Nahanni: The Rock Gardens

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ROCK GARDENS JOURNAL ENTRIES

Sunday, July 4, 2004

Up at 700 in Watson Lake at my house. Breakfast, pack up trucks, leave W Lake at about 845. J in the Dodge noise-machine dual-axle diesel with K and most of the gear, including two 16-ft Mad River Explorer canoes. I ride in M’s venerable red Toyota pickup. Very smoky through Contact Creek; less smoke after that but sky not clear. Lunch at Steamboat at about 1430. Arrive at turn-off to Liard Highway at about 1530. BC section of road is paved (chip-sealed), which was not the case in 1998 when I last drove this road. Most of NWT section of road is gravel and dusty as hell. Highway near Ft. Simpson flat, straight and boring. M provides cheap entertainment. Dusty. Very dusty. Arrive Ft. Simpson ferry ca. 2200 local time (one hour later than Yukon, two hours later than AK). Cross on ferry at ca. 2230. Camp at Ft. Simpson campground at ca. 2300. Still a bit warm but cools overnight.

Monday, July 5, 2004

Up at 730 or so. Pack up camp, breakfast in town, heavy on cholesterol, at 1030. Stop at Parks Canada office, check on fires, weather, etc. M et al. talk to Nahanni Airways re flying to Moose Ponds ­ to check back at 1430. Stop by visitor centre and look at displays, maps, descriptions of rapids. M in touch with Nahanni Airways ­ down to float base on Mackenzie River at 1430. Twin Otter ready for us. Load all gear and leave Ft. Simpson at 1533. Canoes are inside the plane so no worries over aerodynamics. Flight is roughly two hours; a fair bit of it at high altitude to dodge clouds and mountains. A tour of the dry side of the Mackenzie Mountains, with an abrupt change as we circle in over the huge valley in the O’Grady Lakes area. This is the calving ground of the Redstone caribou herd, and it’s easy to see why they like the area. Green, green, green, lots of willow and other juicy green stuff. Then on into the headwaters of the S. Nahanni River; land at about 1738. Approach to land requires some delicate maneuvering to get to shore. One pontoon hits a rock on initial approach. A few willow bushes get trimmed by left propeller. Unloading goes smoothly. Twin Otter on its way back at about 1800.

Blow up raft, pack up gear into raft and canoes and head down-river aways. Travel about an hour between ponds and creek. J has a bit of trouble at one point in a narrow channel with the raft being 6 feet wide. Canoes are ok, although we do go over one or two beaver dams. I paddle in the bow with M; K is solo and J has the raft with most of the gear. We have enough food for a month and enough candy for 5 Hallowe’ens. Soon we will figure out what we forgot. I always forget something. Early Alzheimer’s; maybe I was born with it. Mosquitoes affectionate. The black massif of Mt. Wilson dominates the landscape in front of us. We camp on a gravel bar. At this point the river is a creek, although there is a decent flow in it.

Camp 1 is at 62° 54′ 29″ N, 129° 38′ 25″. We get a shower in the evening but otherwise the weather is tolerable. Supper is late at about 2230 ­ hamburger and noodles. Bed at 2330. Caribou, wolf and moose tracks on gravel bar. Ptarmigan alarm clock at 2 a.m. gets everyone up. Ptarmigan accidentally sprayed by gravel from vicinity of tents, accompanied by much cursing. Birds unfazed.

Tuesday, July 6, 2004

Slept ok, not great. Up at 8 or so. Broken cloud, some smoke and haze. Breakfast is eggs and bacon (I think; forgot to record what it was). We leave camp at 1040. M and I in lead canoe, K in second canoe, J in raft. Initial 1.5 hours fairly quiet; river only 10-15 feet across. Then start into rockier section ­ rocks on the bottom, rocks to dodge as we go. Warm but not too bad. Stop at about 1310 for a break ­ nice gravel bar at left, at base of ridge. Would be a nice camp-site. We’ve gone ca. 7.7 km, based on M’s GPS. There are some gulls, a few shore birds, lots of beaver and moose sign. A few beaver in the slower sections of the river. Unfortunately my guidebook has flowers, trees, shrubs, mammals, birds, and insects ­ but no waterfowl or shorebirds. Cliff swallows along the way, (and common throughout the trip.)

Stop for a couple more breaks. Fairly steady diet of rapids, but all goes well. The raft is slower and J has to work hard to keep up. We pull over at a stretch of rapids at about 1800. Rain starts a bit at about 1730, comes down harder in evening. We’re about 23 km down river from Moose Ponds. Some confusion about what rapids we’ve done. Some locations in guidebook for the river don’t quite match up with maps. We think we’ve done Initiation, Descent, Cliff Swallow Nests, Threaded Needle, and Danish Dynamite. Maybe.

Camp 2 is at 62° 47′ 20″, 129° 28′ 58″, based on GPS, and we are 22.7 km from Camp 1 down-river. Supper is chili out of a can. Exciting; won’t get fat at this rate. So far we seem to have everything we need. There is a scarcity of river bimbos of uncertain moral standards, which M promised would be abundant. In fact there are no bimbos of any kind. Bed at 2200. Rain intermittently through evening and night. (Note added later ­ I thought we heard a peregrine falcon on day one or two but was unsure. Later Parks staff confirm that a peregrine was spotted on the upper part of the river. This is good news as the SE Yukon is generally one of the few areas in Yukon without these falcons.)

Wednesday, July 7, 2004

Up at 730. Grey, overcast, cool. Breakfast is eggs and bacon, as yesterday. However, this won’t last long, and soon we will be into the oatmeal packets. K feeling the beginning of a migraine and J a bit tired from yesterday. Pack up at 930 or so, on the river at 1030. We line some rapids as a close look shows lots of rocks and not much time to choose options. We run some rapids at the end of the series, and at times it’s not clear which rapids we are in. Some pieces we run might on further review have been candidates for lining, but once we’ve bounced through, it’s on to the next challenge. Pull over at about 1430 for lunch. Steady drizzle through the morning and into early afternoon. Pull over at about 1740 to camp on a gravel bar. Good day. We ran some white water and no one has yet been swimming. Like to keep it that way. Sign of moose, caribou and wolves in the sand. I’m feeling a bit more confidence today. No disasters and things are going well. Supper is freeze-dried spaghetti. Well, with water added. Freeze-dried meals have improved since the first ones I had 20 years ago, which were rather like soggy sawdust. Raft Heading to Hollywood.

Camp 3 is at 62° 44′ 51″ and 129° 21′ 51″. Overcast but does not look like it will rain. Check in briefly with Nahanni Airways at about 1900. We are on an island. Went over maps and identified our camp sites based on GPS. It seems we still have some major rapids to get through ­ Bailing Rapids, Hollywood, and Sequel.

Thursday, July 8, 2004

Up around 715. Blue sky. Warm, will be hot. There is some smoke but not too heavy. Packing up 930 or so. Underway 1000. Stop for water just down the river. It ends up being a long day. We run Bailing Rapids, which are aptly named. We do some bailing. No disasters but waves splash us a fair bit. The raft, now named the Queen Mary, also known as the Mother Ship, sails majestically through everything. On occasion J indulges in a pirouette on a rock. We line the canoes around Hollywood and Sequel. Hollywood is not that long but there is a need to make a sharp right turn near the end, and failing to make this turn could have unpleasant consequences. Hollywood has 3 channels and the middle one is the best option. Sequel is even more exciting and we line the canoes there also. There are multiple channels and a fair bit of water going through. K describes the wonderful things that can happen if a canoe goes into a hole, and the even better things that can happen if a paddler gets sucked into a hole. J runs it all with the raft and goes well. Lining Sequel turns into an athletic endeavor. Lots of scrambling over big rocks and kinda hard to stay dry. At one point M and I make an unscheduled stop in the rocks, where we miss the main channel that goes right. Just plain ran out of river. In the afternoon we start to see more recent burns, with abundant purple fireweed, so likely less than 10 years old. This country does tend to burn in big swathes. Raft and Hollywood

End of Sequel is at GPS 62°’ 38′ 53″ and 129° 4′ 34″. At 1830 we are finished the lining. We still have some further class 2 sections to run, with plenty of waves, and M and I come close to swamping on a rock that appears suddenly where there was previously no rock at all. Perhaps a sign of being tired. More stops to bail out water. Finally pull over at 1930 on a gravel/sand bar. Starts to rain at about 2000 and continues through much of evening. Supper at about 2100 is freeze-dried chicken a la king (not bad). Bed at 2200. Seeing sign of moose and wolves on most sand bars, but not much caribou sign any more. Little sign of bears. See some smoke down-river today; perhaps the rain will discourage fires. Long day; everyone a bit tired.

M gives us a GPS location for Camp 4 of 62° 37′ 43′ and 129° 0′ 0″ but this last set of numbers (0′ and 0″) does not look right given the GPS location for the end of Sequel, which we are not that far from.