Day 6 - Ranger Cabin to Snake Rapids

Captain's Log - Day 6 of my trip, from Ranger Cabin on the Sturgeon Weir River to the top of Snake Rapids:

I woke up on the front lawn at the ranger station and made coffee with my jet boiler. Breakfast this morning was Shreddies with powdered milk and some raisins. I woke up just beaten. You know, I wasn't that sore, but exhausted like I had had a hard number of days and I couldn’t sleep anymore, but I was groggy. I just didn’t have any energy whatsoever, so I figured I better listen to my body and take the morning and reorganize my gear. Which, like I said, it takes a couple of weeks just to kind of get things to where you need them to be but the first couple days is always rearranging bags and what you need for that day. Even after doing this for 35 years, it seems like a guy has to relearn a new system every trip he’s on because with different groups your chore list is different. So if I'm in a canoe group of, you know, six or eight guys or four guys, I have a specific job where I have to look after certain gear, which is, you know, a quarter of the gear that I gotta look after now. I’m still undoing the scramble mode that kind of happened from two days before starting the trip, which is my fault. I'm sort of a professional procrastinator by nature. I don't find menial tasks worth doing until I absolutely have to do them, which puts me into scramble mode and for whatever reason it always seems to work out. I usually put everything I need in the right bags, the real important stuff like food, coffee and sugar, those are the three things that I make sure I have on a trip. You know who needs a flashlight. Anyhow, where was I?

By the time I made breakfast and had all my gear all over the lawn of the Ranger cabin area fishing boats started showing. No sooner had one or two come by and another two or three more came by. In all, about 15 boats between eight o'clock and 10 o'clock came trolling by looking for the big northern in that section of river where I was camping. Huge, giant northerns. I've seen pictures of them constantly the last couple of years pulling out 48 inch 49 inch northern pike.

So, I got reorganized and my packs sorted out and a few things dried out. I fed Taiga - he gets fed as soon as I get up because otherwise he's scrambling around trying to pick through my gear looking for food. Looking after him is just like looking after a little kid teaching him good habits but I get the feeling it's gonna take me a whole trip to do, which kind of keeps me entertained. I'm really enjoying having him along. Anyway, it was getting close to noon and I was getting the gear back down to the dock and I couldn't find Taiga. So I'm looking around and I had the canoe tied up to the dock and guess who's already in the canoe sleeping? I think because it was getting warm out and there were lots of horse flies on shore and so he just did that. I even tried calling him to get out of the canoe, but he wouldn't get out of the canoe. He was ready to go! And I tell you what, Taiga has just naturally become a canoe dog within two days now and I just can't believe it. It's just amazing.

So I finally got all the bags packed into the canoe and sorted them out. Taiga has his spot in front of my feet where he can get out of the sun or he can poke his head up over the canoe to see what's going on. For the first half hour he watched the scenery go by and, of course, we were passing by fisherman and he was growling and barking. He thinks that any new thing on the water is danger.

So we cruise along about five kilometers to get to the Spruce Rapids portage. So we have our first portage on this day, which now we're where normal Portages and in this case had been well trotted. It's on a main river route and the indigenous are using it to get to their cabins upstream and same with the fisherman.It was only about a 400m portage of nice walking. It’s like a dream portage compared to what I was used to at the beginning of the trip. I always find that the portages are awesome for Taiga because he gets to run around back and forth until I get all the gear over. And then we went for a swim. It is already plus 28 so we both went for a swim below Spruce Rapids which is always refreshing. I always wear light shorts or something I can easily just jump in with at any time and go for a swim and get back out. Of course I take all my knives and stuff out of my pockets and get down to my t-shirt and shorts. I always like to get my t-shirt wet because it just kind of keeps me cool on a hot day. After our swim we got going and I'd say that it was a fairly boring day.

One cool thing was I came across the trappers cabin which is Darrell Sewap's parent's cabin where he grew up both fishing and trapping. (Darrel was another one of my line cutters.)

Day 6 - Sewap Cabin

And so I went and gave the cabin a visit and took some pictures so I could give them to his mom, Millie, in Pelican Narrows. They spent many summers out there fishing and hanging out at the cabin. She fondly remembers that cabin from when her husband was alive.

I guess another thing to note is I'm paddling upstream. I hadn't actually had any kind of river water for the first couple of days to paddle, but now there's a slow current coming towards me. I have a fully loaded boat, I figure I have about 250 pounds of gear, and I’m paddling upstream. I’m making a pretty good headway. I'm not going as fast as I was the previous couple days on open water, but I'm chugging along and winding my way up the river. There was really nothing much for rapids throughout the day. It's just kind of a steady current and what I do is zigzag the river where the current will be less strong, and it's easier paddling, so I'm kind of zigzagging up the river as I go around the bends to try and make it easier on myself. That just comes from years of paddling rivers. I've gone up river on a few occasions but not to this extent.

Bill Jeffrey and Rick Hall were also starting out today. They are coming from the Hanson Lake Road and they're gonna paddle down to Scoop Rapids, which is like 10 kilometers from the Hanson Lake highway. I knew that there was no chance with the number of kilometers I still had to put on. And there's another big set of rapids, called Snake Rapids, and it's just over a kilometer long and there's zero portage. Well, I’m sure there is a portage somewhere but it's all grown in. According to a few people I’ve talked to, a lot of the indigenous fishermen have learned how to navigate their motor boats down this set of rapids, so they don't need to use a portage anymore.

Day 6 - Snake Rapids on the Sturgeon Weir River

So that's why it's no longer established. My big concern was how Taiga was going to react to me walking my canoe up a set of rapids with him in the boat, and that was gonna be a new challenge. I didn't know, so I got his life jacket on him, and got my life jacket on. As we were going I was coaching him that it was okay and to stay in the boat. At first he was panicking but I did my best to calm him down.

For an hour and a half we walked to the side of the rapids. I'd hide behind the rock and pull the canoe up shallow rapids and I had to do that for two hours. In some parts I had to use the ropes on either end of the canoe and line it around big boulders out in the current.

I didn't leave Taiga in the canoe for that. I took him out on the shoreline and we both walked the shoreline as I used the ropes to wind the canoe around big rocks and up the stream. It was about eight o'clock by the time we got up to the top of the rapids and got into regular paddling water. I found an outcrop that had not a great campsite but enough of a flat spot in and amongst some willows. By the time I got my tent up and got Taiga fed and got my gear sorted out it was about 10 o'clock and then I used my gas stove to boil some water and use my freeze dried Pad Thai for supper.

Day 6 - Bush Camp

I'm recording this right now, in the morning the day after but I'm telling you about day 6 of the trip. It’s a beautiful morning on the rock. I just made coffee and porridge this morning. I said I wasn't sure how my body, my spirit and my mind was going to react to being solo, but you know, have you ever been camping and you're the first one up and you go sit by the lake shore and you got your coffee and no sound of any human mind kind around or human noise at all? And it’s just the sound of birds and the sound of water and the slight breeze in the air, blue sky and you feel like the luckiest person in the world to be awake before anybody else? So this is where my mindset is at right now. In my prayers this morning I just said I'm super blessed that I have this to myself. I'm in nature with my new dog. And I have this all to myself. I've got three months of this and I know there's gonna be days where I’m not going to be like this, but so far nothing is bothering me. I was worried because before when soloing I was worried about bears and worried about being out in the bush by myself. But none of those fears have actually come on me at all like they have in the in the past. I think part of it is having a dog with me.

So yeah, I guess we'll sign off with that.

Over