Mountain River Recollections (Part 1, Launch)

Shooting the rapids in NWT, Canada , 1995

I remember it very clearly; all of us swore (I swear) that at that moment we would rather be sitting back at work behind a desk with a hot cup of coffee in front of us, than here, cold, wet and staring at frost-covered ridges.  Heck, this was July after all!!  Albeit, we were immediately south of the Arctic Circle.  And come to think of it, we never did need those fancy mosquito shirts we all fussed about while outfitting ourselves before the trip....

The Mountain River is a wide, fast tributary to the Mackenzie River, the largest river system in Canada, and the largest river flowing into the Arctic from North America.  It is situated in the Sahtu region which ranges from Great Bear Lake to the Mackenzie Mountains (Sahtu is the Dene name for Great Bear Lake). During this trip upon which we had embarked, we would expect to paddle roughly 200 miles in an almost 4,000ft (1,200M) descent, taking a week to 10 days.  The dream nucleated with Stuart and Trevor, followed closely by Heather and another couple known only to Trevor; Ana was along gamely, whether she was really into it or not.  But they needed a few more enablers as well it seemed.  I was the lone wolf in search of a paddling partner, as the canoe configuration would be 4 total, two per vessel.  Who else was going?  Friend of a friend; maybe she's cute and we hit it off too.... no need to worry about that as it would turn out.  Ok, experience matters most, and she had it, even if we spent most of the trip virtually incommunicado.

Trip planning and preparation were mostly courtesy Heather, Stuart and Trevor.  From maps, to food, to logistics - I was along for the ride and this ride was good!  We shared some of the load through allocation of food barrels and gear amongst the eight of us.  I had a decent Minolta SLR camera at the time and purchased a grey Pelican case and some carabiners to ensure it stayed with the canoe.  Although the internet was a technical reality at the time, slow speeds and poor resources rendered it next to useless for reliable information - today you don't even have to go to the NWT since you can experience it all on YouTube!  Information in the pre-internet days meant books, outfitters and enthusiast groups - ie, pretty sparse and very word-of-mouth.  I recall that some or all of us attended a photo presentation in Toronto at one point.  Still, I was impressed at the maps and route descriptions that Stuart managed to uncover.  While these crude photo-copied pages would be our guide, a few precious dollars also scored us some color topographical maps (which while indispensable on the river, would become a source of future group dissension....).  After a few shake-down runs in the local spring run-off, we pronounced ourselves 'good to go'.

My grand contribution was our Official Trip T-Shirts - proudly handed out to all at the airport prior to departure.  With enough consensus I opted for the long-sleeve style in mountain green and took sizing orders.  A graphic design was chosen (rather stolen, from the back of a Spirit of the West CD) and the text and dates carefully spelled out.  This would be my first practical lesson in clarifying all aspects of a project.  Worth noting here that producing any reasonable facsimile of a creative, unique graphic image in the 90’s was a long shot.  I did design what we needed using word processing software and made all the elements proportional to each other.  I treasure my shirt today, but man, am I still so pissed they printed the damn crest too small...!  "Exactly like that, only Crest-Sized" is what I repeated over and over, referencing the many ‘normal’ sized examples available in the shop, and to which all assurances were given.  They did not enlarge it whatsoever, let alone to “crest size” as we had agreed, but printed it exactly as I’d given it to them.  Too late by the time I went to pick up the order to get them reprinted (oh, and if so, at my cost, so the money was already spent).

yeah, that's a very small t-shirt crest...

So, 90 miles south of the Arctic Circle, we flew into a firestorm at Norman Wells, NWT - literally, we flew into a firestorm.  From the Mackenzie River waterway nearby (which we could not see) we needed to board a chartered floatplane for our planned assault of the Mountain River.  Clouds of white-grey smoke alternately obscured and revealed a few hundred yards of road ahead of our transport van on the drive to the air field.  Almost immediately, we were informed that due to the proximity of these summer forest fires we could not fly as planned to our launching point, 1200M up on Willow Handle Lake, and were forced to wait it out in the loft of a log cabin at the North-Wright Airstrip.  Indefinitely.  Reports on the containment efforts were at times encouraging, only to later return us abruptly to our pessimistic purgatory.  So we chilled, and waited, played board games and slept.

Finally came the word to fly!  Our group of eight went from sitting idle for 24 hours to wheels up in virtually minutes, in a mad adrenalin-jerker.  110 miles away, it would be a little over an hour.  Two runs with two canoes, four bodies and gear fitting inside the Twin Otter floatplane at a time (the same type as that which recently crashed in Alaska with Senator Ted Stevens aboard).  Threading mountain peaks and then circling to land on the tiny lake, a short taxi led to the stubby old dock on the southeast side of the lake. Practically tossing our gear out, canoes and provisions were unloaded for the second round.  I’m surprised we didn’t have to sign a waiver – maybe we did!  We would set up camp around the south side of the lake one night in preparation for our assault on the eponymous river.

Willow Handle Lake is surrounded by high ridges and peaks, most of which appear unnamed, and our schedule allowed a day spent hiking prior to tackling the river.  This turned out to be virtually an all-day affair including climbing to a rocky ridge at 7500 feet.  The steep, loose talus slope was the most difficult section to traverse, and I gouged a hole in my shin while stepping on a shifting rock; the scar from which I can see to this day.  Nurse Heather was called upon to fabricate her best donut bandage and improvise a pressure dressing using my baseball cap.  Going up is always easy - going down your future joint health comes into focus as if through a crystal ball. This would be my first indication that I may have inherited bad knees, and it was slow, careful steps that saw me back to camp.

from an earlier shake-down run

 Leaving the northwest end of Willow Handle Lake would prove much harder than our hand-scribbled play-book entreated.  Pressing our loaded canoes through rough, tangled, sometimes chest-high scrub and sinking in muddy bog for hours, it was starting to resemble a futile trek led by Gollum.  Our initial progress was pathetic, looking back periodically we never seemed to be getting any closer to Mordor from where we had started hours earlier.  It was perhaps a half mile, but progress was ultimately made in drag, drag, scrape, scrape increments.  We were barely a day into the trip already tapping physical and mental energy reserves we hoped we'd never need; we were still on foot, and hadn't even seen the tributary to the tributary yet!  The way finally got a little easier, and creative canoe-dragging methods led us to a tiny creek (known to most in the scant literature as Push-Pull creek) that barely afforded enough depth to take our burden the remaining distance to the major tributary feeding the Mountain River.  Half the adventure seemed to be merely in getting there!