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Trip Journals | The
Nowlye and Kamalukuak Rivers
 On
our third trip to the Arctic, Paul and I paddled the Nowleye and the Kamalukuak Rivers in the Barren
Lands. The trip went well in spite of the very hot weather and a lot of bugs. Bugs rule the North, at least
in July and August.
BACK TO THE BARRENLANDS, 1999
It is spring and we are packing again for the Far
North. Paul and I have taken two trips to the North in the past five years
and we are going again. We had visited the Barren Lands five years ago when
we traveled down the Caribou River and we want to see more of this area.
According to Sandy, we caught Arctic Fever on that trip and we haven’t been
cured yet.
We know very well what to expect in this part of
the world, but it is still a big undertaking to plan and pack and get ready
for three plus weeks away from a convenience store. I’m buying all the food
and planning all the meals. Three hundred dollars worth of pasta, one and
one half pounds of food per guy per day. That works pretty well for guys our
age in warm weather. When it is all packed up, we will have about one
hundred and ten pounds of pasta, nuts and dried fruit. And coffee, don’t
forget the coffee and don’t forget the overproof rum. What if we run out of
stove fuel. We could use the rum, but we wouldn’t.
The area we plan to visit is in the heart of the
North American Continent and as far from any existing community as one can
get today. The rivers we will travel have been populated by various people
for some ten thousand years or so, but have been abandoned since the middle
of this century. We are planning to go down the Nowleye River to Noleye Lake,
which is in the Kazan Drainage, cross a narrow isthmus to Kamalukuak Lake,
and then down the Kamalukuak River to Dubawnt Lake, which is the Dubawnt
Drainage. All of these waterways have been lived in and traveled by the
native people and Europeans until around 1950. As far as we could determine,
few people, or perhaps no one has traveled this route for many decades.
Farley Mowat had written about the Nowleye River,
referred to as the "River of Death" and Kamalukuak Lake, called the "Inland
Sea" in a story he had written about his travels in this area after World
War Two. We wanted to see these places for ourselves.
The following is our journal of our days on these
waters.
JULY FOURTH, 1999
It is Independence Day and the weather is perfect
for the Fourth of July. Hot and windy, ninety-five degrees with scattered
clouds and a dark blue sky. We’re packed and ready to go. Two hundred pounds
in three watertight river bags, one hundred pounds of food and one hundred
pounds of gear. I’ve been buying and packing out the food since March, a
little at a time, slowly filling out our larder for the trip. It was easier
this time because I’ve packed for the two of us twice before. At least I
have a notion of what we like and what works for us. The food is fairly
simple, mostly pasta, nuts and dried fruit. I keep bringing things to cook
but they often don’t get used. Most of the time it is just a one-pot meal.
We choke it down and get out of the outside into the tent away from the
bugs.
We are taking Northwest Airlines to Winnipeg,
overnighting in the airport hotel and then on toKasba Lake in a chartered
Conveyer with a bunch of fishermen the following morning. From Kasba we will
be picked up by Bob Hutika in his Beaver and flown to the Northwest arm of
Ennadai Lake and onto the Nowleye River. This will be our third trip to the
North in the past five years. This trip has been much easier to pack for
than the last two; we know much better what we need and what to expect.
Tomorrow at 5:00 P.M. we head to Winnipeg. We’re very ready.
JULY FIFTH, 9:30P.M. MILE 262
I am lying near naked in the tent listening to the
mosquitoes swarm outside. It’s an unbelievable display of bugs, the worst
we’ve ever seen.
Yesterday we flew to Winnipeg, ate dinner at the
hotel and sacked out. This morning we got up early to get the plane at 6:00
A.M. which didn’t leave until 8:00 A.M. It was a rather nicely restored
Conveyer with a very nice crew. A couple hours on this turbo prop brought us
the Kasba Lake Lodge, a large sport fishing enclave in the middle of nowhere
with a 5000 foot gravel landing strip.
Bob Hutika, our bush pilot and northwoods host met
us here in one of his float equipped DeHaviland Beavers, lashed the new
canoe he had purchased for us to the plane, loaded our gear, and flew us
another couple hundred miles north to the headwaters of the Nowleye River.
When we got to where we thought we wanted to
start, there didn’t seem to be enough water to land on or paddle so we
thankfully continued down river, or in this case, down the swamp and bog
until there was at least enough water to land the plane.
Bob landed, taxied and then drifted the plane to
shore, or what seemed like shore, more peat bog than anything else, and
quickly helped us unload our gear. Quickly because we were under attack by a
bunch of bugs that obviously hadn’t seen anything alive since the caribou
had walked through here a month ago. He waved, wished us luck, fired up and
left, leaving us sinking into the swamp as we watched him blast down the
river and back south.
We had nothing to do but load up, and start
paddling. The river was not quite a creek where we started, oozing out of
the low marshy ground and slowly starting its’ short trip to Noleye Lake. It
was rather warm and calm as we got going, allowing the bugs to stay with is
on the water. A couple hours after Bob dropped us off, a few thunderstorms
blew through and cooled things off a bit, and it was a welcome relief.
We got off the river and camped on the tundra or
near bog in this case. It is so soft that I am not even using my air
mattress. I am lying near naked in the tent listening to the mosquitoes
swarm and buzz. It’s an unbelievable display of bugs, worst we’ve seen.
It was a long day, but very good, overcast and
seventy degrees, not two much wind. But the bugs, the bugs!
We’re shooting for 20 kilometers per day. We’ll
see how it works.
JULY 7 MILE MARKER 240
I’m lying in the tent roasting like beans baking
in a pan. Twenty kilometers. It was very hot all day, no clouds at all. We
just baked in the canoe and the bugs followed us everywhere. I can’t be
outside any more; I’ve got to rest. We had a very good travel day, paddling
and drifting twenty kilometers down the river.
I unpacked the satellite-messaging gadget and
found the battery dead. It is a Garmin GPS with e-mail capability. I bought
the service that was required and all we have to do is get the thing going
and get a satellite in our line of site and press the button. It won’t be
that easy. Not many satellites on our horizon. I have one more battery but I
would like to save it in case we get in a jam. I will try to use the solar
cell and see if I can get an "e mail" message out to the girls. I know that
they are counting on hearing from us. Hope this thing works.
JULY 8 MILE MARKER 210 BIG DAY
It started out hot and still, very buggy in the
camp, mosquitoes and black flies everywhere. They followed us onto to the
water and stayed with us. In spite of the annoyance, we had good paddling
all-day and ended up with a tail wind in the afternoon, which helped us
cross several very big lakes. We paddled some rapids and walked the canoe
through a larger one. It felt good to get into the water and cool off.
We’re camped on a rocky point. It was bug free
when we arrived, the wind went down and we are getting swarmed by black
flies and mosquitoes. Paul is down, sick. Too much sun and heat. He may have
heat stroke. It was awfully hot today and there’s no place to hide, we can’t
get out of the sun. No trees, no shade.
When he got sick, I pulled us off the lake
immediately. It was the worst place I had ever been in. No wind, no shade,
no open space for the tent and blistering heat coming off the ground. I
dragged our stuff through the willows and put the tent up in little open
space and got Paul inside and undressed. I soaked what I could in the lake
and he covered himself with the wet clothes to get his body temperature
down. He looked awful and I was more than a bit concerned. I made a number
of trips to the lake to soak the clothes between cooking up a pot of gruel
in the scorching, windless, bug infested camp. It was terrible. I choked
down what I could and brought some into the tent for Paul. He couldn’t eat.
The day was almost over. I cleaned up camp and crawled into the sick-bay and
got out of my clothes and tried to cool off. Finally getting to the ritual
rum rationing.
The bad news is Paul is in bad shape and there
doesn’t seem to be much that I can do about it. The good news is that he is
too sick to drink his rum, so I get it. No reason to save it.
THE NEXT MORNING
This is the first time that I’ve been able to sit
down outside since we started the trip. Paul is OK and I won’t have to leave
him at our camp under a pile of rocks and come back for him later. Good
news. We finally have enough wind to get the bugs down. I was able to get
two messages out this morning using the solar cell. Thanks NASA. Fifty bucks
and we have an inexhaustible supply of low voltage power via the lightweight
solar panel right out of the space program. I hope the girls get our mail.
The first battery doesn’t work at all and the solar cell doesn’t seem to
have enough punch to run the gadget without a little boost, so I’m using the
good battery with the solar cell hoping to keep it fully charged up.
We’re finally on higher ground, out of the swamp
and bog. Maybe we won’t have so many bugs now that it’s not so wet and low.
JULY 9th LONG DAY 61-47 N, 101-25 W
We left "no name lake" for "no name lake". The
river, such as it is, is really a series of long lakes, five to fifteen
miles long and one to three miles wide connected by a series of rapids. We
are at mile marker 187 . We’re lying in the tent cooking like beans in a
pan. It’s 8:30 PM and the sun is pouring into the tent, baking us. Can’t be
outside, the blackflies are swarming. It’s dead still. It’s sounds like hail
on the tent walls.
We covered twenty plus kilometers today, a big
day, a long day. It was overcast this morning but it cleared up and got
really hot. When it gets hot here it is really miserable. There is no
escape, no shade, no way to get some protection but the tent, and the tent
is an oven, but at least you’re out of the bugs.
We ate in the tent tonight. We never eat in the
tent; I don’t want food in the tent. It can attract a bad crowd; we don’t
want any bears around us when we are sleeping. Can’t eat outside, the bugs
are fearsome, it’s impossible. The heat has pretty much killed my appetite
and my interest in cooking. I’m just making one pot meals of whatever I can
cook fast, and then we choke it down.
The one thing we brought that we really like is
the one hundred and fifty proof rum. We are carefully rationing it out at
night, hoping to make it last the whole trip. The consensus now is too much
food, not enough rum.
JULY 10th
We woke up to calm air and bugs. Ate breakfast,
granola or oatmeal, same every day, and bucked our stuff across a little
rapid and got underway. The wind came up form the West early in the morning,
blowing pretty much right in our teeth. We had a hard head wind all day.
We paddled five rapids into a big no name lake,
ducking from one small island to another, trying to get down the lake. It
was really huffing and puffing. We finally turned a corner and had only open
water and no place to hide. We gave it a try and were stopped in our tracks.
We couldn’t get to the Western shore were we thought we might get some
protection from the wind. No Bugs! Blowing really hard. We found shelter are
in a little protected place on the East Side of a very small island and it
was really comfortable, no bugs.
Bob flew over in the middle of the afternoon and
we talked to him on our hand held radio. He was coming back from dropping
off some fishermen at one of his camps on Dubawnt Lake. We asked him to call
the women and tell them that we are doing fine. Maybe they won’t be so
worried if he talks to them.
The wind stayed up, never let down at all. We
decided to sleep a little while and paddle after midnight if the wind goes
down later. We put up the tent and went to sleep. I got up every so often to
check the wind.
JULY 11 3:00 AM
The wind was down some so we got up and packed.
It’s was still very windy but not nearly as strong as it was a couple of
hours ago. It was a hard paddle across about a mile of open water to the
Western shore, but we managed. Turned up the lake and almost immediately got
stopped cold by a very strong NW wind. We couldn’t make three feet into it.
Temp about forty degrees, a little chilly. We turned around and found a
place to get off the lake and out of the wind. Quit and made camp. We ate
and were back in the sack before 7:00 AM. It’s clear and windy. We covered
two klicks.
We spent the day at this place. It remained very
windy all day and the lake was really up, white and frothy. We were out of
most of the wind and the spot was quite beautiful consisting of a very large
level area with a big hill behind us, protecting us from the westerly flow.
Paul found an old bowl; Hudson Bay trading style and a number of man made
stakes and a food cache under a big boulder. We are not the first ones to
use this place. Many people have been here in the past. In the middle of the
afternoon we walked up to the top of the hill to have a look around. From
the top we could see were we were yesterday and were we were hoping to go
tonight or tomorrow. The hill was the highest land around for many miles. We
turned in early hoping that the wind would go down, planning to leave as
soon as we could get back on the lake.
JULY 12th OFF THE LAKE
We turned in at 8:00 PM when it was clear that the
wind was not diminishing. Woke numerous times to check the water and at 3:00
AM we packed and made a dash, or rather a long grind up the lake. It was
still windy but the lake was down some and we could make headway. It was
hard paddling but very pretty slogging up the lake in the low light of the
early morning.
We’re off the lake and into the river! Life is
sweet! We made breakfast at the end of the lake as it entered the river.
Many people had stopped or camped here in the past. It is the obvious place
to rest and get off the water. We found single rock markers set up in
perfectly straight lines pointing to what I take to be a food cache. Two
intersecting lines of rocks marked the cache, which was filled with bones.
Twelve hours later we stopped 157 klicks from the
fish camp. We made 21 hard klicks today. It’s hot and muggy at camp, which
was laced with more stone markers in long straight lines.
JULY 13TH COOL AND CLOUDY
The wind switched to the Northeast! We have a
headwind again! It was a 180-degree change. We made it to 145 klicks, 12
hard klicks down the river. We paddled and walked three long, big rapids.
The water was not too cold. We saw stone markers all along the river,
marking the old camps. We finally arrived at a very long lake and had to
quit. The wind was tearing down the river right in our teeth. We were in an
old native camp; signs of the old people everywhere. No bugs when we got off
the lake and then the wind went down and the bugs came out big time. Another
one pot meal with flat bread and soup. That would be a three-course meal. I
was almost cooking.
JULY 14TH ANCIENT CAMP
It’s three PM and we’re in the tent dozing off an
all day rain. We arose before 5:00 A.M. this morning and quickly packed and
paddled up the lake in semi darkness. It was hard to navigate when we could
see and nearly impossible in the low light of early morning. Everything
looks the same. You can’t tell a bay from the open water, and the islands
are indistinguishable from the shore. The wind was light but cold. It rained
off and on as we picked our way along the long lake. Three hours on the
water and we stopped and made coffee. It remained dry while we ate.
Back on the water and up the lake. It started to
rain hard. After nine hours on the water we stopped at a sand spit sticking
into the river to rest and discovered an ancient camp. It was an obvious
place to get off the water. Many tent rings and stone tools and points where
scattered around the site. We set up the tent and crawled in. We were too
tired and cold to start the next rapids which where about one half mile down
the river. It was nice in the tent, warm and dry. We were soaked.
The tent was warm and smelled of our wet clothes
and gear, which we spread and hung everywhere. It really felt good to be in
the dry sleeping bag after being wet all day. We dozed and listened to the
rain on the tent. It was hypnotic and comforting to be inside for a change
instead of out in whatever was happening.
By late evening the rain stopped and the sun
returned. We where rested and dry and treated to a beautiful late evening
warm up. The sun was low and it made everything glow orange and gold. When
we surveyed the site we found about a dozen very old tent rings and various
signs of camp life everywhere. It was a very pleasant place to stop and
obvious why the native people stayed here. We found several sites where
quartz was being knapped into tools. There were knapped stones everywhere
and discarded scrapers and stone knives all over the camp. Quartzite is what
was being used for their tools. I hadn’t seen any in the area so I am
guessing that it was gathered somewhere else or was traded for with other
people.
JULY 15TH HALF TRAVEL DAY
I got up, packed my things, and got dressed for
travel. I barely got out of the tent before I returned. It was cold, windy
and drizzling. It was terrible. I got undressed, unrolled my bag and wormed
back in where it was warm and dry. We lay low all morning, dozing and
reading.
We got up at midday and headed down the river
against a very stiff headwind. We paddled and walked the first rapid. We
paddled six or seven more; it was an easy passage down the river under a
very low overcast sky. The sky and the water and the shore where all the
same shades of gray and black. We saw many stone markers along both shores;
single stones set on end on the horizon, blatant signs of the past. In the
middle of a big rapid while we where paddling hard in white water, I saw a
very large vertical marker on the skyline on the Eastern Shore. I was
overwhelmed with the presence of the ancient people that had been here
before us and where now gone.
We paddled and then walked a big rapid at the end
of the river and rode the flume into Giant Noleye Lake. As we started up the
shore, Bob flew over and we raised him on our handheld radio. As we where
badly behind schedule and now faced two big lakes, we asked him for a ride
to the headwaters of the Kamilukuak River. He told us that he may be back
and continued flying south. We waited around for a few hours and explored
the lakeshore. It was very pretty, big boulders and hills rising above the
lake, giving us many good vantagepoints. We couldn’t see across, the water
just disappeared into the haze. We got cold waiting and it was still very
windy so we unloaded the canoe and camped on the lakeshore.
JULY 16TH THE ISTHMUS
Bob didn’t return for us so we stayed at our camp
on big Noleye Lake. The wind didn’t go down much over night and it didn’t
get too cold. Now we didn’t want Bob to show up. We wanted to get to the
isthmus that we had read about in Mowat’s book. Paul had written him a
letter telling of our plans. He responded with a nice letter and description
of his trip to this area fifty some years earlier. He described the hunting
blinds and the vee shaped row of boulders that the Inuit had built to herd
the caribou together as they traversed the isthmus. He described an old
trappers cabin on Kamalukuat Lake and a hawks nest and wished us well. We
have the letter.
We packed up hoping Bob wouldn’t materialize. We
wanted to see what Mowat and his companions had seen fifty years earlier. We
paddled down the lake towards the isthmus into a steady headwind. Paul
guided us through the maze of islands and to a small peninsula, which had a
very small opening through it leading to the open part of the lake and the
West shore, our destination. The low point was filled with willows and was
one to two feet deep, but it was "the chosen way". We found numerous rock
markers guiding us through the tangle of rocks and shallows. People had been
coming this way for a very long time. We stopped at the most likely spot and
found tent poles and sled runners. We always seemed to stop where everyone
else had stopped. It was the human place to stop, or to rest, or to camp.
We were on the last bit of land before the
crossing. Everyone who came this way before us stopped here and surveyed the
crossing as we were doing. It was midday and the wind was down to a gentle
breeze. We looked across the two miles of very open lake and discussed the
chances of making it across before the wind returned. We talked and stared
and shuffled around and stared at the isthmus, now almost in our reach. I
wanted to go and Paul was hesitant. It was a big piece of open water with a
very long fetch and no protection and no place to stop. Once we started, we
were committed to continuing; there was no place to stop and hide.
It was about midday and we finally decided to go
for it. I was anxious to start while the wind was down. It was a big stretch
and very open. For the first third all was well, but as we reached the point
of no return, the wind seemed to pick up a bit, and as got further into the
lake, it started to blow. Soon we were paddling in black water, working very
hard to maintain headway with the shore a long ways away. We could see a
little rock pile about two thirds of the way across and aimed for it,
pulling as hard as we could. It was another paddle for life. No turning
back, no where to go but into the wind, pulling as hard as we could. After
what seemed hours we slowly pulled into the lee of rock pile and jumped out
of the canoe in waist deep water, exhausted. A few scraggly willows were
poking through the rocks and the waves where splashing over the rock pile
and us. I had visions of being stranded here for a couple of days and it
wasn’t very appealing.
After resting for a bit, catching our breath and
staring at the lake, we decided to go for it and piled back into the canoe,
pulling out of the protection of the rock pile and back into the full force
of the wind. We had about a third of the crossing left to cover and slowly
pulled towards the windward shore. As we covered the last portion, we
started to get some protection from the isthmus itself and the traverse
became steadily easier until we finally got in the lee of the shore and
blessed calm water and relief. We had made it. Another "paddle for life".
There always seems to one or two a trip.
We paddled into a little bay, beached the canoe
and climbed to the top of the long hill that was on the north side of the
isthmus. At the crest we got our first look at the "Inland Sea" that Mowat
described in his book. Standing on the hill, we could see down to the
narrowest portion of the isthmus, separating big Noleye Lake from the
"Inland Sea", big Kamilukuak, disappearing at the horizon, whipped to a
brown froth by the strong northwest wind. What a place.
Paddling to the lowest and narrowest place on the
isthmus, we found the spot were everyone stopped and camped. As we walked
the three-quarters of a mile to the West shore of Kamalukuak, we found
numerous stone markers, hunting vee’s, ambush places and signs of the
hunting and camping that had taken place here in the past. It was exciting
and a little Erie being in this place that had been so well used and was now
so empty. Only the stones and bones were left.
JULY 17TH DUST-OFF
We woke to a cold rain and strong wind. The wind
never went down overnight and there wasn’t a chance of getting on the big
lake. I sent an e-mail to Bob and asked him for a ride across the big lake
to the river. We have no idea if he will show up or not. If he doesn’t come,
we’ll just go when we can.
We had a leisurely breakfast and went for a long
walk up the isthmus, which got us several hundred feet above the two lakes
as the isthmus rose steadily both north and south away from the low point
that separated them. It was spectacular to look south and see the two big
lakes almost touch. We were looking at two very large, important drainages
simultaneously, separated by a bit of low marshy bog.
Later in the morning, I tried to cross the marshy
creek that flowed from Noleye into Kamalukuak but was turned back by a bad
bog and thicket which held most of the isthmus’ supply of bugs. I did
determine on this ill planned crossing that the Noleye does leak into the
Kamalukuak, which by our altimeter is thirty feet or so lower than the
Noleye, just as Mowatt wrote fifty years earlier. It continued to rain off
and on all day.
We walked to the big lake to see if we could
launch a canoe and returned disappointed. There was a nice surf crashing on
the rocks. No go. When we returned we found the gulls had eaten the trout
that Paul had caught for dinner. They were hanging around looking for more,
which we couldn’t provide.
We were in the tent dozing off the rain when we
heard the drone of Bob’s Beaver. Dust-off, evac, free fifty klicks to the
Kamalukuak River. Skip the big lake paddle. Get right to the river.
Bob had difficulty spotting us and we had to talk
him to us on the radio. We were surprised because we still had the yellow
tent up and thought it would be easy to see. He landed and taxied to shore
near our camp as we broke down our gear and packed up. He had two guys with
him that he was taking back to Kasba for their return south. While tying the
canoe on the floats Bob slipped and fell in the lake. We didn’t laugh.
Bob dropped us off just uplake from the beginning
of the river on a point of land that jutted into the bay where the river
began. We could hear the first rapids from our camp. This was as pretty a
campsite as we had visited. The sun was just below the horizon and the world
turned orange and red. We had a late dinner and cocktails, 150 proof rum.
Too much food and not enough rum. We won’t make that mistake again.
In the morning we started to look around and found
ourselves in a rather large, heavily used old camp. There were tent rings
scattered all over the point, with many food caches and piles of broken and
gnawed bones. We found a cache of tools and trapping gear under the remains
of a large sled. Fox traps, awls, wooden tools that we couldn’t identify and
pieces of bones filled the crevices and holes under the rocks. Someone had
obviously planned to return for their gear. Who left their possessions here?
We will never know.
JULY 18th FISH CAMP MILE MARKER 40
We left the camp at the headwaters and started
down the Kamalukuak River. As soon as we reached the river we were at the
first rapids which were loaded with fish. We fished the rapids as we walked
the canoe down river, stopping at the better spots and caught many lake
trout and a few big grayling. The sun was out and it was warm, making our
slog through the rapids very pleasant. We saw numerous old camps as we
descended the river. This area was quite well traveled and lived- in in
years past. Every place that we stopped we saw signs of people, camps, tent
rings, stakes, poles, food caches and the ever present broken bones.
Towards the end of the day, we caught and kept two
nice lake trout, which I poached for dinner with some corn bread. The bugs
were so bad that we had to eat in the tent. It was impossible to be outside.
I hate to eat in the tent. We are now forty klicks to Bob’s fish camp on the
big lake.
JULY 19TH ONE BIG DAY
We left our camp at mid morning to fair weather
and a southwest wind, which blew us down a long lake. It was nice to have a
tailwind, a rare treat. In the middle of a rather large lake Paul hooked a
large lake trout. I laboriously pulled us to the shore while Paul dealt with
the fish, hoping not to loose any more of our meager supply of tackle. In
the rocks at the shoreline, we unhooked an eighteen-pound laker and went on
our way. For the record, we clip all the barbs on lures. You don’t need
barbs here, and you probably don’t need them anywhere else. The wind
steadily came up and by the time we reached the next rapids, it was ripping.
The lake behind us was up and in a fury. We saw many old camps as we paddled
and drifted down river, all located at a good take out where the wind off
the lake might keep the bugs down. The next set of rapids was four miles of
continuous white water. The river fell sixteen feet in this distance and the
resulting rapids were big and very impressive. We walked and lined through
four miles of "bad road", slipping in the holes, falling over the slimy
boulders, dragging the canoe over the shallow spots and generally having a
hard time of it. When we were in the middle of it, unable to see where we
had come from and how far we had to go to get out of this hellish little
place I was low and tired. It seemed as if we were going to be there
forever, but once I could see the end, I revived. It took us a long four
hours to get through that stretch. It was our hardest day, wet, cold, windy
and exhausting.
With black clouds building behind us, we went
through the last chute and onto the next lake. We had taken the right
channel around a long island and it was a mistake. The only place to get off
the lake was on the west shore of the left channel and it was a long pull
directly into what was now a very strong wind, perhaps thirty five to forty
knots. It took us almost thirty minutes to get upwind to the shore, which
didn’t offer much protection. The campsite was a large flat area about
fifteen feet above the lake reached by scrambling up a steep bank. It was
sandy and clean, and offered a spectacular view of the lake. This site was
one of the largest and prettiest camps we had visited. Near the lake we
found the remains of a twenty four-foot sled with all the crosspieces. The
runners were enhanced with steel strips, which were very finely made. I
found numerous stone tools scattered around the camp, as well as the
ubiquitous broken and cracked and gnawed bones.
The sky cleared, the wind continued to howl and
Paul went to the lake and caught a couple of grayling, which I cleaned and
poached with corn bread. The colors looking northeast were beautiful. The
lake was black with white wind streaks tearing away from us towards the far
shore and sky and the tundra were almost the same shade of blue-green. In
the end it was a great day! No bugs!
JULY 20TH BUG CAMP MILE 18
The wind blew hard all night. It was cold in the
morning and still very windy. We paddled the long lake that we had camped on
and saw a pack of white wolves on the far shore. As soon as they saw us,
they moved away from the lake and out of sight. There were six or seven of
them jogging along in loose formation. We lined and paddled a long series of
rapids that emptied into the last big lake before Dubawnt Lake. It was still
cold so we stopped at the end and changed into dry boots and rested and
snacked. Towards the end of the day we paddled to the top of the of the last
series of rapids that emptied into Dubawnt Lake. The sun finally came out,
it got warm, the wind went dead and the bugs came out in swarms and clouds,
engulfing us on the water. We were in a low marshy area about a quarter of a
mile from the next set of rapids and we were tired and wanted to stop.
We scouted a couple of less wet places and chose
the dreiest little hump we could find which was marked by a large stone
tipped up on end set on the top of the hummock. We figured that this was as
good as it was going to get and were afraid to go further for fear of ending
up in the rapids with no place to stop. The campsite was surrounded by bog
and we were in the middle of a mosquito ranch and they were herding up. I
somehow boiled something up and we were forced to eat in the tent. It was
impossible to be outside. The sun was still rather high and we baked,
dripping and sweating without a breath of air.
JULY 21ST BUGGY SWAMP CAMP
We woke to clear skies and moderate temperatures.
We planned to line the last five clicks of rapids, which led to Dubawnt Lake
and were looking forward to a strenuous day. As we rounded the little point
that hid the river from our campsite, we came upon one campsite nicer than
the last. If we had just gone another quarter of a mile last night we would
have had a much better place to stop, but we were afraid of what we couldn’t
see. We didn’t want to make a marathon out of what had already been a long
day.
The long series of rapids that was shown on the
map turned out to be one long fast chute after another. We never got out of
the canoe. There were some rapids but the water was deep and nearly free of
rocks, making shooting the whole thing rather easy, and very enjoyable. The
last section of river before the big lake was very pretty with many rock
markers on both shores. This river had been well traveled for many
generations.
The overcast burned off as we paddled through the
fast water and the morning heated up. We stopped about one half mile before
the lake and walked and fished the fast water and eddies, but couldn’t get a
bite. It was surprising because it was very fishy looking. The shoreline on
both sides of the river was now very low, flat and boggy. We could see the
big lake past the expanse of tundra and the low hills surrounding the bay
that the river emptied into.
Paddling the last rapids dumped us into the big
bay and once out of the current, we were on mirror flat water. No wind, just
the bugs and heat. We crossed the bay hoping to get out and rest and eat but
when we got to the shore, we found an impassible willow thicket that started
at the shoreline and went at least a quarter of a mile inland and up the low
hills surrounding the bay. The willows started growing in one to two feet of
water making it impossible to get to shore. We got out of the canoe and
stood in knee deep water and snacked and rested.
I tried to send another "e" mail with my gadget
but I wasn’t sure it got out. When we returned to the canoe, we paddled the
whole bay looking for a place to camp but couldn’t find a break in the
willows that wasn’t boggy. We did find the portage, which was marked by one
of Bob’s boats. It was left there for any of his fishing guests that might
want to fish the river. We never got a rise, but maybe it was the wrong time
of day, or the wrong day, or maybe the wrong month. We’ll never know.
We spent hours looking for one small dry place and
eventually found one very small, nearly dry spot almost big enough to pitch
the ten. It was on the very edge of a large boggy area on the south side of
the bay very near the water. Had to cook on the rocks right at the waters
edge. This was a very small campsite.
The shoreline was made up of medium sized water
worn rocks arranged in a continuous line of scallops, almost like a sign
wave on the entire southern shore. It was like the pattern you might see in
sand made by the waves, but these were one to three pound stones arranged
perfectly by the prevailing winds and waves. The distance between scallops
was about fifteen feet, so I am assuming that that is an even multiple of
the average period of the waves that formed the shoreline pattern. The fetch
across the bay was about three miles without any tree on the shore to slow
things down. The wind probably blows pretty hard here and the waves are
probably fifteen feet between crests, making them about seven feet high.
I’ll bet that’s a real sight to see. I’m not that sorry that I missed it.
I cooked a fast one pot meal while being swarmed,
choked it down and dove for the tent. We had wanted to try fishing after we
ate but we couldn’t be outside. It was just too bad. The bugs were swarming.
The Western sum beat on the tent and made it an oven. We are hoping for a
nice cool day for the big portage.
JULY 22ND LAST PORTAGE
We woke to the sound of Bob’s Beaver as he flew
over our boggy camp. We talked to him on our radio and told him that we
would be in his fish camp sometime today. We had hoped that it would be nice
and cool and cloudy for the walk today but it was hot when we crawled out of
the tent. Along with the heat came the bugs, bright and early.
We packed down good and tight and headed for the
portage. It was cloudless, still and getting hotter as we loaded up at the
portage for the walk across the isthmus to the East Side of the lake. We
made the portage under the worst possible conditions. It was hot and sweaty
and bad walking, soft and boggy with long stretches of hummock grass with
bugs buzzing and swarming. It took us two trips and we were done, sweaty,
tired and eaten up.
We packed the canoe and started North towards the
fish camp. The lake was a mirror, mimicking the sky on the clear water, but
the wind was gone and the bugs followed us far out into the lake. It wasn’t
very pleasant; very pretty but not much fun.
We paddled and drifted and chatted, finally
arriving at Bob’s camp around mid-day. It was good to be at our target. This
part of the trip was over.
We pulled the canoe out of the water and were
greeted by Anne and Joe, the camp manager and his wife, or the camp manager
and her husband, we weren’t sure which. We sat down in the cook tent and to
get aquainted and were immediately served lunch. It was the first food that
I had eaten in three weeks that I hadn’t prepared and served. Quit a shock
but I got over it.
After lunch we went fishing and caught a fish as
big as me every cast. Too many fish. Shocking! It didn’t matter much were we
fished, we caught fish. We took turns fishing, arguing about whose turn it
was to fish. You didn’t want to take an extra turn because you would have to
handle another big fish. We had never seen such a place. The fish were
everywhere. All lake trout, only lake trout.
JULY 23RD FISH CAMP
We spent two days waiting for our ride back to
Kasba Lake and the Convair back to Winnipeg and then Minneapolis. The
fishing was breathtaking. Every cast produced a lake trout, most of them
pretty big. If a guy wanted to catch fish without doing much to earn the
right, this was the place. Bob had a camp on the north end of the lake also.
That was were the "big" fish were supposed to be. You couldn’t prove it to
me. We had trouble catching fish that were small enough to eat.
The afternoon of the third day at the camp, a very
noisy Beech 18 on floats roared over the camp, landed in the bay and taxied
back to shore to take us away, ending our time in the north.
The ride back to Kasba was flown at about five
hundred feet, just under the rainy overcast. We skimmed across the tundra
and saw a good deal of the rivers and lakes that we had so laboriously
paddled just a few days earlier. Everything was somber and dark, the clouds
reflecting the green of the tundra and gray black of the lakes. The rapids,
which were often such a trial for us, looked flat and inviting. The
beautiful camps were invisible in the vastness of the land. Everything just
melted together into a huge green and gray mat. We were going home.
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