Down The Back To The Arctic

Their canoe was found back in the rapids, caught by a loose bowline and being smashed periodically against the bottom by a vertical current. By riding an eddy upriver behind a rock, Kit and I got into the rapids and then eased over to the canoe and cut the bowline. Fortunately the damage was minor; the right gunwale had been ripped off from the stern seat back.

Things went well again for a week. The rapids became too long to investigate, but we developed a system of hugging the shore and hopping out and wading in our skin-diving dry suits around anything that looked too difficult or even marginal. There was no head wind for the 30-mile paddle down Beechey Lake, and the one-mile portage around the cascades at the foot of the lake was made efficiently in two trips for each man. Wildlife abounded. Fifteen musk-ox herding by the river bank, a black wolf sneaking along the shore and three caribou prowling through the campsite made the diversion our lost dog might have provided seem pallid. And we were hardly starving. Kit, with little or no effort, kept us supplied with fish, and when bloating was called for, we fried doughnuts and stuffed ourselves until we lay on the rocks and moaned.

JULY 24. Today the orange canoe broke in half. Its bad luck this time came when it struck a small rock at the edge of a minor rapids and jackknifed at the center thwart. Tracy gave it one kick and, surprisingly, it bounced back into shape. We lashed spare paddles to the split gunwales for support, had an undeserved but ego-building vat of macaroni, and once again set off for the polar sea.

JULY 25. If the rocks and gently rolling pastel-green tundra were looking more bleak and monotonous, our lives were not. Every day brought the excitement of an unforeseen challenge. For example, this evening Tracy and John were photographing a musk-ox browsing by the shore of our campsite. Kit was inland collecting scrub willow twigs for the fire while I soaked the dried vegetables. Suddenly the musk-ox turned and charged Kit. I saw the two silhouetted on the ridge, the beast's head lowered as he bounded over the rocks and hummocks, and Kit waving his arms and bellowing like a drunken matador but holding his ground. For a few seconds it looked as if my sternman would be impaled on a long, curling horn and tossed across the barrens, but the musk-ox veered just in time and snorted on over the moss at about 30 mph.

JULY 26. No one budged this morning at our camp before Hawk Rapids. During the night the strong winds of a cold front had swept down from the arctic. You soon learn to tell whether headway is possible that day or whether it is worth crawling out of your sleeping bag at all from the way the tent shakes. John out-slept us all by sacking in until 4 p.m. He did, however, stick a gloved hand under the tent flap for his bowl of Grape Nuts at noon.

For a week we fought the winds and cold rain. Where the weather stopped us, we camped, often portaging inland over half-frozen muskeg to have a cup of dried beef peanut butter and raisins (our own brand of pemmican) in the tents.

AUGUST 1. Today it snowed. The rain, begun in the morning, turned to sleet and finally to a blizzard. We inched along blindly, judging from the waves that were hitting us broadside that we had turned east down Pelly Lake. Ahead lay the 70 miles of Pelly and Garry lakes, in places 20 miles wide, which made open water unavoidable. To wait for the gale to let up might mean a delay of weeks. The best we could do was hope to travel under the protection of the windward shore, but this meant crossing Pelly Lake. We decided to chance it.

Kit was petrified. From his stern seat he could see the water splash across the packs and the waves surge within an inch of the gunwales. I had no worry until I saw the orange canoe crash over the white crests and disappear into the troughs. I realized we were pushing the canoes to their limit but also appreciated how stable the Chestnut Ogilvy canoe is under the worst conditions.

AUGUST 3. The wind died this morning, and we plunged over the broad rollers of Garry Lake to a small island with an abandoned mission perched high on bluffs overlooking the sandy beach of a peaceful cove. Strewn about the cabin were Bibles and religious comic books in English and Eskimo, caribou bones, some household medicines and letters from Paris and arctic posts addressed to a Father Trinel. There was also a disheveled freight canoe, somewhat less seaworthy after Tracy axed out the ribs and planking to get the potbelly stove roaring. That night we washed down Spanish rice and 30 doughnuts with brandy. After the brandy, tales of the river and musk-ox charges and raging blizzards grew to heroic proportions.

AUGUST 4. A day of rest. We stewed an arctic hare that John had shot, brewcd a chowder using greyling and cooked a large vat of beans. The brief respite allowed us to patch dry suits, mend pants, reorganize the packs and stow away firewood.