rocky banks on the left and fifty meter high crags on the right. We kept to the left to avoid some pretty big white water on the right side of the river, then pulled the canoes up onto a nice little sandy beach to check for a campsite. We were greeted by a perfect set of enormous paw prints heading downstream on the beach – made by an obviously quite big wolf, and not too long ago.
Fresh wolf tracks.
Jenny’s hand print beside a wolf print. Yup, that’s one big dog.
To my disappointment the tundra above the beach was pretty miserable for tenting – uneven and rocky, so we kept going another 500 meters, through a pair of minor rapids where the river widens and splits around a midstream “island” composed of rocks and sand. Immediately after the last rapid a nice little bay with a beach beckoned, a twenty meter walk up the beach leading to a beautiful flat plateau, perfect for the tents.
A most perfect campsite
This was yet another one of those glorious arctic evenings. It was eight o’clock by the time we had set up camp under the cloudless sky, the sun hovering above the horizon, brilliantly reflecting off the little ponds near the campsite, about to start its low loop before rising again to circle high overhead the next day. The air was crisp and clear, shadows were sharp and the tundra was bathed in a radiant, warm yellow bloom. It was cool but not too cold, that and a light breeze keeping the bugs away. It doesn’t get much better than this, the exception being the fishing – Mike and I tried fishing in the eddy at the bottom of the rapids – by all accounts we should have hooked some big boys, but there was nothing, not even a bite. A rather sad looking young caribou gazed at our efforts from a sand bar on the other side of the river, then, having had enough of whatever it was doing, just flopped down on the sand and lazed about. To bed, wondering if the wolf that had made the beach tracks would find the rather wretched, lonely caribou and eat like a king that night.
The lonely little lost caribou. It later flopped down on the sand and lay there forlorn.
Late evening sun (close to midnight!) looping low on the horizon.
30km today.
Tuesday, July 17th. Aerial combat.
It was a warm morning, with the hot sun burning through the tent and rousing me from a deep sleep. I sleep so soundly on these trips that I often wonder what wildlife events have happened during the night around me, separated from the feral things by only the thinnest wisps of fabric. Sometimes new wolf or black bear paw prints appear around the tents in the morning, our local guests curiously checking out their new smelly visitors. Thank goodness we are not their usual food, or perhaps I wouldn’t be sleeping so deeply. But I do admit that sometimes, before falling asleep, rustling sounds outside the tent can get my mind racing – are we being stalked by something dangerous? If I do get up the nerve to look outside, there is usually nothing in sight, the stirrings probably being those of a mouse, lemming or ermine scrounging for whatever they can find to eat, the sound magnified by my imagination in the peaceful, quiet night air. So, usually quickly thereafter, I succumb to the gentle connection with the earth one gets when sleeping on the ground, and slip into blissful slumber.
As we loaded the boats, the small stone that Curt had put at the edge of the water the night before was now three feet clear – the river was still dropping a few inches each night.
Water levels were still dropping fast. The small rock marked the water’s edge the night before.
A glorious day beckoned, warm enough for T-shirts as the sun shone brightly overhead, with only high, wispy clouds sprinkling the impossibly blue sky, as the water beneath us rippled in a light wind.
The early morning paddle in beautiful conditions.
We had a flat water paddle as the river snaked through an acute right-left zig-zag, then headed north cutting its way through a wide, sandy shallow valley, the sand flats stretching up to four kilometers on the right side before reaching the tundra. This was most unusual topography that got me half wondering if we would see camels! Undoubtedly the whole area would become a shallow lake each spring during the annual spring flood. The left bank was rocky with low hills, still adorned by scattered white patches of snow. Our main obstacle was avoiding the slightly submerged midstream sandbars that could ground the canoes and slow us down – an inkling of what was to seriously plague us in a few days.
Satellite image of the “Sahara of the Kellett”, a massive sandy expanse that the river trickles through.
Near the beginning of the “Sahara” section. The vast sandy plain stretches to the hills on the horizon on the right side of the river.
Early in the afternoon we spotted a prominent “rock” on top of a small hill about two hundred meters from the left river bank that warranted exploration. We had a strong suspicion that this represented anther cairn. On the way up the hill I just had to stop to admire some pretty flowers and butterflies. I was lucky enough to see examples of all three butterfly families that live in the high arctic within minutes of each other at this site.
Colias or Sulphur butterfly. There are around 50 species of butterflies in the Arctic, belonging to three main families. Their caterpillars by and large are not picky, eating a variety of plants, unlike southern butterflies such as the Monarch whose larvae feed only on milkweeds. The larvae of most arctic butterflies do not mature within a single year – the environmental conditions just do not allow for fast growth rates, meaning that the adults may take two to three years to appear. The adult butterflies are active fliers, although most remain close to the ground, out of the wind, seeking warmer air in sheltered spots. They gain most of their body heat by basking, exposing their wings to soak up the sun’s rays. The warmed blood in their wings is then circulated to the rest of the body via the wing veins. Unlike most arctic butterflies, Sulphurs bask with their wings folded up, and then tilted to the side, to expose the undersides to the sun’s heat. This basking is a necessity because they cannot fly until their body temperature is warmed to at least 10 degrees Celsius. During periods of cool, cloudy weather, common in the north, the poor things may fail to fly for several weeks!
Oeneis or Satyrid butterfly. These often drab butterflies, usually grey, brown or black are easy to spot as they have a distinctive flight pattern – they are erratic, bobbing up and down while flying. This feature is what earned the family its name – the satyrs of Greek mythology were the drunken, dancing companions of Dionysus, the god of wine. Hmm…I think I like these little guys. Although their flight pattern is unpredictable, these butterflies end each journey the same way – by descending rapidly, closing their wings, and disappearing amongst the vegetation. There are over a dozen satyr species in the Arctic, a few of whom inhabit the High Arctic, where their larvae feed on grasses and sedges.
Boloria or Fritillary butterfly. These are also known as brush-footed butterflies, so named because their front pair of legs is very short, stubby, and covered with hairs. These butterflies, which are often shades of orange and brown, are extremely common around the world, including a few species that have colonized the High Arctic. The different species have similar upper wing patterns, but can be told apart by the silver markings on their lower wing surfaces. The larvae of these butterflies feed on a variety of perennial shrubs including crowberry, blueberry, mountain aven and willow.
A beautiful male Arctic willow, about two inches tall. The catkins are covered in “fur”, acting as a greenhouse to warm them in the sun. The tiny flowers have no petals and secrete lots of nectar.
On top of the hill we found one of the largest archeological sites I have seen in the North. The “rock” we had seen was indeed a large rock, but with many smaller ones stacked in a locking pattern on top. This large inuksuk was surrounded by at least fifteen tent rings in varying states of repair. There were perhaps even more scattered on the slopes that we may have found if we had explored longer. Sitting in the breeze was obviously a big reason the Inuit had intelligently chosen this site for a camp, also making it a great site for lunch. What a glorious place. If this was in the South the beaches below us would be jammed with tourists, kids screaming and running around, and the hill would be chock full of vacation condominiums. But today, up here, we had it all to ourselves, although we couldn’t dally as we knew from the maps that there was probably a big portage coming up, so we had to get going.
Rock marker high above the river, with many surrounding tent rings. A long unused site.
Lonely travelers wandering in the desert. At least they’re not going to be thirsty.
Back on the river we pass long tailed ducks bobbing along beside us, as two sandhill cranes soar overhead.
Long tailed ducks.
Sandhill cranes.
Just downstream from the old Inuit camp, the river narrows as it hits a wall of bedrock that it had to cut through eons ago, resulting in a rock walled gorge filled first with a big rapid, then a seven meter waterfall, then another rapid split by a midstream, bare rock pillar, the last remnant of the bedrock obstacle. This is all followed by a final runoff class 3 rapid.
The mid-section of Falcon Gorge. A waterfall steams through the crack in the rocks on the left, the river is then split by a pillar, and finally a runoff bouncy rapid.
A definite portage, but as we started back to the canoes after scouting the best route, I decided to head over to the river with my camera to get a good look at the beautiful gorge itself, separated from the best portage route by a jumble of squared off boulders. After picking our way through the boulder field, Jenny and I heard the unmistakable screeching of a peregrine falcon, mixed with the cries of a glaucous gull. Looking up we were amazed to see the gull and falcon engaged in aerial combat! The falcon would swoop down at the gull with its claws extended and take a swipe at it. Falcons are the fastest animal on the planet, usually using that speed to ambush smaller birds in flight by diving from great heights, their streamlined, swept-back wings allowing them to surprise their victims at over 300 km/hr. But this falcon didn’t have the element of surprise, wasn’t diving from any great height, and didn’t seem to want to actually sink its claws into the gull, which would probably cause it to crash-land into the river below as the gull was larger than the falcon. Glaucous gulls are the giant gulls of the frozen north, weighing up to 2.7 kilograms as opposed to falcons weighing up to 1.5 kilograms (and that is the females, the poor males only up to a paltry 1 kg). And the gull was not scared, instead of flying away to escape the attack, it would just circle and wait for the next pass of the falcon. Indeed, watching more closely, the gull would turn towards the falcon just before contact and try and peck it with its beak! This was not victim behavior.
The falcon warily eyes the big gull, which turns towards the falcon to try and peck it.
We sat on a rock by the raging river watching this mesmerizing battle of birds for a while, and then a second falcon appeared, also having a go at the gull. Okay, we thought, two falcons in a gorge, that meant a falcon nest was probably nearby. Looking around, we spotted the nesting scrape just ten meters from us, sitting on top of the midstream rock pillar directly across from where we were sitting. One of the falcons soon went back to the nest and then the scenario became clearer – the gull was trying to steal a falcon chick from the nest, and the falcons were just defending their young. Grudgingly I had to admire the scavenger, it was definitely a handful for the falcons, giving them a good fight.
The falcon nest was on the rock pillar.
Glaucous gulls breed across most of the high Arctic. In the East, they migrate mainly through the Hudson Bay area to winter in the St. Lawrence River Valley, Newfoundland and the east coast from New Brunswick down to South Carolina. So this particular gull may spend winter outside my home in Montreal! They are omnivores but one of their favourite pastimes is raiding seabird nesting colonies. It will walk into colonies, taking eggs and chicks left unprotected, and will fly above colonies disturbed by foraging arctic foxes to take advantage of the commotion, then swoop down to claim an easy meal. This gull was bolder, trying to steal from the usually feared falcon! This particular avian skirmish was more of a spectacle, and a definitely fairer fight, than the gull attack on a young goose that I witnessed while paddling on the Puvirnituq river in Ungava a few years ago – that gull swooped, grabbed the swimming gosling with its beak and took off with it, right in front of our canoe. Vicious birds.
One midair battle sequence between a huge glaucous gull and a sleek but petite peregrine falcon. Perhaps surprisingly, the falcon appeared outgunned!
Just who is attacking who?
The battle raged over land as well as water
I could have sat there and watched the battle for hours, but we did have a portage to do and the others were waiting, so I reluctantly followed them back to the boats. The portage was about 750 meters long and the going wasn’t bad if we stayed to the right of the boulder field, only having to traverse it at the end to reach the river above the class 3 rapid at the bottom which we would attempt to run.
Curt laying his canoe down at the end of the gorge portage.
We still had to tackle the not insubstantial runoff rapid at the bottom of the gorge.
Sneaking down the right side of Falcon Gorge Rapids.
We loaded the boats, maneuvered through the tricky rapid, and approached the next rapids, only 500 meters further ahead. On the topographical maps it seemed straightforward, that the main channel was to the right of a large rock/gravel island that would be submerged in the spring deluge, with only a tiny channel (a single line) to the left, which is why we had landed on the right side of the river to scout.
After the gorge, the topo map suggests go to the right of the island!
When we got out of the boats and actually had a good look at the terrain, it became evident that things were a little more complicated. The right channel was essentially dry, the rapids instead thundering to the left of the “island”, which was in essence an expansive, exposed boulder garden. And from where we were, the main channel bending to the left appeared to have a serious elevation drop. We couldn’t see around the “corner” where the map showed the very narrow channel, for that we would need to be on the left side of the river to see if it was paddlable – but we couldn’t make it across as we had already entered the head of the rapids. I should have paid more attention to my satellite maps – they clearly showed that the topo maps were giving bad advice.
The satellite map says go left!
Unloading the boats to portage the “Boulder Island Rapids”.
We mulled it over and decided to go for the safe option – portage right. As I wearily started unloading my canoe, Curt was already off with his usual heavy load blazing the trail. What a machine that man is. The terrain was quite uneven, hummocks everywhere with hidden holes in the low bushy areas. On the first trip I was treated to the sight of Lee with legs sunk into such a hole almost up to his waist with a huge load on his back, the poor guy was unable to extract himself without dropping his packs. On the initial eyeball of the portage route from the start point, I had figured it would be about 500 meters or so to what looked like the end point. Hmmph. That was just a tundra mirage, we had to keep on going over a small hump and the total distance ended up being about 1100 meters. I decided to leave the canoe for the last trip. Not looking forward to balancing the beast on my sore shoulders, I enlisted Jenny to help me on a two person tundra drag using ropes. Fat chance of that being successful on such uneven ground, we got about a hundred meters before we gave it up, cursing and blaming each other for the poor progress, even though it was probably my fault for being lazy and not setting the ropes up properly. I really didn’t want to finish this portage, but I had no choice. So up on my shoulders the canoe went, a traditional portage it became, and it almost killed me. The sun was still ablaze, it was hot, there was no breeze to speak of, and mosquitoes by the hundreds were sharing the air under the canoe with my head, feasting on my face. Yup, still no bug head net or DEET for me, I was determined to do another trip with a naked face. My back was killing me, my legs were shot, and my shoulders felt like someone was digging knives in and twisting them around. One step at a time, I kept telling myself, think of something else, it can’t be much further, almost there, I’m too old for this…hmmm, is Curt really older than me?… so tell me again why do I do this to myself? Whoops, lost my balance on that hummock, don’t fall, must recover…I can’t wait for this to be over…
Reaching the last crest and starting the descent to the beach where we were camped, I saw naked people bathing in the cool water of the river, and that wasn’t a mirage. My torso was dripping with sweat, my feet squishing in pools of wetness as I had kept my drypants on (there’s that laziness again), parched with thirst, eyeing them I had never been more envious of someone else in my whole life. Finally dropping the canoe (literally – I think I threw it off), I collapsed and sunk to the ground. But instead of relaxing, I was soon busy again as it was my turn to make dinner, it was 9 o’clock already, the others were probably hungry, although I still felt like puking. I made the tastiest meal that I had brought, bacon, kale, onion and cheesy mashed potatoes, the rationale being that we deserved a feast after a hard day’s work. At least we had stumbled onto a pretty campsite, on a grassy bench above the beach, framed by rocky hills, with the sound of rapids filling the air, and a fox den just above us. The fox had made an appearance to Lee earlier on, then had taken off and we didn’t see it again. Sore and exhausted, my tiredness got the better of me and there was absolutely no attempt to cross the ugly boulder “island” to scout that left channel and see if it was canoeable. It will be up to the next explorers to figure that out – as long as they scout from the left bank!
Clouds move in late at night at the Boulder Island Rapids campsite.
22 km today.
Wednesday, July 18th. Curt rocks the ledge.
I awoke feeling better, a good night’s sleep can work wonders on one’s psyche. The magic pill naproxen (“Aleve”) also helps. Although it was cloudy in the morning it was still quite warm. As everyone else ate breakfast I fooled around with some spiders that I had found close to the tent. As in the South, spiders are relatively abundant in the North, making up a significant portion of the animal population – by biomass, arctic wolf spiders alone outweigh arctic wolves by at least 80-to-1. Over 300 species of spiders live north of the 60th parallel, evolving different ways to survive the harsh environs. For example, crab spiders often conceal themselves in plants and their flowers for camouflage while they stalk prey. The often minute and aptly named dwarf spiders, part of the sheet weaver family, hunt their prey on the ground. Funnel weaver spiders thrive in sunny spots, building a flat sheet of web with a funnel-shaped retreat that acts as a “home”. Although not sticky, their webs still entangle shaggy prey, allowing the predator to rush out, grab the victim and drag it back into the funnel. Wolf spiders, scary looking with hairy bodies and thick, strong legs, scurry on the ground and pounce to capture quarry. The spiders I had been seeing a lot of were these wolf spiders, Alopecosa hirtipes, the females living in small black holes in the tundra, these “burrows” luxuriously lined with loads of silk. It was the time of year that these females were bloated with colourful egg sacs, sometimes huge. I would sneak up to the holes, lie still, watch as the occupants came right up beneath the web, wait and observe. If I moved, they would scurry back down into their burrows. If they didn’t sense my presence, sometimes they would venture an inch or two from the hole.
A female wolf spider in her burrow, her pale blue egg sac clearly visible (spider identification courtesy of Prof. Chris Buddle, McGill University).
Arctic spiders were in the news this summer – Washington University researcher Amanda Koltz released the results of her study showing how wolf spiders are helping to fight climate change in the arctic. An earlier 2009 study showed that a warmer Arctic could make wolf spiders both larger and more abundant. One of their favorite foods is a soil fungus-eating arthropod called a springtail. And if there are more wolf spiders, then there should be fewer springtails, which would mean more fungus and a higher rate of dead plant matter decay on the tundra, leading to more greenhouse gas emissions and a further acceleration of global warming. But the researchers found that in areas of higher spider density, they actually ate fewer springtails, leading to a lower rate of dead matter decomposition. You may think this contribution as insignificant, and on an individual basis it is, but the tundra is vast and the effect is additive. Just why the “high-density” spiders lose their appetite for springtails remains unclear. It might be that they shift from eating springtails to competing with—and eating—each other. It seems that the men on Franklin’s doomed Northwest Passage mission weren’t the only cannibalistic suspects in the arctic! Or maybe the higher temperature led the spiders to find a completely different food source. No matter, these spiders are doing their bit to try and slow arctic warming, certainly more than the Chinese and Germans, who keep building more coal fired power plants, and the current President of the United States who doesn’t seem to believe it is even occurring.
Jenny found another interesting creature on the sandy beach. It was a dead but still intact banded horntail, a type of wood wasp. They are usually found in the vicinity of softwood trees – spruce and pine, and the lifespan of the adult is only about a month, so what it was doing this far above the tree line was a mystery. The rather large black protrusion at its rear is actually the horntail, an ovipositor and not a stinger. It is used to bore holes into wood where eggs are injected, over 300 per wasp, the larvae emerging to feast on the wood before emerging as adults. The ovipositor itself is an ingenious feat of nature. Human engineers are trying to mimic its action in order to create surgical instruments, such as an experimental neurosurgical probe to use during brain surgery. The wasp ovipositor contains two interlocking valves, each covered with backward-facing teeth. While the teeth of one valve catch onto the wood to provide resistance, the other valve moves forward taking a slight step. This latter valve then catches the wood to provide resistance while the first valve moves forward. Thus, by quick oscillation, the valves alternate in providing resistance and moving forward. This process allows the ovipositor to drill almost an inch into the sapwood. The force used is minimal and the ovipositor does not buckle or break.
Urocerus gigas flavicornis, the banded horntail wood wasp, a mysterious finding 800 km north of the nearest coniferous tree (JJ photograph).
That morning, the river served up a series of class 1 and class 1/2 rapids, easy stuff and fun, as well as having the benefit of pulling us downstream with little effort. Current is good! This was a pretty stretch of river, the banks consisting of low hills, both grass covered and strewn with rock, framing the now almost milky water.
Typical portion of the river in the morning.
Soon the river narrowed and turned slightly to the left, the water funneling into a class 2/3 rapid. As usual Curt and Lee were in the lead canoe and jumped right in, staying left of some pretty big waves barreling down the right side of the river. Close behind were Kate and Mike, with Jenny and I bring bringing up the rear, meaning that we got to marvel as the middle canoe decided it wanted a challenge, plowing right into the frothy maelstrom on the right. Those two sure do like running the big stuff, making me jealous as Jenny never lets me have that much fun in the rapids. I watched them intently, their canoe bucking and disappearing every few seconds, often even their heads vanishing, as the boat entered the deep troughs between the waves, only to pop up again like a cork. Perhaps I was paying too much attention to the show, mesmerized, because before I knew it our canoe steamed into an eddy on the far left, grabbing us with a pull that we couldn’t fight. As we spun slowly around in the eddy I think Jenny was cursing me for our predicament, but we smoothly completed the 360 degree turn and entered right back into the current, avoiding a few holes and joining the others who were waiting , holding their canoes to the left bank. Phew.
My view of Kate and Mike taking the bumpy route. You can barely see their canoe, the bow has just re-emerged from a trough between waves (white arrow).
The next big obstacle on the river was where it, once again, has had to cut through a wall of bedrock as it continues its descent towards the ocean. The water follows the higher left bank, bends around a sandy point, and then splits around a well-worn bedrock remnant in the shape of a diamond. Most of the flow goes through a narrow left channel where there are two drops in quick succession, too difficult to paddle with fully loaded boats. On the right side, after a gentle entry, most of the drop comes all at once, via a small ledge just over a meter high, followed by a short technical class 2 rapid. Curt volunteered to run all three boats solo over the ledge, if we took most of the packs and barrels out, saving us having to portage the canoes. We readily took him up on his offer and went down by the ledge to watch him successfully bring the boats down. Boy do those collapsible canoes bend when they have to!
Panoramic view of the Diamond Rock chute.
Curt briefly disappears over the ledge.
Curt rocking it.
We loaded the boats after the short portage, rounded another river bend to find a very, very technical boulder sieve that spelt trouble. It looked like there was a gnarly ledge straight ahead, so the safer route was to go to the right. This is where Jenny and I had the distinct advantage of bringing up the rear – we got to see the leading boats choose the wrong routes, both getting hung up on the rocks and grinding to a halt. Jenny picked a different route and we made it almost unscathed, my knees feeling it as they bounced off the shallow rocks as we slid over them. The only thing between my knees and the rocks was the fabric bottom of the folding canoe and a thin foam pad. Traversing these boulder sieves is tricky, the current is usually moving fast over the drop and you have literally seconds (or less!) to decide your route, hopefully picking one that avoids getting seriously stuck.
Satellite map of Diamond Rock rapids and the ugly boulder fan around the corner that surprised us.
Soon the river valley widens, again with a vast sandy bottom. This sandy stretch lasts about six kilometers, the beach up to two kilometers wide. At times it looked like we were really in a desert, or even on the moon, the hills covered with sand or made of clay. At the end of this section the river turns left, narrows, and rapids were marked on the map, so we decided to look for a campsite as it was getting late, about seven o’clock.
Are we really above the Arctic Circle? A lonely young caribou walking in an apparent moonscape.
The campsite was not pretty and the landing was pretty mucky, but it sufficed and the hiking close by looked promising. There were a series of hills, up to about 200 meters high, to the east that offered good viewpoints. As it was hot and sunny we took advantage of the nice weather and took care of various chores. I finally decided to drill a hole in my big toe which had been bothering me since I bled under the nail after the canyon portage that seemed so long ago. A niggly little thing I know, but every time I took a step the toe “banged” the front of my shoe, sending me a not so subtle reminder of the injury and I had had enough of it. I opened the medical kit, sterilized the toenail, and drilled a few holes through the nail with a needle. Sure enough, serosanguinous fluid, obviously still under pressure, oozed copiously through the holes. I squeezed as much fluid out as I could and wrapped the toe with polysporin infused gauze, feeling immediately better. I should have done this right after the initial injury!
Relief at last! (JJ photograph).
Mike discovered that the bow rod on his canoe had “popped out” where it clips into the gunwale rod, possibly when the canoe had flexed when it had run over the drop earlier in the day. We tried to clip it back together, pulling and yanking as hard as we could but were unsuccessful – everything was just so tight. We would have to disassemble the whole shebang in order to get that one joint back in, and there was no way that was going to happen. We finally settled on lashing the rods together with some heavy duty zip-ties that I had brought for repairs, which would hold the bow together for the rest of the trip, a little distorted looking but fully functional.
Jenny had been exploring the clay bank just upstream of the campsite, the river having eroded it and leaving a cut seam to explore. She found many seashells, and possibly some coral bits, confirming that this was indeed marine “mud” and the area we were in had been under water not too long ago (if you consider 9,000 years recent).
Sea shells far from the ocean (JJ photograph).
After dinner, at about 10 pm, we all went on a late hike. At first we walked on a grassy, sometimes marshy plain, with a complex of those unearthly looking clay hills to our right.
More weird looking clay hills
Further on we reached the base of a rocky hill, easy to scramble up in a zig-zag fashion as the rock face was well weathered and smooth. We annoyed many little peeps who chirped at us as we passed them. Peeps are the smallest of the sandpipers, getting their slang name from the sound they make – “preep”, “cheet”, or “kreep”. They spend their summers in the arctic, nesting on the tundra, and their winters from southern North America down to South America depending on the species. The timing of their egg hatching is perfectly coordinated with the peak abundance of insects and spiders that serve as the first food for the chicks. And I can assure you there were lots of the nasty flying types of bugs in the vicinity for them to munch on.
One of the sandpipers that we irritated by hiking by their hidden nests. Peeps, as they are known, are the smallest sandpipers and are notoriously difficult to identify. This one has the slender beak of a Lesser Sandpiper, but not its yellow-green legs; perhaps it is a Semipalmated piper or the rarer Baird’s sandpiper.
At the top of the hill we gazed to the north, the low sun reflecting on the river downstream, and to the south the tundra polygons we had hiked over were clearly recognizable, followed by the clay hills, and then the river cutting through the sandy valley. Ice wedge, or frost polygons, are a ground pattern often seen in the Arctic tundra, formed as a result of winter freezing and spring thawing. At temperatures below -15°C, the waterlogged soil becomes so brittle that it cracks as it shrinks in response to the cold temperatures. The following spring, meltwater fills these cracks and subsequently freezes into “ice wedges”. As this process repeats itself year after year, the cracks enlarge and deepen. This geometric pattern can be quite striking from the air, the ground seemingly “tiled”. From a practical standpoint, when hiking over such terrain, the cracks require lots of hopping and jumping as they are usually either frankly full of water or just boggy.
On top of the first hill.
Looking north, upstream.
Looking south at tundra polygons, clay hills and a sandy river valley. And lot of mosquitoes.
It was now getting pretty late and the gang started heading back to camp. I, instead, was eyeing the next hill over – it was higher and I thought may offer a better view of the terrain ahead of us. I could only convince Jenny to come with me, and truth be told, she is always up for further adventure. Off we went, into the polygon valley between the hills, reaching the next rocky climb, scrambling easily to its summit. We surprised a lone caribou that probably thought it had found a good hiding place, instead the poor spooked thing galumphed warily off into the valley below. From the smooth, windswept hilltop I felt like a speck in the vastness of it all, but at the same time it was like being the monarch of the glen – what views! To the north, through my camera telephoto, I could even see our next obstacle – Cameron Lake. Or, as I had suspected from the satellite images that I had perused before the trip, and would soon be confirmed in person, what should be called the “Cameron Sandbars”. Eagle-eyed Jenny spotted an inuksuk on a knoll beside the river far ahead that we would need to try and find when we passed by it. Our vantage point was such that, as we were paddling most of the following day, we could stare back and see the hills that we were standing on that night.
From the highest hill we could see Cameron Lake in the distance.
We finally turned back and negotiated our way through the polygon maze and muskeg, entering the campsite, its ugliness now muted by beautiful midnight sunshine .
“Mucky” camp at midnight.
23 km today.
Thursday, July 19th. Another ancient cairn.
Another hot, hot morning with the tent doubling as a sauna got us up relatively early. Poking around camp we found a few ptarmigan warily eyeing us from the high grass. I also noted that some of the willows were getting larger, sometimes reaching small bush size, signifying that we were dropping elevation and getting closer to the coast.
A pair of well camouflaged ptarmigan (JJ photograph).
Before loading up our canoe I took a look at the bow, which looked a little warped, and discovered that the same thing that had happened to Kate and Mike’s canoe had afflicted mine, but in addition to the bow rods popping apart, one of the gunwale rods had separated amidships and the shock cord holding the rod together had chafed and snapped. The same zip-tie repair that we made on Mike’s boat the night before did the trick for the bow problem, but the gunwale rod repair would have to wait until the end of the trip. It just meant that my flexible canoe was now super-flexy. Another problem surfaced that morning – when I shut the Pelican Case protecting my camera, one of the clips fractured and popped off. For those of you who are familiar with Pelican Cases, this may seem like an impossibility as they are usually bombproof. This particular case had been on about five northern trips and had not had to endure any special abuse, so this was an unexpected problem and a big inconvenience. The case would still protect the camera from direct shock damage, but it was no longer waterproof. I had to bum an extra roll-top dry bag off Jenny to put the camera and broken case in, which meant that any impromptu photo-ops while on the river would be a problem.
The river served up an easy class 1 rapid, followed by a bouncy class 2/3 rapid with trashy waves on the right side that had me smiling as Kate and Mike went right through the big stuff again. After a brief interlude of calm water, we rocketed down the next obstacle, a boulder garden that luckily was narrow enough that most of the rocks were still submerged, although it did have me grimacing as my knees bashed several invisible boulders that we flew over blindly, the water now being essentially opaque. Another short calm section followed, after which we literally slid down a shallow, gentle, smooth gradient, again with enough water to just cover the smooth stones. This dropped us into a wide sandy valley, with the shallow river meandering through what was essentially a large beach up to a kilometer in width, framed by low hills on either side, weathered and smooth. We soon arrived at the small hill with the large inuksuk that we had spotted from up high the night before, clearly visible from the river. To get to it we had to literally beach the canoes in the middle of the riverbed and walk over to the real shoreline on the firm sand.
Walking across the mostly dry, sandy river bed.
Hiking up the hill, we passed by a few old, well weathered tent rings, almost unrecognizable, before finally reaching the big cairn, perched at the rear of a smooth dome of bedrock.
An almost unrecognizable tent ring high above the river.
The cairn standing regally on bedrock.
It was overall about seven feet high, an organized collection of mostly flat rocks stacked on top of a large, triangular boulder, with a five foot high oblong rock propping up its eastern side. You could tell from the lichens that this monument had been standing for hundreds of years. It was an amazing site, with incredible views of the river and the surrounding country. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the scene a hundred years ago, tents erected amidst a bustling scene, perhaps hunters returning with tens of caribou after a successful hunt, welcomed by excited children and relieved women. Could those people ever have imagined that this site would now be long abandoned, with only rare, curious visitors?
Lee beside the cairn.
A hefty triangular slab propped up one side of the cairn.
Lichens crusting the stacked rocks.
Panoramic view from the hilltop.
We were now at the point where the expedition from the year before halted and called for an airlift out to Kugaaruk. They had found a flat elevated area about 500 meters from the river on the left bank, opposite the inuksuk, where a plane could land. Rereading the brief journal that they had kindly provided to us, it was clear that they had had a tougher trip weather-wise, cold and wet, with, despite all the rain they suffered through, substantially lower water levels than what we were experiencing. It did mean that, from now on, we had basically no knowledge of what was ahead – the last 81 kilometers of river was going to be a real unknown. Then there would be the 28 kilometers of ocean travel on Pelly Bay to reach Kugaaruk, but at least Lee knew what to expect there, having been part of the first and probably only “modern” canoe group to paddle that area years before on his Arrowsmith River trip.
After the long walk back to the canoes we encountered a brisk 30 km/h northeasterly wind blowing right in our faces, but thankfully a strong current still managed to pull us along. Soon the wind became the least of our worries as the river became very shallow and braided. It was hard to guess which channel would be the best to follow, if wrong the boats would grind to a halt, necessitating having to get out and drag them to deeper water, not an easy task as the sand was soft and mushy – almost like quicksand.
Canoes grounded in the middle of the river.
At one point Curt almost lost his boots, sinking in the muck to his knees. Seeing this, Jenny and I decided to avoid that route, taking a different channel, more to the right. Soon we were a few hundred meters apart from the others, separated by a huge sand bar, but we could keep track of them as we could see their heads projecting over the intervening bar. A very strange “river”. A few kilometers later the channels rejoined and we thought it best we stick together in case we became separated when it was time to camp. Can you imagine? Getting lost on a flatwater river?
They took the left channel, we took the right…
It was sunny but with wild clouds dotting the now turquoise sky, the temperature a perfect 15°C. We stopped for lunch on one of the firmer sandy areas in the middle of the river, the actual shore being hundreds of meters away on either side, separated from us by sand interlaced with a myriad of channels of varying water depth. I was beginning to think we were going to have problems finding a place to camp that night if we couldn’t get close to the true river bank to find a suitable flat grassy area. We couldn’t risk camping in the middle of the river on one of the shallow sand bars in case the weather turned and it rained, instead of dropping a few inches a day as we had been experiencing, the water could rise and sweep us away in the middle of the night. And portaging to the river bank would be difficult in the often soft sand, as well as a seemingly unnecessary chore. Desperately, I turned to the satellite map, which showed that the main river channel should pull close to the left bank just before a major tributary joins the Kellett from the south, the Atorquait River. I had been looking forward to seeing this tributary all trip – would it really be as incredibly braided as the maps showed? But it looked like it would be almost impossible to stop on the right bank to look for a campsite as there was 800 meters of that darn sucky sand between the navigable channel and the true riverbank, so it was unlikely that we could walk over and explore the Atorquait. Hopefully we would instead find a good place to stop for the night on the left bank, if indeed the river did cut a channel close enough that we could get ashore.
Satellite image of the braided Kellett River, Cameron “Lake”, and the even more braided Atorquait River.
At one point we passed a “real” midstream islet, made of rock and not sand, with lots of gulls noisily circling. We figured that meant nests, so couldn’t resist stopping for a look. When Jenny hopped out of the canoe to take a look, the gulls literally dive bombed her, it was a good job she was wearing her paddling helmet or else she might have had a few scratches. It was interesting that the gulls were so territorial as she reported that the nests were empty. About five kilometers past this islet we did come close to the left bank as the satellite maps had predicted, and after a few stops to check out the terrain, we found a nice flat area about five meters up a steep sandy bank. After erecting camp, I set up my camera and took advantage of the crazy clouds by capturing some time lapse pictures. By dinner time the wind had dropped and the mosquitoes came out in force. Despite the thick clouds of pests, we went for a short hummocky walk up to the little lake behind camp, then up the knoll beside it. On the walk we encountered perhaps the highest number of songbirds that we’d seen so far, hopping all over the rocks, some with their mouths stuffed with mosquitoes. I love these birds!
We managed to find a nice campsite as the main river channel comes close to its left bank. The hills in the distance were the same ones we had hiked up the night before.
Looking south from camp, the Atorquait river joins the Kellett as a 1.7 km wide sand delta.
At dinner time, Mike prays that there would be enough water on Cameron Lake for us to get through.
A horned lark between Lapland longspurs. One has its mouth stuffed with flying pests.
Jenny beside an interesting white rock on the knoll behind camp. Beyond the small pond, you can see a wide sandy area in the background – that’s the Kellett “River”!
When we got back to camp, we set up the “critter gitters”, ultrasonic motion detectors that would warn us if a polar or other bear wandered into camp during the night. They make quite the racket when they go off, supposedly enough to scare bears, and certainly loud enough to wake us up. Then it was off to bed, each of us worried what the next day would bring. Would Cameron Lake actually be a lake? Would we get stuck in “quicksand” in the middle? Or would we be portaging around a lake?
23 km today, further than estimated on the maps due to our contorted path through the braided channels.
Friday, July 20th. Trudging through the middle of a lake.
There was only one false alarm from the motion detectors during the night, probably a gull, but I didn’t go out and check. I get worried enough to look outside the tent if the things keep going off or more than one goes off in quick succession. So I awoke refreshed around eight in the morning, as usual. The early starts were beginning to tire me. More seriously, we may have had complaints about the low water levels at certain places on the river, but in general we had been making good time, and had not had to push with early mornings and long days. Yet. We still had to see what Cameron Lake had in store for us. And when we got to the canoes, we could see that the water level had dropped again overnight. Hmmmm.
It was sunny, with a nice breeze, and cool. Perfect. Again, we have not had any real weather complaints either. So off we went down the puzzle of a river anew, negotiating sand bars and guessing which channel held the most water. It was doubly difficult as the only way to judge depth was to stick your paddle in the water, the milky silt obfuscating us. We passed the wide Atorquait delta to our right, traversing it seemed to take forever, until finally, barely visible in the distance, we passed the tributary itself. It appeared as a small stream, its water even siltier than the Kellett, if that was possible. What a disappointing river!
Soon after we were into Cameron Lake itself and, as expected, it was another maze of channels and sandbars. We started on the left side, meandered to the center, then back to the left. Standing in the canoe helped a little – I could convince myself that the lighter blue channels were deeper than the darker channels, which seemed to average only a few inches in depth. In the middle of a lake! Getting stuck many times, we “poled” the canoes with the paddles, trying our best not to get out and drag the boats as our feet would again sink deep into the sand. I kept thinking that we would turn a corner, end up in water an inch deep, get left high and dry, and that would be it – we wouldn’t be able to pole, couldn’t get out and drag, and would be stranded a kilometer from shore. Another thought that crossed my mind was that this might well be the largest lake I had ever been on that you could practically walk right across.
Trudging through the middle of a lake.
We muddled our way through the maze until the lake started to rapidly taper, finally bending to the left and narrowing to a mere 150 meters wide, before widening again. This second portion of the lake was narrower than the main lake but thankfully not braided, with only a few easily seen sandbars to contend with. It extended for about 9 kilometers, terminating at an impressive outlet rapid. Relieved that we had successfully negotiated the uncertainty of the sand bars in the main portion of the lake, we stopped on the left side of the narrowing for lunch. It was a good place to admire the changing topography to the east – a long ridge of low granite mountains running north-south, which was the feature driving the river north again. I chased butterflies and flowers, and as we wandered inland a bit, we found signs of carnage. First, a snow goose wing that had been ripped off its body, the body being nowhere to be found. Then a furry caribou skull, the spine and ribcage still attached. Close by was the skin and fur from the body, with the legs attached. This was a well picked but still relatively fresh caribou kill. Even the long bones had been cracked for the marrow, and something had eaten all the guts. Beetles were now feeding on the remains. The usual suspects were seemingly confirmed as there were wolf prints everywhere in the sand.
Pedicularis Capitata, the Capitate Lousewort. Its Inuit name is kukiujait, meaning “that which resembles your fingernail.” Inuit also call these plants bananas (in English), claiming that the flowers look a bit like that fruit. The petals can be eaten after pulling them off the flowers, they have a sweet, sugary taste. How did such a pretty flower get the common name lousewort? The wort part is easy – this is an old English word for plant. The louse part? I have found several proposed explanations – from the suggestion that the animals that ate these plants were said to be protected from lice, to that the plant was infested with lice and that animals grazing on it would be likewise infested. However, these may be old wives tales as apparently animals will not eat them because they contain poisonous glycosides. But they are important for bees – their blossoms are typical bee flowers, with landing platforms, abundant nectar, and bright colours. It is interesting to note that the louseworts and bumblebees share the same geographic range.
Mike holds the caribou skeleton up.
The rest of the carcass, dragged onto the tundra, no doubt the wolf responsible didn’t like getting sand in its meal.
While minding my own business on the beach, a bold almost bee-like fly started hanging around. It was furry and cute with its big bug-eyes, and was definitely not afraid of me. While on the ground it would turn and stare directly at me. Then it flew up and started landing first on my clothes, then on my hand, and didn’t seem interested in leaving. I wondered how long it would stay, thinking I had a new friend, although it did finally fly off. I noticed that it didn’t seem to have a mouth, but it only dawned on me a few hours later that this was the infamous Hypoderma tarandi, better known as the Caribou (Reindeer) Warble Fly. This cute little “fly” was actually a disgusting parasite – during the summer, the female flies deposit their eggs on the caribou’s thin summer hairs close to the skin. After hatching, the larvae penetrate the skin and ball up into nodules on the underside of the animal’s hide. There they produce an enzyme known as hypodermin C, which hydrolyzes the subcutaneous proteins of the caribou, which are then ingested by the larvae and become their nutrient source. During winter, the larvae fatten up and mature as they slowly digest their host’s tissues. Upon the arrival of spring, the fully developed larvae emerge from the skin, pop out onto the tundra where they pupate for several weeks, then emerge as adult flies ready to repeat the cycle. Heavily infested female caribou and their calves can suffer gravely from this infection as the larvae sequester the mother’s resources, which would normally be allocated to the fetal calf. The caribou wastes additional energy in her attempt to build an immune response to the infestation. The cumulative effect of these energy costs is significant weight loss in pregnant caribou, leading to the leaner mother birthing lean calves that are much less likely to survive the demands of winter than their heavier counterparts. So my little “pet” was actually eyeing me, sizing me up to see if it could deposit its filthy little sticky load of eggs on the hair of my skin! And it could very well have been successful since, although caribou are this warble fly’s preferred host, humans are not immune to the insect’s parasitic tendencies. They have been shown to lay eggs on humans in areas with high caribou densities. The consequences of a human being infested by these larvae can be quite severe, as can be understood by one hiker’s gruesome tale, recounted in 2013 in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases. Four months after returning from a backcountry trip in the high Arctic, the hiker visited his doctor complaining about a sudden pain in his left eye. Upon inspection, the doctor discovered a living reindeer warble fly larva inside the man’s left eye. The patient needed surgery to have it removed and, in the process, permanently lost vision in that eye. Considering that, if left unattended, warble fly larvae can grow up to 2.5cm in diameter and 5cm in length, the man can consider himself lucky that the larva was removed prior to reaching its fully developed size. Yuck!
My little “pet” turned out to be Hypoderma tarandi, the infamous caribou warble fly.
Look ma, no mouth! The flies don’t eat so they don’t have mouthparts. Their sole purpose is breed and lay eggs.
Back on the lake, the wind was light and from the southwest, perfect for the northeasterly paddle and keeping the mosquitoes away. We were soon at the outlet rapids, which are marked as a “swift” on the topographical maps. Instead it was a pretty good class 2/3 six hundred meter long rapid, with a high grass covered bank to the right and a low, rocky bank on the left. At the bottom of the rapid, a fair sized tributary, the Avalikuarjuk River, joined the Kellett on the right, having paralleled the second part of Cameron Lake because of the ridge of mountains to the east. This looked like a good place to stop and try fishing again! I decided that if there were no fish at the bottom of this rapid, then there were no fish in this river. I had really been missing fresh trout on this trip. All four fishermen fanned out along the rapid to try their luck. Hmmph. I waded out onto the usual boulder sieve to get some good casts in the main eddy at the end of the rapid, but promptly lost my biggest lure (I wanted a big fish!), probably snagging it on one of the many submerged rocks. Darn, the fish have been beating me handily on this trip – two caught, five lures lost. Not a very good ratio for a northern river (it’s normally at least 10:1 in favour of me), but perhaps payback for all those times in the past when the fishing was literally easier than barrel shooting. I made my way back to the shore, slipping and sliding on the slick rocks, then ambled up the little beach on the point between the two rivers, discovering lots of wolf prints in the sand. I quickly gave up trying to fish, wandered back to where we had left the canoes, slumped down onto the cushy, dry tundra, closed my eyes and snoozed blissfully in the warm sunshine.
Finally, after no-one had any bites at all, we reconvened to discuss our course of action – should we run the rapid now, or camp first then run it first thing in the morning? The hiking looked good in the mountains to the east, but to get there we would have to somehow cross the Avalikuarjuk River, which was too deep to wade. So instead of being stuck camping on the little peninsula between the rivers that we found ourselves on, the decision was made to shoot the rapids and camp below past where the two rivers met. Curt and Lee were fearless, tackling the rapid by going straight down the gullet. Jenny wanted a drier ride, so at first we worked to the left of the obstacles at the top, then picked our way down successfully with lots of maneuvering. Kate and Mike decided to follow us, having their driest run yet in a big rapid.
The top of the milky outlet rapid.
Splashy fun near the end of the rapid.
Elated, we pulled in just after the Avalikuarjuk joined the Kellett, discovering a small Inuit cabin on a grassy knoll about ten meters above river level. The cabin was in poor shape, although all its walls and roof were intact, but definitely not a place I would want to sleep in unless desperate. An old newspaper inside was dated 2016, probably the time it had been visited. The hut may have been shabby, but it was set in a glorious piece of real estate, close to two sizeable rivers, with beaches and a backdrop of weathered mountains. A third river, a small stream really, joined the Avalikuarjuk right before it flowed into the Kellett. So we were actually at a trident river junction (“Trois Rivières” camp). The little stream drained a triangular valley that wedged into the mountains for about 3 kilometers and its water was nice and clear as this valley had no clay hills. The Avalikuarjuk drained the basin beyond the mountain ridge, following the ridge after it had broken through it and was as silty as the Kellett. We set up the tents in front of the cabin, ate, then hurriedly set off to explore the hills behind camp. It was a beautiful night, the only negative was the lack of wind resulting in thick clouds of mosquitoes following us around. After reaching the hilltop, looking to the south, we had a great view of Cameron Lake after the narrows and of the outlet rapids. Looking north we could see a seemingly endless jumble of mountains. Looking east we could see the valley with the little stream and behind it, the ridge of mountains.
Looking south at the second part of Cameron Lake.
Jenny had her binoculars out and she swore she could see a musk ox far away on the flat valley bottom. She said that it was lying down, resting, and managed to convince the rest of us that indeed the black dot was an animal, although deep down I remained skeptical. Consequently, the valley got a new name – Lone Muskox Valley, and so too the stream, from now on known as Muskox Creek.
Looking east at Lone Muskox Valley and Creek.
Was the black speck in the middle of the valley really a muskox?
As usual, we saw lots of interesting flora, in particular one magnificently hairy female willow and some purple mountain saxifrage that had already begun to bear fruit.
A particularly bushy female willow – the mature catkin fruit has opened to release the “cotton” associated with the seeds.
Purple mountain saxifrage in fruit.
Back at camp we decided that the next day would be a rest day. The Cameron Lake “obstacle” had been successfully tackled and we were progressing better than expected.
Canoed 21 km today.
Saturday, July 21st. Close encounters of the muskox kind.
This turned out to be one of the best days of the trip for me. One of those Arctic days that you don’t want to end. We knew it was going to be a layover day, and that meant hiking, and the prospects looked very good – a remote mountain range that was close to camp and looked easily accessible, was reasonably high, where perhaps I could step where very few humans have stepped before, maybe even find a lookout point that no-one has ever taken the time to explore. The weather was splendid: Sunny, temperate, windy. There was no river drama to get worried about as I wasn’t going to set foot in the canoe that day. And there was also the bonus of a potential wildlife discovery – a search for the mythical Lone Muskox Valley beast that Jenny was sure she had spotted in the distance the night before.
Most of us first headed along the left bank of Muskox creek over to a rocky hump in the middle of the valley that would give us a good viewpoint for our quest for the muskox. Lee and Curt instead decided to take their canoe and paddle across creek and explore the right side of the valley. The rest of us were gambling that the creek would be shallow enough to hop across further up the valley, and that the muskox would be on the left side. On our side of the creek, the going was tough – hummocky and boggy, so much so I was glad I had my wellies on. The positive was that this was good wetland habitat to discover the little things that the ground harboured. I almost stepped on a cute little dunlin chick that took off, running in circles, chirping its head off to no avail, its mother choosing to remain hidden.
A dunlin chick. Dunlins are a type of sandpiper.
A particularly nice clump of arctic cinquefoil.
The very distinctive net-veined willow, so-called because of the “net” like pattern in the glossy leaves .
We finally reached the rock outpost, scrambling up to its dry plateau to find sik siks and old Inuit tent rings but no muskox.
A sik sik, rather unamused at the interlopers disturbing his knoll
Wandering back down to the tundra, we headed over to the creek to find a place to cross and head to the mountains and join the others. The going was better, the ground underfoot drier, eventually turning into a field of rock hard frost boils. Frost boils are caused by alternate freezing and thawing in poorly vegetated ground, the repeated temperature differential causing small changes in the ground that become additive. As the temperature drops, underground pockets of wet silt or clay are “squeezed” by the freezing earth around it, the unfrozen fine “mud” squirting to the surface (it can’t be forced downwards because of the permafrost). After many such squirts, a raised round puddle of fine muck pools on the tundra. And since it hadn’t rained for quite a while, these frost boils were hard as rock and easy to walk on.
Walking through a field of patterned arctic ground, this time frost boils.
We were chatting when I almost stood on a duck sitting on her nest, disaster being averted at the last minute when someone with sharper eyes than me yelped “look out”. The duck was very, very patient, sitting dead still, not even blinking. I took a few photos and gave her a wide berth. It was a long-tailed duck, although the females of the species lack the namesake long tail that the males sport. The long-tailed duck is one of the deepest diving ducks, reaching depths as much as 60 meters to forage. Compared to other diving ducks, they spend the most time under water relative to being on the surface, staying submerged three to four times longer.
A very patient long-tailed duck sitting on her tundra nest.
Ambling over a crest, bingo, we spotted our elusive target – a large male muskox lying down on the cushy grass just before the creek. We circled downwind around him, crossed the stream, then snuck closer to get a better view of the critter, joined by Lee. Curt had disappeared, having decided to head directly for the mountains. I encouraged Jenny to go in front of the crew to experience the one-on-one wild beast encounter that I knew would get her heart pumping. He finally turned his head and stared at us, looking rather nonplussed, still chewing his cud. After a while, he got up and began to wander off in the opposite direction, but then seemingly had a change of heart, perhaps finally smelling our strange odour, turned, crossed the creek and headed straight for us, staring the whole time. We thought it best we back off and take refuge behind some low rocks to our rear. He continued to approach, coming to within fifty feet of us, snorting and grunting, rubbing his cheek on his foreleg, licking his lips. He then moved even closer and climbed a little tundra hump, posturing majestically, the king of his little hill, still eyeing us. But obviously not a happy camper. It was a classic standoff – five puny humans huddled behind their rocks, and this noble, ancient beast standing tall and acting pissed off. I kept thinking, what do we do if he charges? Were we all thinking about the typical “being chased” joke, that you don’t have to be the fastest runner, just not the slowest? I finally broke the deadlock, practically crawling backwards further up the slope behind us, the others soon following. His majesty then turned and nonchalantly walked away, heading back into the heart of the valley. I wondered if it was because he finally realized that our alpha male, our “old bull”, Curt, was not with us, in fact being well on his way up the mountain slope already, so we weren’t much of a threat to him in the end. Phew, no damage done to either party, but we experienced quite a few surges of adrenaline, and shot lots of good photographs, the only way a wild muskox should be “shot” by random travelers!
Jenny sneaking up on the beast as he rests on the soft grass.
Mr. Muskox rubbing his cheek on his foreleg to release his musky scent.
Mike hiding behind his rock as Mr. Muskox ambles closer.
Hamming it up as king of the hill!
After all the musky excitement, we climbed up a solitary peak between the ridge of mountains and the river, wondering if there would be any archeologic sites on the top, but finding none although being rewarded with excellent views. High overhead a juvenile bald eagle soared – unusual as this is much further north than their usual range.
Looking south from the hill, the Avalikuarjuk River paralleling the mountain ridge. Cameron Lake is on the top right.
Looking north, the Avalikuarjuk River in the foreground as it joins the Kellett (in the background). Our tiny tents can be seen on the middle far right.
A juvenile bald eagle.
Descending the hill we then tackled the mountain ridge, scrambling up to meet Curt, who had been watching our muskox encounter from the top. On the first plateau we found a charming small but deep pond with crystal clear water and, believe it or not, fish – we could see them swimming close to shore. And no-one had brought their fishing gear. Typical. It was quite windy on the ridge, but sheltered behind some rocks and bathed in the bright sun it felt warm. Out came the sausage and cheese and we had a very scenic lunch. I think you can guess what happened next – we sprawled out on the soft grass and had a grand old snooze in the sunshine.
The first mountain pond.
Looking west from our lunch site, Cameron Lake in the background.
After an hour or so, we moseyed further into the hills, once again marveling at the flora. I found some pretty Labrador tea plants with small flies poking around looking for nectar. Labrador tea leaves can be made into a medicinal tea and some indigenous cultures use the flowers as well. It was even exported to England by the Hudson’s Bay Company during its heyday, called both by its simple name “Hudson’s Bay Tea” or its Chipewyan name “Weesukapuka Tea”. The Eastern Cree had a similar word for the plant, wesukipukosu, meaning “bitter herbs”. It has several Inuit names, depending on the dialect – for example, qijuktaaqpait on Baffin Island, and mamaittuqutiit in Nunavik. The plant is now also used as one of the ingredients in a popular new gin from Quebec called “Ungava Gin”, and I can tell you from personal experience it is delicious. We now know more about the compounds found in the herb, and it’s not all good news. Yes, it does have a lot of vitamin C, it can have a “pick-me-up” effect similar to caffeine and can be used to clear nasal congestion and relieve stomach aches, but, because it is part of the rhododendron family, it contains several toxic compounds, most notably ledol, a poisonous terpene that causes cramps, paralysis and delirium. This was confirmed in an article in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture in 2015 – in their words, “Although low concentrations of ledol in the beverage may have a restorative effect similar to caffeine, large doses can affect the central nervous system. Initially, psychomotor stimulation occurs, afterwards seizures and cramps, and eventually paralysis, breathing problems and even death. However, there are no data supported by clinical evidence concerning the safe dosage of Labrador tea… But considering the lack of studies on its toxicity, consumption of this tisane should be limited.” Nevertheless, it is still generally considered safe to make Labrador tea, but you should steep the leaves for only five minutes and definitely no longer than ten minutes. An alternative way to enjoy the stimulating effect of plant is to lick the brown “fuzz” on the back of young leaves which supposedly gives a “buzz”.
A fly enjoying some nectar on Labrador tea flowers.
Alpine arnica, a type of daisy, with its big showy yellow flowers. Whatever you do, don’t eat these guys as they are poisonous to humans, causing multi-system distress including cardiac toxicity and death.
We picked our way further east, following grassy valley floors and clambering up smooth rocky slopes until we reached the highest point, rewarded with endless 360 degree views of this boundless land. It was absolutely stunning scenery. Words just cannot do justice to the wildness and absolute loneliness that permeate such places, overwhelming senses and emotions. It is such a privilege to still be able to experience an untouched, primeval hinterland. I just love to stand on these pinnacles, buffeted by the constant wind, staring, allowing the solitude to suffuse me, letting it all soak in. Surrounded by ancient, weather worn mountain tops, hidden green valleys and pocket lakes settled between craggy bluffs. In the distance, the Arctic Ocean wasn’t too far from the northern horizon line. Caribou tracks snaked everywhere, but we were the only animals visible on the windswept vista.
Exploring.
The view from the top.
The hikers enjoying both the view and the sunshine.
A view of the seemingly endless wilderness to the north through a zoom lens.
We headed back to camp via a different route, descending a steep slope to reach the middle of the valley.
About to start our descent into Lone Muskox Valley.
Back on the valley floor, we soon met none other than our muskox friend. The poor guy was probably wondering what he had to do to get rid of us. He didn’t think long, glaring for a bit then turning and thundering off into the distance, never to be seen again. Crossing back to camp we hopped over a stream, no more than two feet across and a foot deep, but flush with three to four inch fish despite its small size. More teasing! On the marshy ground we also stumbled upon many good examples of the very pretty fernweed, Pedicularis Sudetica, a type of lousewort with tell-tale purple spots at the base of the petals. This plant has a similar adaptation as its hairier cousin, the wooly lousewort – the young plants clothe themselves with dense white “hairs” that act as insulation for the young flowers against the cold. This is one of the edible arctic plants – the flowering stems and carrot-like roots can be eaten, usually boiled. Interestingly, it is an introduced species in North America, being native to Northern Europe.
A gorgeous clump of fernweed. Note the insulating “hair” on the young plants (bottom right) that have not flowered yet.
Fernweed swirls, as seen from directly overhead.
Back at camp, Lee made his famous turkey dinner with stuffing. Who needs fish? We sat out in the open to eat, soaking in the beautiful views which included patches of July snow which kind of went with the Christmas dinner theme, but our luck didn’t hold as the wind dropped and the bugs came out to bother us. The dinner discussion included the outlook for the rest of the trip. We had five days to make it to the coast, only 45 kilometers away, then another two days on the ocean to get to Kugaaruk, so there was no need to hurry, although the maps showed what looked like another canyon coming up and more rapids, so there were bound to be more obstacles. The temperature started to slowly drop and by 10pm it was downright cold. To bed at 11pm.
0 km on the river today.
Sunday, July 22nd. The Valley of the Lost Peaks
The temperature kept dropping overnight, probably getting close to freezing, I could feel it in my bones despite being snuggled in my sleeping bag. We emerged from the tents to find that the beautiful blue sky from the prior day had vanished to be replaced by a grey, cloudy muddle. A brisk cold wind was blowing from the northwest, adding to the gloominess. But I’m sure Curt was happy to be back in his canoe, probably hoping for some challenging rapids. At first the river was wide, but with even broader sandy shoulders that the navigable channel meandered through, sometimes snaking left, then right, then back to the center.
The river marches on.
After a few kilometers it narrowed and bent to the right, serving up a class 2 rapid. The wind picked up, about 30–40 kilometers an hour, generally in our faces, whipping up whitecaps on the water. The days paddle turned into a tough slog, making any forward progress hard work. The only saving grace was that there was still a strong current propelling us forward, otherwise I think we would have just given up for the day. The river banks were generally low and featureless until we passed a cluster of three old cabins on the right shore, this being followed by a small butte consisting of crumbling, weathered blocky red rocks, inhabited by a plethora of gulls that squawked overhead and buzzed us. Soon after, the river turned to the left with the wind now fully against us. After a few kilometers, we spotted a ratty looking cabin on the right shore, beside an escarpment that looked like it would offer protection from the bitter wind, ostensibly a good place to stop for a sheltered lunch. The cabin was a shameful disgrace, surrounded by and full of garbage, marring the pristine landscape. Its purpose was perhaps epitomized by scattered old fishing nets and even an antique Lee Enfield .303 rifle left (abandoned?) by prior occupants. After putting on more clothing, we huddled behind the escarpment and stuffed sausage and cheese or, in my case, protein bars and jerky, into our hungry bodies with cold fingers. There was no way we would eat in that sad excuse of a shack even if it did offer wind protection. Back on the water the weather got worse, intermittent rain adding to the dreary misery.
Paddling under ominous clouds.
Lee and Curt slogging ahead.
A quick decision was made to stop at the first good looking campsite that we encountered. The problem was that the real shoreline was now well separated from the river by more soft, exposed sand flats. The first site we spotted was out of the question as we wouldn’t have been able to get the canoes close enough to the tundra. The wind was now so fierce that I actually tried wading in the shallow water and pulling the canoe rather than paddling. I soon gave that up but things got worse as hidden sand bars and rocks started appearing as obstacles in the main river channel, just inches below the surface but barely visible due to the murkiness of the water. Kate and Mike got hung up on one rock, spinning 360 degrees before jarring free. Curt and Lee were very unlucky, I think they hit every sand bar in the river, finally wedging solidly on one. Dreading getting out of the canoe as there was a real risk of sinking dangerously deep into the soft sand to the point that merely losing one’s boots would be the least of one’s worries, they “poled” with their paddles like mad. Curt swears that the sand bar was “moving” forward faster underneath them than they could push themselves off it. This feature subsequently became permanently known as the “Gellerman Sand Bar”. Not the kind of river excitement that he cherishes.
Avoiding shallow sand bars in the middle of the river.
Finally the river came close to the right bank where a line of raw, weathered rocky hills jutted into the water, with an accessible beach. It turned out to be a spectacular site, partially protected from the wind, with a small flat, grassy valley lined on either side by granite hills and the valley floor dotted with several monolithic rocky knolls. Things were looking up, and true to form, the skies started to clear with big, puffy white clouds racing in the background. We marveled at the light shining through the cracks in the clouds, playing magically off the richly coloured rock faces. It was the kind of setting where I wouldn’t have been too surprised if a dinosaur wandered onto the scene. I thought we should call this the “Valley of the Lost Peaks”.
Map showing The Valley of the Lost Peaks.
Beautiful campsite in the valley.
We set up the tundra tarp for some wind protection, but the wind would have none of it, shifting ninety degrees just so it could blow sideways right through the tarp. Some of the puffy clouds started to drop intermittent rain on us, and colourful rainbows subsequently appeared over the river.
A rainbow over the river.
The temperature began to drop and this, combined with the piercing wind, ended up making it a harsh evening. Huddled together, we watched as sandstorms danced along the river banks, blasts of wind whipping the fine particles into the air. Dinner was hot soup, followed by pot after pot of tea to try and ward off the chill. Finally we were experiencing the Northwest Territory weather that I had been expecting for the last two weeks. It was an early night for everyone, into the tents by 9:30, such a relief to be cocooned in a comfortable sleeping bag. At times we would hear a loud “whoosh” outside that sounded like a jet plane passing overhead, but seconds later the tent would shudder – it was just the wind howling around the hills surrounding us. The motion detectors woke me up a few times during the night, mostly false alarms due to the wind, but also when Lee got up for a midnight pee and inadvertently kicked one. After the magical day before, today was much more of a trial.
Huddled around the stove on a cold July evening.
19 km progress today.
Monday, July 23rd. Circumnavigating Hidden Lake
It rained on and off during the night, but in the morning we could see that the water levels on the river had continued to plummet as the Gellerman Sand Bar was now exposed and visible in the middle of the river. The thermometer read a chilly two degrees and overhead a low sheet of fast moving clouds looked menacing. As we had only 26 km to reach the ocean we decided to take another layover day, the thinking being that we would be less likely to encounter polar bears in this mountainous terrain rather than if we were camping on the coast. Besides, the hiking looked fabulous once again right where we were. After a late breakfast we started our exploration in the hills just downstream from the camp. Jenny spotted another eagle, or perhaps it was the one from a few days ago, soaring over camp. The bitter wind continued to chill us, but kept it bug-free as we made our way up the rocky slope. We encountered three plants in bloom that we hadn’t seen before, dwarf fireweed (also known as river beauty), nodding saxifrage and Maydell’s oxytrope. By far the prettiest of the three is dwarf fireweed. This is a good plant to find if you are starving on the tundra – all parts of the plant (leaves, flowers and seed pods) are edible. They can be eaten raw or, if you happen to have caught a seal, mixed with oil, or if you’ve shot a caribou, with blood and fat. The leaves are good cooked and taste somewhat like spinach. The flowers may be eaten as a salad but are also delicious when mixed with crowberries, blood, and oil. The long seed pod is edible only before it becomes woody. Tea can also be made from dwarf fireweed, according to the Inuit it is supposedly good for stomach aches and helps to revive one’s strength after losing a lot of blood.
Dwarf fireweed.
Nodding saxifrage, so called because the younger flowers hang down or “nod” forward, uses an interesting reproductive strategy. Most species of flowering plants propagate using sexual reproduction, that is, after pollination a seed is formed which then disperses to a new location. The advantages of this are genetic diversity and the possibility of finding a better site for the new plant to grow. However, at the edges of species’ geographical habitat range, one often sees the development of novel responses in the struggle for survival. Nodding saxifrage, despite flowering far into the summer, has not been observed to set seed in the Canadian Arctic. Instead, it reproduces by means of numerous reddish bulbils produced on the axils of the flowering stem leaves and bracts. This is called pseudovivipary and is a form of non-sexual reproduction, the “daughter” plants being genetic clones of the parent. Only about fifty known species of flowering plants utilize this form of propagation, most of them growing in harsh arctic, alpine or arid habitats. One theory is that the probability of an offspring finding a new growth patch better than the parental patch is very low, therefore seed dispersal mechanisms enjoy no particular advantage and in fact may be disadvantageous as you lose a season before the new plant grows. Interesting stuff.
Nodding saxifrage, which reproduces by growing new plants from the little red bulbils on the stems rather than setting seed.
Another good plant to find if you’re hungry is Maydell’s oxytrope, known as “airaq” in Inuit. The roots can be quite large and can be eaten raw, having a sweet taste. The yellow/green roots of young plants are better than the older, more fibrous brownish ones. They are supposedly good for stomach aches and were used to control diarrhea. The roots are also supposedly excellent fried in seal oil. Airaq root was traditionally given to babies to suck on, supposedly helping them fall asleep as they were being carried in their amautiit. The yellow flowers attract and are often eaten by geese.
Maydell’s oxytrope. Their carrot-like roots are edible.
As usual, from the high point overlooking the river, the views were majestic. Looking upstream it was easy to see the sand bars that gave some of us so much trouble, if we had been forewarned with what we could now see, the going would have been a lot easier the day before. Looking downstream the river narrowed and rapids cut through steep sandy banks – this must be the small upcoming “canyon” visible on the maps. Looking west a small stream cut through a meadow, draining a charming little valley that receded into the bare hills. After standing on the windswept summit and taking in the majestic landscape, we were all a little chilled so it was time to hunker down in a depression and attack those lunch sausages and jerky. I took advantage of the break to shoot some time lapse photographs of the crazy clouds.
Looking upstream at camp and some of the “Gellerman Sand Bars” in the river.
Looking downstream. The upcoming “canyon” is in the distance.
Scouting the canyon rapids with a zoom lens.
Looking west at a valley on the other side of the river.
Human specks in a giant landscape making their way up to the summit .
After lunch we split up – Jenny, Curt and I headed inland to hike around a fair sized pocket lake “hidden” between the rambling mountains, the others headed back to camp. We did a lot of up-and- down scrambling, hitting many viewpoints on the way. Looking to the southeast we could see a chain of lakes along a valley-like cleft in the otherwise boundless granite landscape tracking inland. Staring down at Hidden Lake we saw caught site of Mike and Kate approaching the lake through the valley below with fishing gear. Well, why not? The lake looked big enough and deep, and the water was clear so the fish should be able to see lures…maybe our fishing drought would be broken here?
Hidden Lake.
Licking my lips, the anticipation of a fat trout dinner gave us the energy to continue exploring. We carefully descended from our lofty perch to the left shore of the lake, swung around it, then clambered up the peak behind. Completing the lake circumnavigation, we followed the little stream draining it back into the valley.
Looking down the Valley of the Lost Peaks from the berm beside the lake.
It was a raw, wild day of hiking in a primeval setting. It was also a good job we weren’t hunting as we saw absolutely no prey. The fishing? Need I tell you? Failure! Darn, skunked again. As we walked back to camp the wind began to drop, the temperature rose and the cloud cover thinned. By the time we were ready to eat dinner the mosquitoes were thick, forcing us to erect the bug tent so that we could eat our non-piscatory meal in peace.
0 km on the river today.
Tuesday, July 24th. Shipwrecked!
Even after a layover day, barring a disaster, we still had loads of time to make Kugaaruk – another five full days to arrive the day before we were supposed to fly south back to Baker Lake. So I was a bit puzzled when everyone seemed very eager to get going despite the wind being forecast to blow moderate all day from the west or northwest at 30 km/h. Would the hiking be better close to the coast? Would we be increasing our risk for a polar bear encounter? Didn’t we come all this way to cherish being deep in the wilderness as opposed to spending time in or close to permanent settlements? No matter, after quickly packing up and scoffing breakfast the canoes were loaded and we were on the river. I think maybe our crew was looking forward to the last few hopefully exciting rapids of the trip. Today was truly an “unknown” day – lots of rapids were marked on the maps but we had no idea how severe they were. There appeared to be several pinch points and the contour lines predicted the small canyon that we caught a glimpse of in the distance on our hike the prior day.
The first rapid was easy, the second big but fun, followed by a series of amusing class 1-2 bouncy rides until we hit a class 3 that we scouted for quite a while. After the usual visible numerous random rock obstacles there was a ledge that went across most of the river, except the left side where most of the water funneled through a big chute. Although we must have been close to a hundred meters from the chute, Curt swore that he could see a green water channel smack in the middle of it. The center and right sided ledge was essentially a boulder sieve with an abrupt drop, most of it without enough flowing water to float the canoes, so hitting them at full speed would be a disaster. Jenny spotted a little diagonal channel in the sieve that she thought would allow a canoe through, but it would be a very technical paddle to make it to that exact spot. After much discussion, Curt and Lee ferried out into the middle of the rapid and went all in for the big stuff, targeting the smooth channel that they saw in the middle of the main chute on the left. Of course they made it fine, with Curt walking back up to where the rest of us were waiting, and then running Kate and Mike’s canoe down the same line but solo. Maybe Jenny and I should have let him have a third go at it with our canoe, but we had spent so much time looking at the rapid and figuring out that contorted route down the right side of the river, avoiding the big water, then finding the little chink in the boulder sieve, that we felt we should at least see if it would actually be a viable option. We set off, hugging the right shore, until we reached two visible “marker” rocks that we stayed just outside of, then cut hard left at the last minute to make the little gap in the boulder sieve and avoid the exposed rocks. We executed the route to perfection, but at the last minute an unexpected jagged triangular rock just below the surface of the water decided to try and throw us for a loop – I shrieked as it flashed into view, we instinctively braced as it rocked the canoe and tried to snag us and throw the boat sideways, but finally there was just enough water to allow us to slide over it. We were oh, soooo close to disaster! Instead of being flipped out and going for a bony swim, we triumphantly bashed into the calm water below the rapid, whooping with delight. But I’ll tell you, the old ticker was pumping with the adrenaline surge. Bad things can happen so fast in these rapids.
Jagged rock rapid. Yellow dots are Curt’s route, red dots are Jenny’s route.
Curt and Lee ferrying upstream to set their approach angle.
Making last adjustments in order to hit their slot.
Disappearing into the safe channel.
Curt runs the second canoe solo via the same route.
Jenny and I, on a different path, go over the ledge.
All this time the river had been cutting gradually through the coastal mountain range that we have been traveling since the end of Cameron Lake. After another two easy rapids the river finally ran into an obstacle that it couldn’t snake around, instead forcing it to “bash” a path through eons ago – a line of low hills. First the river turns ninety degrees left, yielding the sight of a huge sandbank directly ahead, probably the debris from huge eddies that form in the spring. Next it turns ninety degrees to the right as it, surprisingly perhaps, flows rather gently through the narrow gorge that it had eroded in the bedrock. The gorge was lined with low but dramatic cliffs on both sides, about 25 meters high on the right and 15 on the left. A pair of gyrfalcons screeched overhead, although when we located their nest on the left bank we couldn’t see any chicks peeking out. Perhaps they were too small to peek over the rim if they had just hatched. We pulled over to explore this lovely little river feature, checking out a large boulder that had been deposited on the beach, then scrambling over the rocky shoreline, finally climbing the cliff, gazing around and letting the scenery soak in.
Huge boulder on the beach.
The gorge.
Gyrfalcon soaring overhead.
It was a good place to have lunch, then lie on the grass and stare at the noisy gyrfalcons soaring high in the sky. From the high point, looking around with her binoculars, Jenny spotted something white intermittently appearing then disappearing maybe a kilometer away in a grassy meadow downstream to the left of the river. We convinced ourselves that it could be a wolf – perhaps moving in and out of a den, and asked the others if we could stop and go investigate when we canoed past the area. After lunch we floated serenely through the little gorge in the canoes, marveling at the sheer, smooth, cubed rock faces lining it.
Paddling through the calm little gorge.
Past the gorge, the river turned sharply ninety degrees to the left for a short while, after which we pulled over on the left bank to investigate the white “thing”, wondering if we would indeed find a wolf. Anticipation mounted until we approached close enough to get a definitive but eventually disappointing look with the binoculars, finding – believe it or not – a white plastic bag stuck to the vegetation, blowing up and down in the wind! What a letdown, and a sorry indictment of humans, finding plastic waste up here, in what should be land uncorrupted by modern human trash. It had probably blown over from a garbage pile at one of the Inuit cabins we had passed. Deflated, we trudged back to the boats and took our minds off the depressing plastic bag chase by running first a class 1 rapid, then soon after a short class 2 rapid. Barely a kilometer later, a wall of white water appeared in front of us as the river narrowed to about 40 meters wide and dropped over another ledge. Big waves and ugly holes stretched across the whole river, but scouting revealed a “cheat” route on the far left, if we hugged the rocks close to shore we could slip through a narrow channel with a more gradual gradient and miss all the big stuff. We talked it over, walked back and forth along the shore memorizing the marker rocks that we had to stay close to, got in the canoes, cinched our spray decks around our waists, took deep breaths, then went “ducky style” – one canoe closely after the other, with Curt and Lee leading and Jenny and I bringing up the rear. I was concentrating on hitting the marker points when out the corner of my eye I saw the canoe in front of us suddenly going sideways then wedging on one of the rocks we were supposed to just slip around. Within seconds we were on it, almost T-boning the now bent canoe as its rear blocked our narrow target channel, but with some last minute hard maneuvering we just skirted Mike, now trying to get out of the swamped rear cockpit, instead of bowling him over. Next thing I knew we flew right through two huge waves with a deep trough in between, the water washing over the spray deck. We pulled over as soon as we could to jump out and help with the rescue. The stricken canoe was solidly pinned but Mike had managed to clamber out onto the rock, and with our help managed to rock it loose. Once free, we took the safest option and lined the canoe down the rest of the rapid, following the line we should have paddled.
Trying to hug the shore.
Oh oh…an unexpected sudden roadblock.
Mike abandoning ship, just as we manage to skirt around the stern. Check out the reverse rocker on that canoe!
Now off line, we couldn’t avoid submarining into the big stuff.
Lining the salvaged canoe down the rapid. Jenny and I ended up going over those big waves above Lee’s hat.
Their canoe had some seriously bent floor rods and surprisingly only two small tears in the sidewall fabric, but was still seaworthy, although Mike later confided that it tracked strangely and was difficult to paddle in a straight line. It was almost a disaster, the outcome could have been far worse. Looking at footage from my onboard camera, I think that they got a little too far from the shore, overcompensated and then mistakenly thought they had to go inside the rock that they should have skirted to the outside, instead hitting it broadside. It all happened so fast.
Chastened, we continued, negotiating several minor rapids before the river makes its last cut through the bedrock before descending to sea level. Here it splits into two channels, the left one was clearly not the best option, a boulder garden leading to a sudden two meter drop. The right channel was the main one, the river swooping right-left with some big, splashy water on the outside of the curve that spelt trouble.
Scouting the right channel of the last rapid.
The best route was to start on the left side of this channel, then ride the shoulder of the big waves on the right side without getting sucked into them, finally pulling into a big eddy to the left. Despite being shaken by the earlier incident, we all decided to run this last challenge, emerging triumphantly unscathed after what turned out to be a fun ride. I think Kate and Mike had the most fun in that rapid, they were following closely behind us this time, and as we hit the eddy I craned my neck to catch them bucking right through the big waves to celebrate the grand-finale rapid in style. They would briefly disappear, then Kate and front half of the boat would pop out riding the crest of a big wave, then Mike would come into view in the stern, after which the canoe would submerge into another trough. That looked like a wild ride!
Riding the shoulder of the big waves.
Looking back, I caught a brief glimpse of the last canoe riding the big waves rodeo style (the bow of the canoe emerges from a wave, white arrow).
Well, that was that – no more rapids for the remainder of the voyage, bringing a sense of relief but also that bittersweet feeling of no more river challenges. We had survived the river, with only the open water passage on Pelly Bay to now worry about. At least I hoped it would be open water – that the winter sea ice had left and not been blown back into the bay by all those northerly winds we had been experiencing. This scenario was not as farfetched as you might imagine. Shortly before leaving on the trip, I had read an article about the search for Franklin’s ships a few years earlier which had been stymied by ice blowing into and completely choking Queen Maude Gulf in August, 400 kilometers to the west but slightly further south from where we were.
As the adrenaline dissipated we started looking for a place to camp. Almost right after the last rapid there was a small dry grassy flat between a clay bank and some solid rock hills on the left side of the river that looked like it would do the trick, so we pulled in and set up the tents. The camp backdrop was very strange – the river ends with a huge double “M” bend and we were at the right sided base of the “M”. Directly downriver from us, at the top of the “M”, where the river had eroded through a thirty meter high sand bank, heaps of snow were still stashed in regularly spaced crevices in the bank, looking like a railroad trestle bridge in the distance.
last river camp. As the river takes the first bend in an “M” shaped end feature, regularly spaced late July snow on the distant river bank looks eerily like a railroad trestle bridge.
After dinner we all set off and headed towards the ocean to explore the area. Curt brought one of the shotguns in case we ran into the dreaded scenario – meeting a polar bear. After ascending the top of the river bank we discovered a broad plateau stretching kilometers to the west and extending north towards the bay. Sunbeams streamed brightly through cracks in the dense cloud layer, providing a beautiful backdrop. It was easy walking except where little streams would cut into the tundra as they drained down to the river. These were a problem as I was wearing my dry shoes and the little valleys formed by these streams were quite boggy, resulting in me having to take contorted routes to avoid sinking in the muck, with a lot of jumping from hummock to hummock. Wildlife was sparse, although we were able to get quite close to three sand hill cranes feeding on the tundra. Finally, with my feet starting to get wet, I had had enough and made my way down to the river, following its dry sandy shore back to camp. For those of you who don’t think keeping your only hiking footwear dry on a trip like this is important, well, it’s worth a lot. Seemingly innocuous tribulations in city life can turn into major ones in the middle of nowhere.
Sunbeams stream through the clouds.
Sandhill cranes foraging on the flat tundra.
Patterns in the sand as we walk back to camp.
Back at camp, the cranes flew across the river in formation, beautifully silhouetted by moody late evening clouds. Three or four red throated loons squawked loudly on the river, either engaged in mating rituals or fighting over territory. Siksiks popped out of their holes curious about the guests ensconced amongst them, or perhaps, more likely, getting a whiff of our food.
Sandhill cranes in flight.
A siksik deciding if it’s worth coming into the shelter to look for food.
12 km today.
Wednesday, July 25th. A peek at the Arctic Ocean at last
The second most comforting thing on a canoe trip, the first being that moment that you crawl into the tent and slip into your warm sleeping bag after a long, hard, cold day, is waking up in said sleeping bag in the morning and lazing about while listening to the wind whip the flapping tent knowing that you don’t have to go out and paddle anywhere. Being ahead of “schedule” has its perks. The wind was fierce enough that whitecaps were steaming upstream on the shallow river; it certainly would have been a challenge to paddle to the ocean today. After drinking lots of tea we decided to cross the river in the canoes and go for a hike to see the ocean, about five kilometers away. Aside from the pure exhilaration of finally seeing the ocean I was still eager to make sure that the sea ice was all gone. We took two canoes (the undamaged ones), three in each boat, and battled the waves to get to the opposite shore. Curt was again the “bodyguard”, packing his 12 gauge shotgun. The first thing we encountered was a complex of seven cabins, some of which still had doors and rooves, others consisting only of their wooden foundations. One had a still functional door but it was swung open, leaving the inside to the mercy of the elements, the interior disorganized and coated with windblown sand. Poking in and around others, we found lots of junk but also some useful items such as portable gas stoves and cooking pots, indicating that some of the cabins are still probably used from time to time. This is the site where we found the old three-pronged fishing leisters – possibly merely remnants from the Netsilik educational films from the 1960’s as we also found many modern nets behind the cabins, the more preferred fishing instruments in use these days. An interesting religious relic consisted of two old metal fuel drums stacked one on top of the other with a small wooden box on top containing a crucifix.
Inuit cabins by the river.
The “pepsi” cabin didn’t blend into its surroundings well.
Garbage everywhere. I guess it gets hidden by snow in the winter.
Oil drum reliquary.
Curiosity satisfied, it was time to keep marching. We wandered along the river bank, the going pretty easy as the ground was generally level, vegetated and dry. Reaching a large fissure in the ground, the result of a stream at the bottom, we slid down the sandy bank, crossed, then clambered up the other side.
Hiking towards the end of the river.
The first river bend.
Near the top of the right side of the “M” bend that the river makes, we hunkered down in a little trench in the ground to escape the constant wind and have lunch. I crawled around and hunted for new flowers that I hadn’t yet seen and played with some wolf spiders in their tunnels while the sausage and cheese was being handed out.
A tuft of arctic thrift.
A fly taking refuge from the wind on an arctic poppy.
After eating we continued our trek to the ocean, now walking on top of a giant sand bank. Getting too close to the edge to take a look down at the river was downright scary as the bank was abrupt and the ground quite unstable, giving the feeling that it could give way at any moment. Indeed, the next day while paddling past this area, we would in fact witness several spontaneous collapses, sending parts of the bank tumbling into the river. Even walking far from the brink was fraught with peril as the ground would sometimes just collapse underneath us, causing a leg to break through the surface into a hole, probably a result of underground runoff, pitching you forward and making you wonder how far you may fall in next time.
Once we were beyond the river bend after it takes its turn to the left, the ground became more solid. We kept on walking until we got a glimpse of the ocean, finally setting our eyes on Pelly Bay and – no ice! Whitecaps frothed as the waves rolled towards the shore, confirming that this would have been no day to be out there paddling the open water.
Some cold hikers finally get to see Pelly Bay.
I wanted to keep going to a raised promontory sticking out into the bay, but the consensus was to retreat to camp. And as we all had to go where the gun protection guy went, we all set off back. Just a week before we left for this trip, we had read a tragic story in the news about an Inuk on the west side of Hudson’s Bay who had left his boat without his gun and been surprised on the land by a polar bear. He had two children with him, placing himself between the bear and the kids to save them, sacrificing himself. That’s why you always travel with a gun near arctic waters.
I love these relaxed hikes as, in addition to exploring new territory, you get to chat with your companions about all sorts of things. We stopped when we got back to the river bend and marveled again at the way it has cut through the sand massif we were hiking over, with the erosion in the steep bank causing the regular clefts that, in the distance, looked like “trestle tracks”, each with its deep snow bank. Walking back we had a good view of the mountains we had just paddled through, a low dense range of bare peaks extending north and east as far we could see.
Lee taking his chances on the steep river bank.
Looking northeast at the distant mountains.
Back at camp we discovered that the shotgun Curt had brought on the hike was jammed – it wouldn’t load. He figured that the relentless wind that had been blowing fine sand everywhere had gotten into the mechanism and clogged it. My goodness, we were lucky that we hadn’t run into something that wanted to eat us while out hiking! After cleaning the gun, we decided that we had better test both it and Mike’s gun just in case, plus it is always wise for everyone to familiarize themselves with our last line of defense and get some target practice in. Using an empty fuel can for a target, we made sure that it was dead, filling it full of lead.
Bang! Scaring the siksiks away.
Yet another direct hit. I wonder if we could repeat this with a 450 kg bear sprinting towards us?
Sand not only caused havoc with the gun, it was everywhere, the wind having coated the tents with a thin film, our eyes sore from the grit assault. Fine sand in the river required us to now let collected water sit for hours in order to settle before we could drink or cook with it. After a leisurely dinner we checked the weather forecast for the next day, with somewhat good news that the wind was supposed to drop. Tomorrow would be the Arctic Ocean paddle!
0 km of river travel today.
Thursday, July 26th. Big waves on Pelly Bay
It was another cold morning, the thermometer measuring 3°C. Getting psyched for the ocean paddle, I agonized over what to wear. I remembered how cold I was on the midnight sun boat ride to Ulukhaktok on Victoria Island after finishing the Kuujuua River in July 2012 – possibly the coldest I have ever been in my life, and I didn’t want a repeat. But back then we were on a power boat, having been picked up by some Inuit fishing boats, whereas today we would be working hard paddling, especially if the wind was up. Finally, I erred on the side of caution and wore six layers of clothes from merino wool under layers to goretex outer layers. I knew I had made a mistake about an hour later when we were in the middle of the “M” bend…I hadn’t taken into account that snaking through the big “M” would consume 13 kilometers before we were actually on the bay. By the time we would reach open water it would be mainly sunny and 15°C and I had shed quite a few layers of clothing. The wind was mild and from the northwest, it would be against us at times, but at other times we would be completely protected by the high bank.
Nearing the first bend near the end of the river.
Nearing the last big bend we spooked a gaggle of flightless geese off the river, and as they scrambled up the river bank they were met at the top by five juvenile red foxes. We stopped and observed this fascinating encounter. I had expected to see a flurry of action with feathers flying and the end result being a tasty meal for the foxes, but it didn’t play out that way. The geese held their ground, especially an alpha goose that stood between the foxes and the other geese, flapping its wings, sticking its tongue out and hissing loudly. The foxes would slink closer then retreat when the goose lunged at them. They then tried to outflank the geese but were chased off again. At that point I started feeling sorry for the little foxes, they obviously really needed their parents, who were probably off hunting somewhere else, to help them bag their intended meal. As we left, one of them was running for its life with a goose hot on its heels. The battle was probably a draw, but the geese looked more likely to harm the foxes than the other way around. Another fascinating wildlife encounter!
An ambush awaited the geese…
And there was more than one villain…
The little foxes got more daring…
Then backed off…
Then a brave goose took the offensive…
Driving this fox away.
The river was quite shallow in spots, causing Curt to find another one of his namesake sandbars, grounding him and Lee until they could work themselves free.
Curt and Lee furiously “poling” with their paddles to get off a sandbar.
We otherwise made good progress until we hit the wide delta at the very end, where the river bends northwest into the bay. The lead canoe chose the shortest route, the furthest right channel, and we dutifully followed, but we obviously required a deeper draught than the others as it was now our turn to get stuck, firmly wedged on sandbars, twice. Arm wrenching paddle-poling got us off, there was no way I was going to step out of the canoe with the sand again being very, very soft, so by the time we got going again, we were quite far behind the others who were well out onto the bay. The wind had picked up a bit, it was now blowing about 20 kilometers an hour against us and to our right, waves were breaking on a wild, very picturesque, long beach, about 250 meters wide, that had become our new reference point. The offshore water was shallow requiring us to head a little further from the beach so that our paddles wouldn’t ground as we paddled. The swells started getting pretty big, up to a meter, and it seemed like we were hardly moving. I could sense Jenny getting a little antsy as we got further offshore, cutting an angle into the wind and waves, especially as the three boats were not in tight formation. Finally, before the water got noticeably deeper where we had to cross a more open area to round the promontory, the others stopped and waited for us to catch up. We struggled painfully slow northward together, the offshore swells getting bigger and bigger, turning into true waves, the canoes rolling up and down each one, torsing my back pretty good. My left elbow started to really hurt to go with my back spasms. This was the most wretched paddle of the trip, or so I thought at that point, but it would only get worse. As the waves started to come over the spraydeck the other canoes gradually pulled away – the canoe racers were probably relishing the challenge. I wasn’t. Finally, thank God, just as I thought I couldn’t paddle any longer without a recovery rest stop, they stopped at a tiny rock strewn island for lunch. Food was the furthest thing from my mind. I ached all over, could hardly move, was drenched in sweat and starting to get cold in the now strong wind, but that didn’t stop me from poking around a little, walking like a stiff little robot. I like islands. There was all sorts of flotsam, mostly junk, but some of it interesting, such as a beat up old wooden paddle.
Lunch on the stark little island.
I braced myself as we set off again because the wind and waves had picked up even more. The sky had turned dark with a dense cloud layer, any hint of sunshine now gone, the gloom overhead now matching our rapidly diminishing prospects for a successful paddle. We had trouble rounding a small point sticking out from the mainland and then headed towards a bigger one. Heading for a small rocky islet beside the tip of the point because the waves were a little smaller in its lee, we were also somewhat protected by the headland itself. Despite this protection, the waves were getting too much for canoes to handle safely, and we could see that once we rounded the point the ocean would be merciless. In the meantime, watching the shoreline creep by at a snail’s pace was torture, our forward progress was that slow. I had already decided that I wanted nothing to do with what lay ahead with the current weather conditions, but the other boats were again now well ahead, so I hoped they would wait for us at the islet before challenging the breaking waves. Instead, I watched incredulously as Kate and Mike, taking the lead, turned and plowed right into the mayhem. What were they thinking?, I thought. We were in no position to rescue anyone if they ran into trouble. And remember, this was the Arctic Ocean with the water temperature close to the freezing point and most of us not wearing dry suits. Another concern was that we didn’t know what was around the corner, would there be anywhere to come ashore safely if things got really desperate? Or would we be beaten sideways into rocky cliffs by the westerly wind blowing at right angles to the shore?
Cresting waves that threatened to swamp the canoe.
Ferocious wind whipping the spray sideways as we head to the lee of an islet to get some relief from the fetch.
I finally had had enough and blew my whistle as loud as I could, hoping to get their attention, then screaming something about the craziness of it all and prayed that the second boat didn’t attempt to join the madness. Thankfully Curt and Lee had come to the same conclusion and managed to signal Kate and Mike to return to the slim protection of the islet. We all then turned and skulked back, heading deep into the small bay, surfing big waves in.
Surrendering to the elements – we turn around and head back to safety…
And high tail it back into Desperation Bay, surfing the swells to safety.
Relieved and happy to be alive (at least I was), we came ashore on a pretty ugly beach, replete with old whale bone and seal remains, but managed to find a reasonable campsite amongst the hummocks well above the high tide mark. Another bullet dodged.
Gloominess reigns over Desperation Bay campsite.
It was still early so after setting up camp, we grabbed a shotgun and went off to explore the point that we could have been shipwrecked on if sanity hadn’t eventually prevailed. The promontory was a raw, mostly barren spit of land composed of dark, lichen covered rugged rocks. The wind and therefore the seas had finally died down quite a bit while we had been setting up camp, but it was still depressingly grey and gloomy, and I could just imagine huge waves breaking over this shoreline in a gale. A couple of weathered tent rings clung to the grim, rough ground. Despite the dismal habitat, a few pockets of vegetation added some needed colour to the environs. I happened upon a cushion of rather brilliant purple moss campion, the plant beautifully alluded to in this poem by William Wordsworth, Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1843-1850:
He would have loved thy modest grace,
Meek Flower! To Him I would have said,
“It grows upon its native bed
Beside our Parting-place ;
There, cleaving to the ground, it lies
With multitude of purple eyes,
Spangling a cushion green like moss ;
But we will see it, joyful tide!
Some day, to see it in its pride,
The mountain will we cross.”
(William Wordsworth, Elegiac Verse VI, in memory of his brother, Captain John Wordsworth, Commander of the ship Earl of Abergavenny, in which he perished by “calamitous shipwreck” in1805).
Moss campion. How fitting that we found the very flower that reminded Wordsworth of his shipwrecked brother’s death at the very place we were almost shipwrecked ourselves!
There was also an extremely pretty three-toothed saxifrage plant.
The almost impossibly cute three toothed or prickly saxifrage, so named as the leaves have up to three prickly, tooth-like lobes at the apex. The Inuit name for this plant is kakillarnat, meaning “that which causes prickly feelings.”
Jenny modeling her summer outfit on the raw coastline of Pelly Bay.
Back at camp we huddled in the shelter, ate dinner, drank the last of the rum, and told a lot of stories, perhaps some of them tall. All we were lacking was a campfire to warm us up – the temperature had dropped to 7°C, with rain now lashing down on and off.
24 km today, 13 on the river and 11 on Pelly Bay.
Friday, July 27th. Kugaaruk or bust.
We were lucky as the wind had started to drop the evening before and continued to dwindle overnight as I did not want to experience another hair-raising paddle in frigid ocean waters. As we rolled out of the tents it was cloudy with just a light breeze. Launching at 9:30 on a flat calm bay, we enjoyed an easy paddle out to Nasty Point, where gentle swells up to a meter high, without whitecaps tamely met us, much easier to negotiate than the mayhem of the prior day. After ninety minutes we were past the last point and could start to head into the large bay that Kugaaruk was nestled in – St. Peter’s Bay. We knew we would be safe here as a multitude of offshore islands offered protection if the weather were to suddenly change. We had scooted along the coast so quickly that the lead canoe was a little confused as to where we actually were, landing on a small island beach to get their bearings. I managed to convince them that if we headed east we would hit the coast and not be heading down the blind fjord evident on the maps that had somehow been “missed”. Exploring the little rock strewn beach there were interesting things such as a decapitated beluga whale skeleton with little bits of flesh still clinging to bone, surrounded by bird footprints, to depressing things like a trashed snowmobile. Quite the contrast.
Rounding Nasty Point in reasonable seas.
Beluga whale skeleton, surrounded by bird footprints, on the island beach.
Kate with a weathered whale bone vertebra (JJ photograph).
A contrasting and rather unnatural skeleton found on the same island…sad…(JJ photograph).
Back on the water the mood was light as we were on the home stretch! The scenery in St. Peter’s Bay was impressive, from the turquoise, Caribbean-like water, to the rugged bluffs and hills lining the shore, up to the now cheery blue and white sky. Paradise. We stopped in a little cove to eat our final “bush” lunch under a sky that continued to clear, then it was the final push to reach the village. I began to wonder what kind of reception we would encounter – not many canoeists have paddled right up to this village, we know of only one other group, the crew paddling the Arrowsmith River in 2005, of which Lee was part of. The Arrowsmith roughly parallels the Kellett, more to the west, draining into the west side of Pelly Bay. Would the locals be surprised? Welcoming? Or view us as an unwelcome intrusion? By the time we approached the boat launch area the water was dead calm, but the beach was hopping with activity. It was rush-hour Kugaaruk style! The locals were coming and going with their boats, launching them, or hauling them out of the water onto homemade trailers hauled by ATV’s. Because it was a small launch area, we landed on the side to keep out of their way, watching with amusement as the ATV’s kept getting stuck on the coarse pebbly beach trying to haul the heavy boats onto the beach, their wheels spinning and digging in. The local drinking water truck came down to help out, hitching a rope onto the stuck ATV’s and dragging them and their loaded boat trailers up to level ground. They were so busy with their boats that we were initially completely ignored, except for a cheery little boy who came up and literally gawked, but eventually a few guys were curious enough to come over for a chat. When they found out where we had just come from, they immediately wanted to know if we had seen any caribou inland, and what the fishing was like. I enquired about the sea ice and found out that it had only come of the bay three weeks previously. The reason for the frenzy on the beach was that the recent high winds had kept the boats, mostly aluminum skiffs with big outboard motors, off the open water, so the locals were anxious to get out fishing, sealing and whaling. They were in a big hurry as the weather forecast for the coming night was bad – a fierce storm was on its way with even higher winds. One older hunter, wearing complete camouflage clothing in his boat, told us he wanted to get himself a narwhal before the storm hit. He told us that the toothed whales used to come right into the bay where they could be easily caught, but now they have to travel several hours north in the boats to find them. Apparently last year Kugaaruk got 300 narwhal “tags” from the government, but they only caught 80.
Batman or superman? Our cheerful welcoming reception committee.
Rush hour at the launch site
Lee, Jenny and Kate headed off into the village on foot to try and find somewhere for us to stay, otherwise we would have to find somewhere to camp outside the village. The rest of us poked around the beach and kept an eye on things. Right beside some beautiful arctic cottongrass wafting in the gentle breeze was another ugly, wasteful, abandoned snowmobile. Again, such contrast!
Beauty…
Next to the beast…
The search party returned with mixed news. They had first gone to the hamlet office where the housing officer had told them that there had been a suicide the day before, a thirteen year old girl, meaning that no housing was available as grief counsellors were being flown in the next day to help the villagers cope with the tragedy. Suicides are major problem in the north, especially among teenagers. In 2017 there were 25 suicides in Nunavut, a ten year low, but this in a region with a population of only 38,000 people. And things hadn’t settled down in 2018 – for example, Pangnirtung on Baffin Island, with a population of only 1,400, had 12 suicide attempts over two weeks in February, and in March, the territory’s poison control center took 55 calls from the same little hamlet. Things are no better in Nunavik, Quebec’s Inuit territory, which has had 13 suicides from a population of only 12,000 so far this year (up to October, 2018). The only country in the world with a higher suicide rate is Russia. This seems to be an unfortunate reality to “modern” living in the north, probably a combination of post-colonialism, unemployment, boredom and alcohol. Sad, very sad.
The good news, if there could be any after hearing about the suicide, was that the search crew had also stopped in at the local Co-op store and had spoken to the manager, John, a very welcoming and helpful fellow, and found out that he had a house open. The government workers who had been staying there had just left. It did have its problems – although there were three bedrooms, there were only three beds, there were no towels and the kitchen sink was clogged. But after some hard bargaining he was willing to let us stay there for $150 a night, and he would throw in his pickup truck for us to borrow as necessary. Knowing that we didn’t have to paddle around looking for a campsite, we got to work tearing the canoes apart and 45 minutes later, everything was loaded onto the truck. Now in pieces, Mike and Kate got to see the extent of the damage to their canoe.
Mike with one of the bent canoe poles.
This was all the stuff six of us had survived on for the previous three weeks, including the boats.
Kugaaruk House #105 was perfect! I have to admit that when reaching the villages at the end of these trips, staying in a house feels luxurious. But it’s also about logistics – for example, camping in the village there is no good source of safe drinking water, and, um, no convenient “bathroom” where one can go about their daily business. And there is also the worry of theft; each village is different, but I remember being told by an elder in Kangirsuk to always keep an eye on our gear. No need for temptation. Then of course there was the short term weather forecast of high winds and rain.
It was now time for the ritual hot shower, but who first? When my turn came, I peeled off my clothing completely for the first time in three weeks, wondering how badly I reeked. The clothes themselves were fine, a remarkable feat given the body odour abuse they had endured, thanks to the miracle of merino wool! However, compared to what Rasmussen found when he lived with the Netsilik in the 1920’s, I probably smelt like a rose. I had been stewing in the same clothes for a mere three weeks, they spent a whole year in the same caribou skins:
“…their spring and summer clothing is indescribably filthy and sodden with blubber. The natural reason for this is that in these regions economy must be practiced in every department; one is forced to do so in a country where starvation is always lurking. For this reason the old winter clothing must be worn to shreds in spring and summer, as no one gets new clothing until autumn when the snow has fallen and snow houses can be built. In spite of these old, worn-out clothes, which are thus carried on the body a whole year without change, they have remarkably few lice; but those they have they eat.”
-From Knud Rasmussen, The Netsilik Eskimos, 1931, pages 51-52.
All scrubbed clean, smelling reasonable and draped in clean clothes, it was time for dinner. It was Curt’s turn to cook, with gluten free pesto pasta on the menu. He was using spaghetti, which I find is the most finicky of the GF pastas to cook, easily falling apart. You have to follow the instructions provided meticulously in order to end up with something that looks like spaghetti, you can’t wing it or cook it like regular pasta as the various types all cook differently (corn, rice, quinoa, amaranth…). I looked on in horror as Curt dumped 1.5 kg of the stuff, which was probably double what we needed, in a huge stock pot full of water that hadn’t yet boiled, but didn’t say anything as it was his show. And what a show it ended up being – he kept stirring as the water tried to boil but wouldn’t, with half the pasta dissolving into a glutinous appearing mess (which was odd as it was gluten free), and the other half essentially raw and stuck together. We spooned what little that looked like spaghetti into bowls and attempted to choke it down, seemingly hardly putting a dent in the gloop in the pot. After eating what we could, we had the problem of what to do with the rest, which had turned into a pasta monster – a hot, sticky, jello-like living blob. I would have just poured it out behind the house but who knows what kind of wildlife that would have attracted, so when Lee suggested pouring it into large zip lock bags and dumping it in the garbage it seemed like a good idea. Except the creature broke through one of the bags and oozed out all over Lee’s clean trousers. What a dinner adventure! At least there was dessert – a whole tub of ice cream from the Co-op store. Amusing as it was, Curt’s dinner show pales in comparison to the ones that Rasmussen observed in the summer of 1924:
“During my visit here I went from tent to tent and partook of the “public” meals that are eaten several times a day. At a time like this, when food was easily procured, all meals were common ones. In the tent where I usually slept a small boy or a pup played about on the platform of (caribou) skins and on these “sheets” the boy and pup let everything go, both “number one” and “number two”. True, every time this happened the place was carefully scraped clean with a knife, but it was the same knife that was used to cut up our meat for cooking, and course there was never any question of cleaning the knife. Afterwards the mother wiped the child with the sleeve of her fur jacket, finishing off with her hand, to thereupon hand pieces of meat round to us with her fingers without first wiping them. After the meal, the men all scraped their dirty, bloody fingers with their knife and then licked the knife clean, taking everything, including the filth from their hands. It is not easy to understand why all this necessarily should conclude a meal and end up in the mouth, but it did.”
“One type of “table manners” that was also difficult for me to get used to was that when the boiled meat was to be eaten, everybody sat round in a ring and let it pass from hand to hand, each one biting a piece off. Meat for cooking is never washed off and its place is the floor; as a result it is often dirty and unsavoury; it is then expected of the eater that he will suck or eat it clean before handing it on to his neighbor; this manner of serving does not exactly whet the appetite of those who are accustomed to more refined surroundings.”
Ramussen gets more specific about the “piggishness’ (his words!) that he observed:
“There was another habit that cannot be said to be aesthetic either. When they blow their nose in their fingers, they always put the mucus in their mouth, although spitting it out later. If a man picks his nose, he invariably puts his fingers into his mouth afterwards.”
-All excerpts from Knud Rasmussen, The Netsilik Eskimos, 1931, page 51.
To bed at 10:30, myself on the floor, once again ensconced in my sleeping bag, on my inflatable pad, which, being so used to, had me sleeping like a baby.
17 km of paddling on Pelly Bay today.
Saturday, July 28th. Kugaaruk, Pelly Bay and Captain John Ross
Pelly Bay and environs.
Kugaaruk (roughly translated, “little stream”), on the east side of Pelly Bay, was simply known as “Pelly Bay” until 1999. It is located in St. Peter’s Bay, sheltered from storms by barrier islands, and built on the southern banks of a small river, the Kugajuk River, which drains Lake Barrow, a fairly large lake, as well as a multitude of smaller lakes and ponds in the interior of the Simpson Peninsula. Pelly Bay itself is the southern extension of the Gulf of Boothia, with the Boothia Peninsula being the land mass on the western side of Pelly Bay and the gulf. There is a plaque on the wall at the local airport that states that the “first recorded contact with outsiders” was in 1869 when Captain John Ross “wintered in Pelly Bay”. This is clearly wrong as Ross, who was indeed was an arctic explorer, died in 1856. John Ross, a Scotsman, was an interesting character. His first artic expedition in 1818 to search for the Northwest Passage was an abject failure, famous for the “Croker Mountains” that he “saw” after entering Lancaster Sound, claiming that they blocked further passage. It turned out to be a mirage! William Parry soon after proved these mountains to be a myth, the fiasco almost ruining Ross’s reputation. Nevertheless, he managed to return to the Arctic in 1829, but perhaps understandably after his faux-pas, couldn’t obtain funding from the British Admiralty, instead convincing his good friend, Felix Booth, a gin magnate (gin was all the rage in Britain at the time), to sponsor his expedition. This explains how the Gulf of Boothia and the Boothia Peninsula received their modern names!
Booth’s Gin is still available today. It’s perhaps bad enough having colonialist’s names etched on our maps…but booze merchants?
This expedition turned out to be the stuff of legends – yet another remarkable story of survival under extreme conditions. There were a few unusual aspects on this expedition, the ship itself was a sail-assisted steamship, the Victory, and it was the first major privately funded arctic exploration, to the tune of £18,000, a minor fortune at the time. The Victory successfully negotiated Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, but instead of continuing further west it went south into the Gulf of Boothia, where it eventually got stuck in the ice, forcing the crew to winter at the eastern tip of the Boothia Peninsula.
The Victory stuck in ice, Boothia Peninsula, 1829.
While icebound, in January 1830, first contact was made with the previously isolated Netsilik who wintered in the area. Ross wrote:
… we had the good fortune to establish a friendly intercourse with a most interesting consociation of natives, who, being insulated by nature, had never before communicated with strangers; from them we gradually obtained the important information that we had already seen the continent of America.
-From a letter addressed by Captain Ross to the Secretary of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. 1833.
The Inuit were telling them that the Boothia Peninsula was not an island, but part of the mainland. Perhaps aptly, the locals initially approached the ship cautiously, first sending an elder who was considered “expendable”. Ross did probably the smartest thing he could have done – he commanded his crew to throw down their weapons and utter the few Inuit words the explorers had gained from previous voyages. The Inuit, in turn, were apparently elated that the newcomers seemed friendly. The so different Europeans and Inuit then exchanged gifts, with Ross offering such things as metal barrel-hoops in exchange for fresh fish, seal meat, furs and other supplies.
Print of a meeting in the Captain’s cabin on the Victory between the ships officers and two Inuit, Ikmallik and Apelagliu. After an original drawing by Captain Ross.
The ship’s carpenter, Chimham Thomas, fashioned a wooden leg for a hunter, called Tulluachiu, who had lost his real leg in an encounter with a polar bear. This allowed the crippled man to once again become a hunter. You can just imagine how much respect the resource starved Inuit gave these strangers for such a gesture. Surely this is the way to interact with each other, co-operation, not mistrust and violence.
Tulluachiu, with his new wooden prosthesis, and his family.
Ross and his crew explored the area the following summer, but meanwhile the ship remained locked in the ice until August of 1830. When the ice had finally melted enough that the ship was free to move, six weeks of constant northerly winds blew in pack ice. The crew crept along towards home by cutting channels through the ice, but after managing to travel mere miles, they finally gave up at the end of October when it was obvious they weren’t going to make it to open ocean. They prepared for another winter in the ice, but Ross was ahead of his time and certainly more astute than the pigheaded Franklin as he clearly recognized the benefits of adapting the survival skills of the “Esquimaux”. Trade with the Nestilik also provided them with fish for food, and animal skins for clothing. The next summer, in 1831, James Clark Ross, the nephew of the Captain, was sent to find the north magnetic pole on foot, which, although it shifts constantly, had never been knowingly “reached” by man before. His success was later hailed back in Britain as being one of the greatest scientific achievements of the time. James Ross went on to become perhaps more famous than his uncle, morphing into an Antarctic explorer, eventually giving his name to the massive Ross Ice Shelf, the largest in Antarctica. It is so big that some monster icebergs have calved off it, the largest, Iceberg B-15, being the size of Belgium. James Ross’s ships for these southern explorations were none other than the Terror and Erebus, which later became Franklin’s expedition ships, now lying in the shallow icy waters off King William Island on the other side of the Boothia Peninsula. Small world, eh?
That summer was otherwise a repeat of the year before – the ice never cleared enough for a serious attempt for the Victory to clear Prince Regent Inlet and then round the top of Baffin Island into Baffin Bay, finally making the Atlantic and sailing home. Even worse, the ship struck an iceberg and damaged its rudder. Stuck once again in the ice with rations running low, scurvy finally reared its ugly head that winter. Early in 1832 Ross came to the conclusion that the summer they had sailed right into the gulf was actually an anomaly, the norm was probably that the ice rarely cleared enough for it to be navigable. They would have to abandon the ship, trek north and hope to be picked up by a whaling ship. Their immediate aim was to reach a place on Somerset Island, just north of the Boothia Peninsula, called Fury beach, where William Parry had abandoned one of his ships, the HMS Fury, in 1825. He had even left the ships life boats as well as many of its stores, which would become useful to more than one future expedition in trouble. James Ross was sent on a scouting mission to assess what was actually left at Fury Beach, finding the Fury’s life boats serviceable, meaning that the men didn’t have to drag the Victory’s small boats north over the ice, and could instead take their supplies on sleds. The crew completed the 240 kilometer trek on the first of July, not surprisingly “worn out completely with hunger and fatigue”. Ross wisely commanded his men to create a winter shelter from the wreck of the Fury while they waited for the ice in the gulf to clear, “just in case”, naming it Somerset House. In August they left in three small boats, hoping to make it across Prince Regent Inlet into Lancaster Sound where the whalers operated. Slogging north, enduring weeks of sleet and rain, they found the inlet completely icebound, forcing them to turn back to Fury Beach, where they spent a miserable winter sheltered inside Somerset House. Frostbite claimed fingers and toes and scurvy bagged the carpenter, Chimham Thomas, but remarkably he was the last of only three crewmen to perish during the whole expedition. The following August, now 1833, they went north in the boats again, this time being lucky as there was a channel through the ice right into Lancaster Sound, luckily finding the winds favourable for sailing north. On August 23rd they had the fortune of being spotted by a whaling ship, the Isabella, which coincidentally was the same ship that Ross had commanded on his first arctic trip years earlier. Again, small world!
Even though Ross’s expedition was a private one, on his return he was hailed as a hero and knighted. The crew were even paid for their efforts by the Royal Navy – in fact, they received “double pay”. At least the expedition ended much less tragically than Franklin’s, and Ross had the common sense to befriend the local population. On the other hand, one wonders what the Netsilik thought of their first experience with Europeans!
Sir John Ross, by James Green, 1833. Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London. You gotta love the romanticism of these portraits. On the right is the title page of his self-published book of the voyage, 1835.
Another confusion on the airport plaque is whether the “first contact” occurred at this very site, in the (former) village of Pelly Bay or somewhere else in the Bay itself. In fact it occurred on the Boothia Peninsula as detailed in the history above, where the ship was icebound for its first winter, at a place they called Felix Harbour (again, named after the now infamous gin merchant, Felix Booth!). The local Netsilik were nomadic until the last part of the 20th century, so no “village” actually existed. The first permanent structure built at what is now Kugaaruk was a small chapel, now known as the “old stone church”, in 1941. The first Christian missionary who came to “convert the pagans”, if you can believe it, only arrived in 1935. It’s also hard to believe that these guys were still finding populations of people essentially untouched by “Westerners” not that long ago. But of course this kind of nonsense is still happening even today – a few days before I wrote this sentence, some foolish “missionary”, John Allen Chau, a self-described “adventurer” from the United States, sought to convert a reclusive tribe in the Indian Ocean archipelago of Andaman to Christianity. The tribe is known to us as the “Sentinelese” after the island they live on, North Sentinel Island. They shun all contact with the modern world and have wisely been given complete autonomy by the Indian government, but the self-styled proselytizer had the audacity to trespass on the island in his attempt to “save the souls of the heathens”. The Stone Age tribesmen were having none of this, firing arrows at him the first time he landed. One of the arrows pierced a waterproof copy of the Bible Chau held aloft in his quest to evangelize the tribe. He promptly beat a retreat from the island in his kayak, to the refuge of a fishing boat that had illegally, for $350, brought him to the island. In his journal, the misguided Chau wondered if North Sentinel Island might be “Satan’s last stronghold,” then expressed frustration that he hadn’t been greeted with open arms. Nevertheless, he returned to the island that night and this time went down in the completely predictable hail of arrows. An Indian expert, Madhusree Mukerjee, who has written a book about the Andaman Island tribes, has said of Chau, “He wanted to be a Christian martyr, and he is. What he probably didn’t realize was that this event would set in motion a series of developments that will lead to actually harming the tribe.” The incident has made them international news and attempts to recover his body may bring more harm. The fisherman who had brought him to his death saw the tribesmen bury his body under a heap of stones. It is predicted from prior incidents that they will eventually exhume his carcass and string it up on the beach to display. I just hope to the real God, if it exists, that he had no pathogens on him that he could have transmitted to the tribesmen. Like the countless indigenous people before them, including those in Canada, they are in danger of being killed by simple western diseases that they have no natural resistance to. A sad warning, if they are not left alone, is what recently happened in the South Andaman Islands, where the local Jarawa tribe finally laid down their bows and arrows, bribed with western goods by missionaries and government officials, only to subsequently have their population decimated by two outbreaks of measles. Once proud warriors are now “unemployed”, their culture ravaged by alcoholism, with children forced to dance for handouts by tourists paying for “human safaris” to ogle a primitive culture. Other Andaman tribes in turn have suffered demographic shock and cultural collapse following efforts to force them into settled communities. Sound familiar?
Sentinelese tribesmen “greeting” unwanted visitors. Image from Business Insider India.
Back to Kugaaruk and the frozen north. The first missionary was Father Pierre Henri, a member of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic order that still exists today. Their motto is the latin, Evangelizare Pauperibus Misit Me. Pauperes Evangelizantur , meaning, He has sent me to evangelize the poor. The poor are evangelized. The chapel he built, together with Father Franz Van de Velde, was made of stones held together by “mortar” made of local clay and seal oil. The priests soon learned that stone wasn’t a very good insulator in the frigid winters, therefore they wisely adopted Inuit ways, living in igloos and wearing traditional Inuit clothing during the cold months. Inuit would meet at the church for Christmas celebrations then separate again to pursue their nomadic lives. During the Cold War, in 1955, a Distant Early Warning (DEW) site, CAM-4, was constructed at Pelly Bay, greatly increasing contact between Inuit and outsiders. An airstrip was built, then, in 1968, in its effort to assert sovereignty in the North, the Government of Canada installed 32 prefabricated houses, plus a school and medical facilities. These facilities and the attraction of salaried employment in the settlement began to replace the nomadic lifestyle of the Inuit. In the late 1970s a small commercial arctic char fishery and fine ivory carving came to supplement the hunting-trapping economy of local residents. Starting in 1992, retreating sea ice allowed the Bay to become navigable enough in the summer that fuel and supplies could be shipped in rather than airlifted, greatly decreasing costs. Kugaaruk today is small but growing rapidly. The population in 2016 was 933, representing a 21% increase from 2011, so housing is tight.
We were greeted on the Saturday morning by the promised storm, bringing strong gusts, easily over 60 kilometers an hour, rain and even sleet coming in sideways. Boy, were we lucky to have gotten into town the day before! By early afternoon the wind continued but the rainy skies cleared a little, allowing us to go outside and explore the village. First we went and had a look at the sea, whitecaps cresting the waves in the protected bay, rollers crashing the shoreline. Nasty. There were no boats out there today. Noses were constantly running thanks to the bitterly cold wind.
Rough seas.
Next we ambled over to the old stone church. It was in sad condition – propped up by wooden planks as the old mortar no longer had the strength to bond the stones together. There used to be a museum in the church, housing many artifacts including traditional clothing made by the villagers, but sadly we couldn’t go inside to check it out.
The old stone church today, off limits and propped up by wooden planks .
Unfortunately we couldn’t go inside to explore.
The church in earlier times (photo courtesy of Northern Pix).
Eyeing some spindly structures on the far side of town, we wandered over and found a major construction site. It was to be the new school, which had become necessary as the “old” one, which was actually quite modern and well equipped, burnt down on a cold winter night in February of 2017. Firefighters had to truck in their water to vainly but bravely battle the blaze in -35°C conditions, their hoses repeatedly freezing up. The fire was deliberately set, a teenager being charged with arson. This fire was especially devastating for the community as all the teaching materials, especially the information gathered in Inuktitut — including elders’ interviews and pictures — were now gone. And there is no way of replacing them. This was not the first, or the last devastating intentionally set fire in Nunavut – the year before, the school in Cape Dorset burnt to the ground, with three youths being charged with arson. And just three weeks before I wrote this sentence, arson partially destroyed the largest retail and grocery shop in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut, another youth being charged with starting the fire. I witnessed the sad result of yet another fire when in Puvirnituq in 2014. The once famous but now ruined local Art/Print shop sat derelict in the village, no longer allowing the local artists to create those fantastic works of Inuit art that employed many and brought needed income into the hamlet. So what is going on? These deliberately set fires clearly harm the communities affected. Perhaps the disillusioned kids show their dissatisfaction with life and rebel through arson? Perhaps they feel that if they are unhappy, everyone else should be? Or is it to get attention? Or just for thrills? Undoubtedly there are deep rooted issues in play, similar to the epidemic of suicides in the north.
Entering the community center, which was now doubling as part of the temporary school, we met the better side of the next generation in Nunavut. The building caretaker was glued to a TV but his wife, a cheery young woman carrying her very cute baby in a traditional amauti, took the time and talked to us about the village, constantly smiling as she showed us old photographs of the town and its inhabitants.
We wandered back to our temporary refuge, house #105, picking our way through the dirt roads, observing how much the village looked like many others in the North – both modern houses and shacks in varying states of disrepair, surrounded by a lot of junk, especially old machinery – the remains of snowmobiles, engines, vehicles, even old snow cats, as well as qamutiiks (wooden sleds) waiting for the next winter. Dogs on chains barking. Musk ox skins hanging on the sides of buildings to dry. Even a few polar bear skins hanging off balconies.
Stop in three languages – you don’t see that in many places
A typical village scene.
The main street, the modern RCMP station is to the left.
The new school under construction.
Lee’s rather tame encounter with a polar bear.
Back at the house we jockeyed for favoured couch and chair positions to while away the time by reading books and magazines.
The lucky few got the comfortable chairs…Curt wasn’t so fortunate despite the rigours of the trip finally catching up with him.
We managed to contact Ookpik by Inreach satellite messaging to find out what time they were going to pick us up at the airport the next day – between 9 and 10 in the morning – but we weren’t sure if that was Kugaaruk or Baker Lake time – there’s an hour difference. And of course it was dependent on the winds, if they were too strong it was possible that they wouldn’t fly up to meet us. To be on the safe side, we arranged with John from the Co-op to borrow the truck for nine. Dinner was a sedate affair that night, with no repeat appearance of a pasta monster. But two tubs of ice cream did miraculously emerge from the freezer.
Sunday, July 29th. Party time in Baker Lake
We awoke to a message that the plane would arrive to pick us up at 10 am. Again, we weren’t sure if that was Kugaaruk or Baker Lake time, so off we went to the airport at 9 am our time. It was breezy, but the wind wasn’t strong enough that it would avert a turbo otter from flying. The little airport was empty, with no scheduled flights that morning, we had the terminal to ourselves. Soon after arriving we got another message that our plane would now be here at 12:30, blaming “the weather”. No-one was surprised at the sudden change in plans, it seems to be modus operandi for this outfit, but truthfully, I was thankful and more than a little surprised that they were coming to pick us up at all. Trust is a powerful emotion, and I just didn’t feel it with these guys. So we waited. And waited.
The little airport terminal. No Starbucks here, and no duty free shopping to while your time away whilst waiting for a delayed flight. At least they had a few seats.
When we heard the drone of the plane and spotted it coming in on its approach run, I almost didn’t believe it. The pilot was Swiss, a fellow named Mike, and after five minutes of speaking with him, we immediately felt a lot more comfortable. He was a straight shooter, a more typical bush pilot, chatty and friendly, no bullshit. He happily told us why he was “late” – he first had to drop a “passenger” off at Spence Bay (Taloyoak), a village 182 km to the northwest of Kugaaruk. Hmmm. Ookpik was double dipping again. Charging us for both directions of the flight, either doing the same to the Taloyoak passenger and making double moolah, or giving someone a free flight on our dime. And obviously the dispatcher would have known about this well before we got the message that they would be late. Weather delay my ass!
The plane was refueled and then we loaded up and clambered aboard, Curt taking the co-pilot seat as it had the most legroom and he was the biggest guy.
Curt in the co-pilots seat. Wait, is he really flying the plane?
The pilot, Mike, asked us if we wanted to fly low so we could see the terrain we had just traveled. The best bush pilots think of things like this – they may see this kind of scenery all the time, but we certainly don’t and it’s quite a thrill to be able to soak it all in from a low altitude. The most memorable flights I have ever had have been with Air Inuit pilots who did things like taking us on a 360° turn around Mount Iberville in the Torgnat Mountains of Northern Labrador in perfect weather conditions, after first making a detour to show us the jaw dropping Barnoin Falls, the highest waterfall in Quebec, then flying low through the spectacular Koroc River Valley on the way to the drop-off. That flight alone was worth the price we paid for the charter, never mind that it then gave us the opportunity to paddle the blow-your-mind scenery of the Koroc. Another time, after picking us up at the end of the Nastapoka River, they flew us back through the infamous canyon section and double waterfall so we could see where we almost drowned but instead dodged a bullet. And last but not least, fly arounds of the unbelievable Pingualuit Meteor Crater, on two separate trips, before dropping us off to canoe the Puvirnituq River.
The spectacular Pingualuit meteor crater, Ungava, 12 kilometers in circumference, still frozen in July, 2016.
Each time they gave us the extra sightseeing tour without asking – these pilots truly understand their clients. Mike was cut from the same cloth. After flying over the mouth of the Kellett and then the south end of Pelly Bay, we roughly following the Arrowsmith River, which looked, at least from the air, pretty much like the Kellett.
The beginning of the “M” bend just before the Kellett enters Pelly Bay.
Flying over the Arrowsmith River.
After about half an hour Mike announced that the sightseeing was over and he was climbing up to 9000 feet for the remainder of the flight, as he could zip along at 180 mph instead of the 150 we were managing a few hundred feet off the ground. Because of the loud din made by the turbojet engine, we were all hooked into the inflight intercom via headsets and were entertained by Mike and his stories, some of which cannot and should not be repeated here. We did ask him what happened to the other Ookpik plane, the one that was scheduled to initially fly us up to the Kellett (we were on the same plane, the backup that we had been on a few weeks previously). He was very diplomatic, more or less confirming – by not denying – that something had happened to that plane while it was dropping the other guys off beside the Kazan River the night before it was supposed to fly us up north. More sleuthing would be needed to get the final story when we got back home.
He told us that a caribou herd had migrated past Baker Lake while we had been away, and that the locals had gone out on their ATV’s and basically “slaughtered” as many animals as they could. The caribou hunt is sacred to Inuit, without the caribou they would not have been able to survive the north. But the methods of hunting have been changing ever since first European contact, especially after the introduction of firearms, and even more so now with mechanized travel both in the air and on the ground. It is perhaps telling that the astute Rasmussen noted how change in hunting methods might affect the caribou, back in 1924, when he was on King William Island, just northwest of where we had been:
In some mysterious manner the various herds (of caribou) seem to be in touch with each other; hardly has the first lot gone down to the coast to inspect their chances of making the crossing (to the mainland), when their relatives come from every part of the island, from the interior direct down to the coast…They keep to certain definite routes, and therefore along by the beach and in the various mountain passes there are numbers of cairns and hides (hunting blinds), showing how they were hunted with bow and arrow in the old days. (Back ) then the whole settlement (Inuit) had to be organized and hunt in company, and even if it was a slow process and did not yield much in the way of supplies, it has sufficed for generation after generation; the other aspect of it is that by this means they avoided the shambles that now means danger to the stock wherever Eskimos get possession of modern rifles.
On the fifteenth of September the settlement was in a panic, there now being over a hundred people. A shout resounded through the camp and, when we all rushed out, we saw the first great herd of caribou coming trotting down over the hills east of the settlement. At a distance they looked like an enormous force of cavalry advancing in lines of fifty to a hundred animals, bearing a fixed course towards the crossing place at Eta. All the men seized their guns and hunting bags, and moments later they lay concealed here and there among the hummocks that the animals would have to pass. This was the first real caribou massacre of that autumn, and therefore they approached unsuspiciously at the same quick trot down towards the shore, until a deafening volley of rifle fire suddenly checked then all. For a moment they stood as if riveted to the spot, gazing bewildered here and there for the enemies they could not see, and this moment of indecision gave the hunters a good chance. Shot after shot cracked, animal after animal tumbled over among their terror-stricken companions, until the whole cavalcade split up into a number of small flocks as if by prearrangement and galloped back to the interior of the island. Qavigarssuaq (Rasmussen’s Greenlandic Inuit companion) and I had not taken part…we dared not run the risk of being infected by the wildness that so easily seizes hunters when blazing away at game. I should say that the spoils of that day’s hunt numbered about fifty animals, and judging by the drum fire that had been going on, at least five to seven rounds had been expended on each animal; for not only did the excitement upset their aim, but the competitive zeal caused many to fire at hopelessly long range. Both Qavigarssuaq and I considered this to be a very poor result, having regard to the chances the hunters had had. But to the Eskimos themselves, who were still accustomed to reckoning according to bow and arrow, the score was “a large number of animals, killed in a few moments”. In the old days a kill like that would perhaps have taken them months. In their enthusiasm over firearms they took no account of the fact that before many years had passed the caribou would have chosen other paths that made a wide detour about their dwelling place.
-Knud Rasmussen, The Netsilik Eskimos, 1931, pages 77-78.
But of course back then there wasn’t also the same environmental pressure on the caribou herds that there is today – climate change, large noisy and polluting mines, roads, pipelines, annoying overhead flights (guilty!), all the things that “civilization” has brought that may adversely affect the animals, on top of the modified hunting methods. For example, changes in temperature may cause anomalies such as freezing rain instead of snow, which can coat the caribou lichen food source with a layer of thick ice, leading to malnourishment or even starvation. Melting permafrost can make the terrain difficult to traverse, bogging the animals down in deep muck, as well as causing foot rot. Even things such as internet sales have become a problem, where Inuit buy and sell caribou online. Someone can post a shout-out for caribou in Iqaluit – say they want to buy three cows – and a hunter will jump on his snowmobile in one of the communities that is near a herd and go out and shoot the animals right away, they can then be air freighted to the buyer. Apparently thousands of pounds of meat are being delivered this way, all of it legal (ref. Northern Journal, March 1st, 2016, https://norj.ca/2016/03/caribou-diminished-vulnerable-under-siege/).
Although caribou populations normally cycle up and down, recent surveys have shown that the current state of barren-ground caribou herds across the Canadian Arctic is perilous, with all of the major herds in decline. For example, the Baffin Island herd has declined 95% since the 1990s, with an estimated 5,000 remaining caribou according to WWF-Canada, prompting an all-out hunting ban in 2015. The Bathurst herd survey in 2015 estimated that caribou population at a paltry 20,000, down from 470,000 in 1986. The Bluenose herds are down 77%. The central Beverly herd has now been deemed extinct after the last cows in the remnant population relocated to join another herd to the north, the Ahiak (which is the herd spending their summers in the Kellett River region), perhaps seeking safety in numbers. Less affected is the southeastern Qamanirjuaq herd, down to an estimated 264,700 animals in 2014, from 496,000 in 1994. And of course this caribou collapse has other wildlife consequences, namely the virtual disappearance of tundra wolves over large parts of the barren lands. Food for thought and an interesting discussion, not only for us laypeople but also for the experts – for example, in 2016 the government of Nunavut, in its new land use plan, reversed a long standing policy that protected caribou calving grounds from development, an action that was completely opposed by its own Nunavut Wildlife Management Board, which called for full area protection of the calving and post-calving grounds. This protection would necessitate the prohibition of industrial activities, such as mineral, oil and gas exploration and development, as well as banning construction of new roads. So even the local government and its own advisory board couldn’t agree on what to do about the problem. The neighbouring Northwest Territories appear to be more proactive in protecting caribou -in July of 2018 the NWT Conference of Management Authorities added barren ground caribou to the NWT official list of species at risk, meaning that they have to come up with a “recovery strategy” for them within two years. It’s kind of silly having different jurisdictions doing different things to the same animals – caribou have wide ranges and don’t pay any attention to our artificial borders!
Not all the in-flight entertainment banter was so somber, many of the stories were amusing, and some were downright, err, let’s just say, not politically correct. Before we knew it we were starting our descent into Baker Lake. As the plane dropped from its lofty height it came through some dense clouds, with ice quickly forming on the windshield and wings. To make matters worse, on the final approach strong wind gusts buffeted the plane and sheets of rain obscured the old, weathered windshield even more, Curt telling us later that he couldn’t see a damn thing through it, so although he didn’t admit it to us, the pilot landed the plane practically blind. He did apologize for the bumpy landing though, which I thought was funny given that we could have easily missed the runway. Thank heavens this guy was skilled.
Helen was on the runway waiting for us, wearing her usual smarmy smile. No apology or explanation for the late pickup, mind you I didn’t really expect any given how fishy she had been so far. The plane was quickly unloaded as it was about to head out to pick up a canoe group that had just finished paddling the Quoich River. The employee who drove us to the Baker Lake campground in a pickup truck offered to catch us up on world news since we had been away…I briefly considered asking him not tell us who won the World Cup, but then thought, that’s not the kind of news he’s talking about, maybe there’s been a new war, terrorist attack or perhaps Trump has been impeached. Fat chance. First thing out of his mouth was, “France won the World Cup”. Curt and I looked at each other, like me he had been hoping to watch recordings of the games as well. Well at least they had the decency to take us to the campground instead of leaving us standing on the dirt runway with all our gear. After unceremoniously dumping us and our gear at the campground, the great customer service continued – there was no offer to help us get everything back to the airport the next day for our commercial flight out of Baker Lake.
Lee went off into town to get some drinking water and to try and find David and Cheryl to see if their offer of dinner was still on for that night. Unbeknownst to him, while he was gone, David and Cheryl, on their way to their fishing nets in the lake, dropped by the camp to confirm that dinner was indeed on! We were to meet at the art center where there was a big kitchen area so we could have a communal meal. Mike went with them to help collect the fish, later reporting that they were full of trout, char and whitefish. In the meantime while poking around the campground I found some new wildlife – one of those giant arctic hares, much larger than southern bunnies, some red breasted mergansers, the male still in his breeding plumage, and yet another spectacular plant, castilleja elegans, another member of the lousewort family better known as the elegant paintbrush.
A giant bunny hopping around…
Red breasted mergansers on Baker Lake.
Elegant paintbrush.
After a while we wandered over to town, finding Lee on the grounds of Baker Lake Lodge talking with the guys from the Quoich trip, many of whom he knew, some of them even being on the exploratory Kellett trip of 2017, staying at the luxury digs to take the edge off coming back to civilization. Soon after, Mike drove by in David’s truck, intercepting us before we reached the art center, saying that there had been a change in plans and we were meeting at David and Cheryl’s house instead. They had a small house on the edge of town with only a few bedrooms that had to accommodate two sets of kids, I can’t remember how many in total but I was amazed at how they could squeeze everyone in. But they had no choice – there truly is a housing shortage in town.
Dinner was a seemingly endless smorgasbord of local food, as well as a huge tub of Lee’s fish chowder made with the fish straight from the nets. The highlight was perhaps the arctic char and whitefish sashimi, impossible to be any fresher. There was caribou and musk ox jerky, arctic char jerky, candied char and, to top it all off, muktuk.
David preparing the sashimi, fresh from his nets.
Arctic char sushi and sashimi.
Lee smelling the not so stinky muktuk. His huge pot of chowder is on the left.
Beluga muktuk.
Muktuk is chunks of whale skin and blubber, either bowhead, beluga or narwhal. I think we were eating beluga judging by the colour of the skin, but I’m not sure. They had prepared it by boiling for about two hours to make it more palatable for us, but it is traditionally eaten raw. When the kids in the house, two teenage girls, smelled it, they left and went outside, saying that it “stank”. They wouldn’t eat it. We didn’t think it smelled at all. The texture was new to me, chewy and oily, quite different, but very edible. Certainly tastier than the fermented Greenland shark (“hákarl”) that I’d eaten in Iceland earlier in the year. That stuff was pungent with ammonia, the byproduct of the urea and trimethylamine oxide “antifreeze” that the shark is loaded with that will kill you if you eat enough of it fresh. These toxins are neutralized by burying the dead shark underground for months, then digging it up, cutting the meat into slabs and hanging it to air dry in a ventilated shed. This stuff has a really bad reputation outside of Iceland – the late chef Anthony Bourdain, renowned for eating weird food, described hákarl as “the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing” he had ever eaten. Both my friend Carlo and I tried it and didn’t think it was that bad – nothing that we would go out of our way for, but certainly edible. You do burp up ammonia for hours afterwards though.
Greenland shark chunks hung to dry in a shed in Iceland.
If we were in Greenland we may have been treated to one of the Inuit delicacies made there – kiviaq, which is essentially sea birds fermented in sealskin. Up to 500 whole little auks, and they have to be little auks, are packed into the sealskin, beaks and feathers included. The air is removed and the skin sewn up and sealed with seal fat. The sealskin sack is then buried under a heap of stones, with a large rock placed on top to help keep the air out. The birds ferment for about three months, and are then eaten in the winter. The auk’s innards turn into a liquid, and apparently a popular way to eat it is by biting the head off and sucking out the juices inside. If larger birds are used, such as eider ducks, the result can be deadly as they don’t ferment as well and are prone to botulism.
Yummy Kiviaq ready to be enjoyed. (Photo courtesy of Tanny, the Fourth Continent).
It was a boisterous evening, an apt ending to our northern trip this year, lots of stories were told, lots of laughing, our hosts were very hospitable, and the two girls even gave us an impromptu demonstration of throat singing. After finally calling it a night, David graciously lent us his truck so that we could get to the airport the next morning. Northern hospitality at its finest.
Monday, July 30th
Thanks to David we got to the airport nice and early, shuttling all the gear in his SUV, then had an uneventful flight back to Winnipeg, via Rankin Inlet. In Winnipeg, Kate and Mike bade us farewell and headed back to Minnesota in their car. The rest of us went off to eat at The Forks, then wander along the banks of the Red River. So many people! So noisy! All that was left to do was to make it safely home and get used to the onslaught of civilization once again. Sigh.
Epilogue
An internet search to try and find out what happened to the Ookpik plane that was supposed to fly us out from Baker Lake to the Kellett revealed this hit:
https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20180709-0
“A DHC-3T Turbine Otter aircraft operated by Ookpik Aviation, began takeoff on the sandy shoreline of Parker Lake, NU with the pilot and one passenger onboard. During the takeoff roll, the aircraft ran out of shore line and went into the water. The right main gear was torn off and the aircraft came to a rest in an upright position. The pilot and passenger were not injured and the aircraft sustained substantial damage. It was reported that the sandy shoreline was very soft”.
So, their plane had crashed into the water while dropping the other guys off. Thankfully no one was hurt! It was then that I realized why Boris had gone wandering off in the direction of the caribou when we landed at the Kellett headwaters – he was actually pacing out the tundra to make sure there was enough flat, firm ground for a successful take-off. And the real reason that he came for his “joy-ride” with us must have been to ensure his only operative plane was going to make it back to Baker Lake unscathed. The poor guy must have been really rattled by the crash, and in the circumstances we would have obviously cut Ookpik a lot of slack for the delay in flying us out – but why were they so opaque about it – to the point of lying? Maintenance issues? Waiting for parts? Really?
IF YOU LIKED THIS JOURNAL, YOU MAY LIKE THIS ONE FROM 2017:
https://thlewiazablog.wordpress.com
The Kellett River 