full photoset and slideshow

The preceding night’s long sleep, the day’s light exertion and even the nap didn’t prevent us from hitting the sack soon after early nightfall.  Not only did  our creaky bodies crave extra rest since the big descent, living outdoors increased synchronization between the anatomical clock and the seasonal one.  Drifting off to sleep felt like hibernating–to conserve and store energy, and also to continue a winter journey into the underworld.

Two days earlier the permit-checking ranger had said that we’d be in for a change in the weather Saturday, and the morning sky seemed to confirm her warning.  Our itinerary called only for a five mile hike today, mostly on a good trail, with no great altitude changes, so we dallied at the river, adding stewed dried fruit to our outmeal, brewing an extra pot of coffee, further exploring the little oasis and gawking at dancing patterns of light and shadow projected on the canyon’s  walls  by thick fast moving clouds.

Relieved of unnecessary weight and the straps better adjusted, on the way  up through Hermit Canyon the pack felt more like a strong hug than a troublesome burden, and the effort to escape gravity while ascending was easier on the joints than resisting it on the way down.

Once back on the Tonto trail heading eastward on the Platform, it was possible for the first time to enter the springy rhythm of forward motion propelled by the momentum of extra weight that for me makes hiking a real sport.  Cruising this wide plateau–continuous across both banks of the inner canyon, which usually hides, but then suddenly gapes at one’s feet with a fifteen hundred foot drop either to the flowing Colorado or the tributary gullies the trail must circumvent by leading back to the base of walls and buttresses and towers that stretch higher overhead with every step–under a sky that transforms momentarily from a limitless expanse of light to a dampening ceiling of fog made walking feel like flight.

Like the canyon itself the trail’s track through space performed tricks with time.  It led a leisurely traverse around the base of Cope Butte, the harshest section of the descent two days ago,  and above the river it provided a retrospect of yesterday’s idyll at Hermit Rapids.

As the afternoon shadows deepened we passed along the edge of Monument Creek’s side canyon eager to find the campsite at its head before dark.  The trail twisted off the Platform down into a tight gully through which we could hear water flowing toward the river.

After debating which of the many surrounding formations above us could be the named Monument, the answer was suddenly obvious looming from below. The top two thirds of the column consisted of brownish fractured sandstone layers, the bottom third of rounded pink lobes.

As the trail dropped into the basement level of rock formation, the colors on the wall beside it became even more unearthly than those in Hermit Canyon.

This campsite offered the succor of perennial creek water that could be purified and harvested to fill our drinking bladders, coffeepot and dehydrated dinner envelops. In addition it provided a toilet conspicuously absent from last night’s where we had to search fruitlessly for a satisfactory place among the rocks for our leavings and make unpleasant acquaintance with the deposits of others.  Like in many other recreational wilderness situations, this is more of a problem than might be expected, and we felt grateful for the stinky and prominent facility here provided.

A large party of backpackers had occupied the marked campsites and so tight was the gully that the sound of their amiable voices boomed around us, so we relocated to a more solitary spot, again unauthorized but well used, to pitch the tent and cook supper in the light of a brilliant sunset and haunting moonrise.

The pole stretching the fly on my two-person tent had become deeply bowed over years of use, and Steve exerted his design skills to straighten it, to great advantage, since in the middle of the night the wind blew and the rain pelted down but inside we stayed cozy and dry.

full photoset and slideshow

After 12 hours of rest, we awakened in the predawn and packed up quickly to vacate the unauthorized spot.  I wished we’d had coffee.  Before starting out we dutifully stretched,

and as the light came up we descended into a tight curvy canyon gouged out of the shale strata of the Platform that reminded me of the hike through Zion canyon I’d taken with Joe and Amy in 1995, during which he went off into a side canyon with her and proposed.

The sound of flowing water echoed as we approached Hermit Creek graced with little cascades and rich vegetation.

The old trail, originally constructed by the Santa Fe Railroad as part of a luxury resort serviced by a cable tramway from the rim, wound under rock overhangs down to a place where the neat horizontal layers through which we’d descended since yesterday were replaced by swirling shapes of hardened basalt laced with multicolored and multitextured stone.  We were entering the “basement” of the canyon, the deepest portion carved by the river and its tributaries that exposed rocks estimated as two billion years old.  The shale layers directly above them were supposed to be 500 million years younger, making for the “Great Unconformity,” in which the geological record had disappeared.  To mark the change, large clumps of overlying strata had fallen into the canyon on the opposite side of the creek. On the trail side we stopped to marvel at granite embedded with huge flakes of mica interspersed with quartz in bright shades of red, white and black.

As the canyon straightened near the bottom, we suddenly saw the pillar of Ra flaming above us and heard the roar of the river ahead.

Then the walls on our side opened to reveal sky and brilliantly colored cliffs upstream and down.  We were at the Hermit Rapids and didn’t have to leave until the following morning!

We had a choice of empty campsites and picked one in soft, warm sand right on the riverbank surrounded by tamarisks and willows .

Before unpacking and lighting the stove for coffee, we clambered over some large rocks for a look at the rapids themselves and  were joined by a young woman, Ingrid, one of a group of kayakers and rafters on a 27 day journey on the river.

She was soon surrounded by a crowd of men young and old who charted a course through the fast flowing turbulence.

They had camped here last night after swamping in Granite Rapids upstream and were just ready to take off.  Regretting the delayed coffee but excited to watch and take pictures of their daredevilry,  we waited beside the clean, green racing river that had carved the masterpiece engulfing us.

The spectacle was worth the delay.  First came Ingrid and another kayaker in their tiny solo boats.

Then the rafters, some in twos, some by themselves.

This was no guided tour; they were all highly experienced River Rats who owned their equipment and lived for the sport, according to Mike P., the grizzled rower who left his email address. Once they had all run the rapids, they assembled in the eddy below and then disappeared around the blind curve ahead.

We set up our gear, boiled water for coffee and oatmeal, and luxuriated in the prospect of a day of rest and relaxation.  Despite the long sleep the night before and the stimulant, we all napped for a couple of hours, Peter after taking a dip in the icy water that flowed from the bottom of the dam upstream at Glen Canyon.

In the afternoon we went exploring the creek and beaches and rock formations of this wondrous oasis in the midst of vertical walls that otherwise made the river unapproachable from land.

I started reading Powell’s enthralling account of his 1869 trip down the river.  He was the one-armed leader of a small expedition of wooden boats, which by the time they had reached here had lost most of their tools and provisions and still had they knew not how far to go and what awaited them ahead.

As I stood munching our lunch of salami and cheese, I looked up at the cliff behind the campsite and saw moving shapes.  Two of the canyon’s legendary mountain sheep were browsing on the low ridge line no more than 200 feet away.  “Get your cameras,” I whispered, pulling mine from its holster.  Eager as any hunter to shoot, we captured the quarry.

Click last two images for full-size versions

full photoset and slideshow

Next morning after early breakfast we drove into the National Park, passing elk wandering the roads. We left the car at the Backcountry Information Center where we had to wait over an hour to buy a map and receive advice to head down the Boucher Trail, which my earlier research alerted me was dangerously erroneous.

fullsize map and itinerary

Then we took the red bus along the rim road to Hermit’s Rest, where I purchased a copy of John Wesley Powell’s The Exploration of the Colorado and its Canyons,  and followed the Hermit Trail over the edge.

The hike was ecstatic at first, the canyon more Grand and awe inspiring than any landscape I’ve seen, including Yosemite and Zion: the light and colors of the rock more dramatic, the succession of views on the trail”ahead, behind, across, up, down”more varying, the eye continually arrested by unfamiliarity of shape, texture, and scale.

The trail was quite busy with hiker traffic in both directions.  Three hours down we came across an attractive young woman sitting on a rock in the sunshine.  She asked to see our permit and then stopped a large party passing by to see theirs.  She told them they were too late to make it all the way to the site at the river where they were registered and signed a change order on the permit allowing them to stay at a closer one.  Then she warned them not to make noise that could disturb others at the campsite.  I told her that Steve was a half mile behind us carrying our permit and asked the penalty for camping somewhere without one.  Two hundred eighty seven dollars she replied without smiling.

I was having extra fun playing with the new camera I had bought for the trip–a two hundred dollar 10x telephoto 10 megapixel hand-sized Canon, which replaced both the point-and-shoot I handed down to my grandson and the bigger but less powerful SLR I’d purchased just two years ago.  At a turn in the trail that brought us for the first time within sight of the inner canyon, I wondered if a little blue dot in the middle of the view was some kind of gondola, and only after I took the picture could I recognize on the screen that it was actually the river.

fullsize picture

After four hours of carrying my overloaded pack–from excess caution I’d brought along five liters of water in addition to the heavy food, tent and stove”on a trail that got steadily steeper, more fractured and more littered with stones, the fun ended. The splendor of scenery, the invigoration of exercise, the stimulation of good company gave way to pain, fatigue and anxiety.  I ached in the shoulders from the pack straps, in the upper arms from bearing weight with the trekking poles, in the knuckles from gripping them, in the spine from the packs’ rubbing, in the stomach and side and thigh and calf muscles from tensing against the weight, in the hip and knee and ankle and big toe joints from internal friction at every step, in the thickened toenails crushed by my boots, and in the ears jarred by the clank  of poles against rocks.

This was predicted by the well-written Park Service Bulletin about the trail:

The Hermit Trail is unmaintained, the ruins of a pathway that hasnt seen a trail crew in 80 years….The trail runs across an angle of repose slope, crossing high gradient drainages at roughly perpendicular intersections.  ¦the trail has been badly damaged by the same erosional forces that shaped the larger canyon. Hikers must scramble across chaotic jumbles of rocks washed down or fallen from above every time the trail crosses a gully.  It is possible to lose the trail entirely where breakdown has covered the original route¦The uncertain footing as well as the impression of exposure presented here has caused inexperienced canyon walkers to conclude that they are engaged in a truly hazardous enterprise.

The descent becomes unrelenting at Cathedral Stairs.  An endless series of rocky switchbacks eventually leads hikers through the Redwall cliff and down the talus below Cope Butte….

As we made our way down that cirque of Cope Butte toward the more level Tonto Platform, I resorted to the emergency tactic I’d used while hiking with grandkids and Jan: talk distraction.

I asked Steve his worst hiking experience and he told me of the forty mile walk he took from Gold River to Tahsis and of his hair-raising climb up Bear Tooth, and I told him of my 1962 hike up the mountain in Yellowstone to the fire lookout I was stranded in for three days out of exhaustion.

After a rest stop at the trail junction, some gorp and two more Aleves, I got a second wind, and could again enjoy the sunset light on the buttes across the river. Miraculously, Steve’s wounded knee, a concern for all of us, showed no signs of further injury.

We ambled on to a solid rock campsite several miles short of the one where we were permitted to stay, but safe from the citation-dispensing rangers at this time of night.

We prepared an easy Thanksgiving meal”two cups of boiling water poured into envelops of dehydrated Turkey Tetrazzini–more than good enough to merit gratitude.  As the sun set, I blew up my Thermarest, crawled into the sleeping bag, rested my head on the unpitched tent and reveled in the sensation of relaxing muscles.

The stars were clear and the air mild”twenty degrees above the chilly rim four thousand feet overhead. I woke up several times without having to get out of the sleeping bag, following Steve’s suggestion to pee in a water bottle which remained comfortably warm beside me.  The waxing moon flooded the cliffs with light and then disappeared behind them. Three shooting stars flared.

Prelude and background

After a quick trip to Trader Joe’s for provisions the day before, Steve and I left San Luis early Wednesday morning and drove  across the Carrizo Plains on Highway 58.  The emptiness of the landscape and the beauty of the road provided a preview of what was to come.  The eight hour trip to Las Vegas over the Tehachapis and through the Mohave desert passed quickly, lightened by easy conversation, favorite music downloaded from my itunes collection and anticipation of the hike.

We met Peter at the airport, avoiding contamination of contact with the city, and headed south on highway 93. At Hoover Dam we encountered a massive traffic jam and got out to join thousands of tourists rubbernecking at the old dam in the spectacular late afternoon desert sunlight.

Rather than pay the 25 dollar admission to the new 115 million dollar visitor center we admired the art  nouveau mosaics and sculptures ornamenting the 1930’s engineering miracle.

It’s now dwarfed by a magnificent four lane bridge under construction across the canyon hundreds of feet higher at a cost so far of 250 million dollars.  It will, we are told, alleviate traffic congestion on the road between Phoenix and Las Vegas, even though an alternate Interstate route already exists.

A good Thai dinner in Kingman Arizona kept us going till arrival at the Holiday Inn Express room I’d reserved a couple of miles outside the park in a dreary new industrial tourism development.

full photoset and slideshow

About a month ago Steve E. phoned and said he was traveling down to California in late November and would I want to join him for a hike in the Grand Canyon.  I’d seen the Canyon 44 years ago from the rim on a hot hazy day, surrounded by mobs of tourists, and never had the urge to go back until a recent flight  to Idaho via Phoenix, during which the plane went over it at 30000 feet and I got the point. I was also feeling what Andy called Wilderness Withdrawal since returning from the Yukon and only managing to organize one campout–a night on the Sandspit with Chad. So I jumped at the invitation.

Steve had done preliminary research which indicated that it wouldn’t be easy to get a camping permit even at that time of the year, but since the reservation would have to be sent by mail, I volunteered to negotiate a time and itinerary  from here. The central trail which he had hiked 25 years ago and which had guaranteed supplies of water was unavailable, so I looked for alternate routes on the web and collected books from the Cal Poly library.  Because no large scale map of the canyon showing all the trails was available, this required learning quite a bit of nomenclature: categories of corridor, threshold, primitive and wilderness trails and names of specific trails and campsites and their designations, itineraries where water was available at least every other day, and a sense of the contours and distances inside the canyon.

Following up possible itineraries led to warnings like these:

Extreme care should be taken if you are using this trail during the winter months under icy conditions as at times your are literally walking on the edge of the gorge and one wrong step could be fatal. Once the trail reaches the head of Travertine Canyon the real fun begins. The descent is clogged with boulders of all sizes ranging from footballs to small houses. Most other guide books that I have read actually recommend this trail. I think that the people who wrote these must be out of their collective minds. You end up taking a lot of chances going down something like this and there are some difficult places where you may have to take off your packs and lower them down with ropes.

And this, coming from an independent authority, was mild compared to the warnings stated by the Park Service:

The Boucher challenges even experienced canyon hikers. The trail consists of tough, tedious traverses linked together by knee-destroying descents, with a section of exposed hand and toe climbing thrown in for good measure.

Not an adventure to take on with a partner who has bad knees.

After further immersion in the literature and several amiable conversations with people at the Backcountry Information Center, we were able to come up with what promises to be a reasonable five day loop that wont require the Satellite phone or other unusual backup arrangements. In addition, Peter B. decided to join us, flying into Las Vegas from Vancouver.

Even with the risks diminished, my imagination remained excited by the prospect of exploring a vast landscape different from any other on earth, a place where nature and recreation converge with metaphysics and myth.  I read that although the canyon itself was only 7 million years old, it trenched downward into rocks at the bottom that had been there upwards of two billion years, that the mile-deep descent through layers of strata conducts the hiker back that far on a voyage through time, where the passage of epochs can be followed in the coherent sequence of strata, like the dendrochronology in rings of ancient trees.

This seemed a particularly appealing prospect while I was spending time probing my own past, descending through volumes of journals, trays of slides, albums of photographs, packets of letters, looking for the overall shape and meaning of the story.

A comparable search drives Colin Fletcher, the author of a book written in 1968 entitled The Man Who Walked Through Time. For seventeen years, he planned a solo hike from one end to the other of the two hundred seventeen mile stretch of the Canyon within the National Park.  His account is structured as a vision quest, a passage through exertion, fear, deprivation and ambition toward an unmediated experience that puts him in touch with the nature out there beyond the busy preoccupations of his ego and that helps him understand the relationship between his tiny presence in space and time and the vast expanses of both in which it finds itself.

Day 8

Cameron and the Brits headed downstream while we washed the canoes and obeyed Steve’s strict instructions for cleaning up the campground.  He struck it rich by finding a pair of provocative ladies’ panties.  Horst showed up with the trailer.  He came here 40 years ago from Germany to hunt moose and never went back.  On the road to Whitehorse we got out to look at a roadkilled porcupine, slight compensation for the absence of bear, wolf and moose along the river. We stopped in Braeburn, a coffee shop on the Alaska highway to share some impressive Cinnamon Rolls and arrived in Whitehorse, where we found the previous day’s newspaper’s official version of Russell’s story.

We were joined at dinner in the Hotel Restaurant by Andy’s friends and associates–Chad, an environmental consultant and Mary Ann, professor and researcher in paleolimnology, the study of lake bottom sediments and fossils that encode the north’s environmental history.  Jonah and Monica also returned to hear about our adventures and share more of theirs.  Some of the men stayed in the bar till closing learning local lore from a reliable informant with some regrets in the morning.  Others retired early to enjoy clean sheets, good books and prospects of returning home.

Day 7

The fog was thick during breakfast at the Little Salmon campsite. The roar of trucks on the Campbell Highway that converged here with opposite bank of the river gave notice of our excursion’s approaching end. Our original plan to spend one more night in the wild was abandoned in favor of staying over at the Coal Mine Campground in Carmacks, our planned pickup point the next day. We couldn’t travel the river in fog and it was lifting later today than yesterday. It could strand us tomorrow.

A second shot of Murray’s coffee and his pome cleared the air for the last lazy cruise.  The aspens were turning from yellow to gold.  Fish were biting.  On a gravel bar at lunch, the men aimed rocks at a figurine erected by Steve. Early arrivals at the Coal Mine campground got to clean up and ride into town for beer to bring back, and heard the news that Russell’s associate had been found dead in the bush after an extensive search involving boats, land parties and helicopters.  Andy and Murray brought more fish caught in eddies and at beaverdams.  Cameron and the two Brits showed up and joined our campfire for more Robert Service readings.  Ian presented them with the collection he’d bought second hand.

Day 8

To view a complete set of photos for this trip go here.
To view a slideshow of these photos go here.

Day 6

A quarter moon and Venus lit the dawn, which arrived 45 minutes later this morning than the day we started. Allan, a.k.a. “Soaring Eagle,” was the day’s leader. We crawled out of the tents greeted by a heavy frost, another sign that the northern winter was on its way. A ribbon of fog spread from the cold river over the warming land and then burned off revealing a cloudless sky. The powers above were smiling on our soon-to-be-terminated voyage. The current had reached a steady 10 km/hr making paddling optional, except where multiple channels around gravel bars and islands required selection and vigorous effort.  Reflecting on the ability of the river to move us as it wanted while we struggled to find the right direction and on yesterday’s experience of choice and circumstance, Steve and I debated determinism and free will. In other canoes Andy theorized about neurological analogies between gambling and angling addictions while John and Murray caught more fish.

On the lookout for a suitable spot to stop for lunch, we rounded a turn and spotted a curious sight on a distant low island: what looked like an old-fashioned wall tent standing off kilter on the shore and people at a campfire.  Steve said, “Looks like hunters, lets not go there,” but then we saw Allan and John’s canoes pulled up on the beach.  As soon as we landed, our old friend Cameron came over and introduced a young fellow with long curly hair and a leather hat as “a film maker.”  We walked with them toward the fire and discovered that the tent was pitched on fresh cut spruce poles and mounted on a large raft also completely constructed of poles. Alan and Rob were conversing with a striking young woman wearing dreadlocks gathered in a loose bun who offered us tea and muffins with a radiant smile.  I could only smile back and stare goggle-eyed as she explained that she was with a group who had built the raft several days before out of 130 poles they cut at the northern end of Lake LaBarge where they too were delayed by the storm. Afterward they’d floated it down the river, having spent a whole night on the water trying to find a place to land where they could maneuver out of the current.

Two other men stood at the fire drinking tea, neither looking much like a voyageur, and when they spoke, out came the broadest Cockney accents I’ve heard since watching a Mike Leigh movie.  They had seen a story about going down this river in a book about 20 Great Things To Do Before You Die and had taken a couple of weeks off from their business in London ferrying drunk teenagers from pub to pub in a minibus.  They’d never canoed or kayaked before and were having the time of their lives.

It was hard for me to take my eyes off the woman with the tea, but my attention was drawn by the sound of Ian flopping in the water off the gangplank leading to the raft.  I wandered over and went aboard to overhear a man who looked like a model exquisitely garbed in wool and corduroy explaining to John with a thick French accent that he and his partner, professional guides, were making a promotional film about a new sport of recreating the old prospector’s experience of building rafts and floating them down the river, the project financed by a Swiss bank. They had rented two canoes from “Up North Adventures,” carried their baggage and towed two large logs and six plastic barrels up the lake, and then used hand tools to build the raft.

Against the pile of baggage on the large deck leaned expensive cases for a rifle and a guitar. Too shy to address questions in the presence of all this competence, youth and beauty, I asked John how the girl got here and he said the guides had put an invitation in the Whitehorse newspaper classifieds and that she responded. Her name was Victoria.  She’d left New Zealand on her post-highschool travel sabbatical twelve years ago and was still on the road.

Back at the fire, Victoria was joined by another lovely woman from the south of France.  She was talking to Lionel and Allan about having encountered Russell a couple of days before and not knowing what to make of him. We shared our story and I flashed on my adventure in the south of France 47 years ago, centered in a tiny village called Grimaud.  She said she knew the place.

Our group reassembled at our landing spot for lunch as the last canoe arrived with Murray and Andy, triumphant about having caught four grayling and also puzzled by the spectacle on the beach.  I urged Murray to give the ladies an offering of fish, but hearing our giggles at his approach, he returned too embarrassed to proceed and instead targeted me with a Monte Python fish slap.

After lunch Murray, Andy and I went skinny dipping in the cold Yukon river a discrete enough distance from the young folk to limit our exposure and still show off. Once we were dressed again and about to get  back into our canoes, the two women wished us farewell as they walked down the beach carrying machetes, presumably to cut more poles in the bush.

Our intended campsite for the night was already occupied by a couple with a dog so we decided to spare them our company and take the next one downstream indicated in the guide, but it couldnt be found. While Murray and Andy stayed behind to catch more fish, the rest decided to carve out a new campsite on a small muddy spit at the end of an island since night was approaching. When the fishermen arrived and saw it, they convinced us to keep going another hour to the Little Salmon River where we found an established spot that all agreed was a better choice. Three speedboats passed close to the canoes just before dusk–other than the RCMP’s the first motors we heard in a week. “Don’t F—With Me” Steve was appointed next day’s leader.

Day 7

To view a complete set of photos for this trip go here.

To view a slideshow of these photos go here.

Day 4

Lord Robert, the day’s captain, saw to it that we were back in the boats at 9 AM on a bright promising morning. The only use of the word “spectacular” in our otherwise low-key guide occurred to describe the section of the river we approached soon after departure, dramatically illuminated in the morning sunshine.  Two high cutbanks converged to create what seemed like an endless maze, probably the outcome of past shifts of the river’s course.  We all stopped paddling and let the current slowly wind us along, dazzled by the luminous cliff faces and hushed by those in shadow, dwarfed by their scale, thrilled by the brilliance of sky and foliage on the opposite bank.

Lunch was scheduled for Mason’s Landing, a historical landmark 136 kilometers from our starting point.   Among the ruins of crude log cabins, we ate, rested and Murray chronicled and composed.  According Mike Rourke’s guide, the Teslin river itself didn’t yield much gold, but it was the route from the South to Dawson City and the Klondike a hundred miles north, and to nearby big strikes on Livingstone Creek in 1894.  First a pack trail and then a wagon road was constructed to lead there from this trading post, along with a telegraph line from the Hootalinqua junction downstream, our destination for the night’s camp.

Andy’s GPS told him that the current was increasing so we could slow down whenever we wanted to enjoy the scenery, the fishing and the feel of the river flowing fast over the bottom visible in the shallows along the shore and slow through the eddies and whirlpools on its surface in the middle.

At Hootalinqua, the Teslin terminated, absorbed by the Yukon river flowing into it from Lake Labarge. The Google map suggested this would be a sensational location, but the convergence was hidden by treed islands. Nevertheless one could suddenly feel a surge of new current and see that the color of the water had changed from a transparent brown to an opaque green.  We paddled hard to get across the channel  and arrived in a calm bay, at the end of which floated a pair of swans in placid dignity beside an artfully shaped boulder protruding from the water.  As we approached them quietly, they took off in formation and circled the large bay trumpeting as they flew over us and then returning to alight where they started.

Another reception was provided by a man standing on shore staring at us intently, dressed not like a canoeist or kayaker, but in torn jeans, jean jacket, gumboots and wide hat, long-haired, bearded, bespectacled and dark in complexion.  There was no sign of a boat along the shore and we knew there was no road to this place. As we pulled up on the sand beach, eager to explore this interesting location and make use of the well built outhouses, he asked if we had any tobacco, he hadn’t had a cigarette in days, since he’d had a fight with his uncle, got out of the boat here, and waited around hoping for a way to get home.

As we unloaded our canoes a tiny figure came shooting across the widened river from behind the island paddling a tiny collapsible kayak.   Cameron, a young man from Victoria had borrowed it from someone he knew who had got it from someone else for a hundred dollars. He’d started at Whitehorse on the Yukon river, and gotten delayed by a two day storm that kept him from crossing Lake LaBarge.  He had neither sleeping bag nor waterproof clothing nor job nor kayaking experience, but a spirit of adventure that was taking him through the five finger rapids all the way down river to Dawson City.

The marooned man, named Russell, also asked Cameron for a smoke.  His strange story and mix of reticence and talkativeness made everyone uneasy.  In reply to whether or not he had food, he said “up in a tree,” explained later by his saying he’d almost hit a grouse with a rock and that he could kill the two swans with one shot.  Steve urged that we offer him a ride out, but Andy suggested that we bring up all the paddles from the shore and keep them in our tents.

Russell disappeared while we ate a somber dinner.  Andy called Steve Mother Teresa and said that Russell refused his offer to call for help with the Satellite phone. Steve said that only “Westerners” would be hesitant to help a person like this in distress.  The rest of our group seemed reluctant to desert Russell but wary of taking on a passenger we distrusted for the rest of the trip, especially since his family and friends knew of his being here. After the meal to which he was not invited, Russell returned and asked for coffee”but not alcohol.  Steve gave him hot chocolate and John and he engaged Russell in conversation.  He had come up river, he said, with his uncle and two friends, one of who had “gone crazy” and run off into the bush up near Teslin Crossing, a spot between Mason Landing and the Spectacular Cut Bank.  The uncle insisted on returning to Carmacs down the river for a doctor’s appointment, but Russell wanted to stay and search. That was the reason for the fight. Wariness diminished somewhat as we all sat around the fire in the chill evening drizzle, despite Russell’s repeated mention of the “thirty aught six” that he had stashed in his camp. He also indicated that he had a son in England, that he was a volunteer firefighter, that he was planning to go to a First Nations shindig upriver, that he was a Boston Bruins fan and that he was familiar with Leonard Cohen.

Day 5

To view a complete set of photos for this trip go here. To view a slideshow of these photos go here.