On the Nahanni River, above Virginia Falls.
This is a story best told in pictures, but let me give you a little framework.
A few years ago Mr. Sierra – let’s call him James, since that’s not his name – took a trip on one of the most remote rivers in the world, in northern Canada. No roads in, just bush planes and rivers.
(Me? I didn’t go. Too outdoorsy for me. I loathe camping, and tents, and sleeping bags, and being wet, and being cold, and being bug-bitten, and having no comfy chair, and having bears as neighbours, especially all at the same time.)
The river is the Nahanni, in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The park it’s in, Nahanni National Park Reserve, was one of the world’s first four natural heritage locations to be named as UNESCO World Heritage Sites in 1978. The entire park is about the size of Switzerland. It’s not quite on the same latitude as Anchorage, Alaska – maybe a couple of hundred miles farther north. And about 700 miles below the Arctic Circle.
Anyhow. It was August. James flew from our then-home in Ottawa, into Edmonton, then Yellowknife, then Fort Simpson, on the Mackenzie River, where he joined the escorted tour of nine travellers. They got on a pontoon plane to be flown to the launch site on the shores of the South Nahanni. The river at that point is a series of four canyons, over 3,000ft deep at the deepest point. The water is very fast-flowing, fairly flat between canyon necks, and very turbulent at the narrows.
Their flight was a little over an hour long. Also aboard the plane were four large young men, the guides. And all their supplies for a week. And their one big cargo canoe, specially-designed to break down into six pieces, the better to store it inside the plane. It wasn’t made of birchbark, but of bright orange plastic.
Eventually they land on the Nahanni, just above Victoria Falls (300ft; 30 storeys; twice the height of Niagara). What happens next is that everything has to be portaged down past the falls to where they will launch their canoe and begin actually paddling along. The portage is about a quarter mile, and takes several trips, with the sound of the falls breaking around Mason’s Rock pounding in your ears.
So eventually, there they all were at the bottom of Victoria Falls, bolting their canoe together, packing it, getting it in the river.
Sad: While James’ group were getting their gear organised, a couple traveling on their own were busy putting their regular-sized canoe into the water. In went all their provisions, tent, sleeping bags, everything. Then somehow the canoe got away from them. It capsized. Their paddles and most of their gear went swirling away in the fast-running river. And that was the end of their trip. Poor, poor people.
That’s a sad story, but it does serve to show that this is a serious river, very fast, a lot of it white-water, there are falls, rapids, portages, rocks, ornery currents, you name it.
Eventually James’ group of travelers were under way. The first thing they encountered was First Canyon, very tall vertical rock walls, maybe 200ft wide. Going into the canyon, the rushing water hits the canyon wall at an angle, bounces back to the opposite wall, and still has enough force to bounce back to the first wall and back off it again. This sets up a very messy standing wave, which must be paddled through.
It was a dramatic beginning to the trip. The waves were over James’ head (he was about 5ft back from the prow of the canoe). The boat took on a little water, there was some very powerful paddling being done by the guides, to take them to the river’s edge. There was a patch of rock and gravel where they were able to get ashore, unpack everything, turn the canoe upside down to drain it, right it, and pack everything back in. And get on their way.
The guides did most of the paddling all through the trip. They were going downstream on a very fast (I think I said that already?) river so paddling to move along wasn’t the issue, the issue was steering, to avoid rocks and stay in the right part of the current. However, there was a lot of smooth water, so the guides did get to spend a lot of time each day with a paddle stuck in the water as a rudder, gliding along in brilliant sunshine, thick forest on either side. Serene and beautiful.
They were on the river 7 or 8 hours a day. The guides knew when the good camping spots were coming up in late afternoon, but they still had to look carefully before coming ashore – one campsite was rejected. “How come?” “Grizzly bear,” the guide said, pointing. They also saw a black bear, later on. The guides had bear-bangers – small firecrackers. No guns.
Everyone slept – soundly – in their own tent, with the guides doing all the cooking on an ingenious little collapsible woodstove. It was James’ birthday during the trip – he staggered blearily out of his tent to see coloured pennants strung up in the trees. That evening, they made a very creditable birthday cake for him. I’d sent a mystery gift along with him – a small plastic wrapped shape, birthday paper inside the plastic. Inside: one can of beer.
They were on the water about a week. If you’d brought the right soap with you, you could wash in the river, but no one did, much – very cold water. Towards the end there was, mercifully, a hot springs.
When they left the river they were met by members of a local First Nations tribe (Dene) who took them in powerboats to where they were met by a truck and taken back to Fort Simpson.
Oh, and what about the mosquitoes, you ask? There were lots of mosquitoes. Lots and lots of mosquitoes. Here’s one, life-size:
