Extreme Frontiers: Racing Across Canada from Newfoundland to the Rockies (5 page)

Wade then proceeded to tell me the three options now available to this intrepid Chris Bonington wannabe: easy,
medium and extreme. I didn’t like the sound of that last one, but I also knew that Russ or Mungo was about to remind me of
the title of the programme, so before they could show me up for the coward I just might be, I said: ‘Let’s go extreme!’

We were high on a cliff overlooking the water, and with a nervous laugh I admitted to Wade that I thought I might have lost
my mojo.

‘Your mojo?’ he said. ‘Brother,
now
is not the time to lose your mojo.’

From the clifftop, we began to make our way down a series of steep steps in the rock, with the iron cable guiding us. It was
then that I made the mistake of looking down. Bloody hell, that was a bit of a drop! Although the water wasn’t coursing as
much as I had feared, it was still slapping the base of the rocks like the waves at Cape Spear. Thank God I was clipped on
to that cable. I knew that if I slipped, the harness would keep me from falling, but I would still hang ignominiously, scrabbling
at the wall. Despite my fears, however, I gradually started to enjoy it, even getting a little cocky – holding on to the great
iron grips fixed into the rock while swapping my feet around like a dancer. Then it was into an overhang, where a length of
four-by-four had been fitted as there were no footholds. There were no handholds here either, only polished rock or the option
of clinging on to the cable itself. It didn’t feel very safe. Taking a moment to have a breather and inspect the bloodied
calluses on my hands, I clipped the spare karabiner on to a metal loop and leant back. Suddenly I heard something crack and
almost soiled my pants. ‘Jesus!’ I cried. ‘What was that?’ One of the boards we were walking on had creaked, ominously, as
Russ stepped on it. I
desperately screwed the thread on that second karabiner so it couldn’t work itself loose by mistake.

Despite a few panicky moments, the whole thing was great fun – though it was a little awkward trying to film with Nat on the
line with me, Mungo above and Russ behind us taking photos. It was the perfect way to view the stunning countryside, and finally
we’d been blessed with a beautiful day – warm and sunny, with only a light wind. As we rested on a perch on the cliffside,
Lac Saint-Jean was an expanse of shimmering water before us; sitting there with the sun on my face, I really did feel like
I was hidden away from the rest of the world.

My moment of solitude didn’t last for long, though – what Wade had planned for me next was anything but hidden away. The extreme
high-ropes course. ‘It’s designed to challenge you, Charley,’ he said. ‘And I mean
challenge
you.’

Between us, climbing into the heavens, was a vertically hanging log with wooden pegs hammered into it at various intervals.
‘This is the ladder of natural selection,’ Wade said. ‘You’re familiar with the theory of evolution?’

‘Sure,’ I said, cautiously.

‘Well, this is going to determine whether you keep evolving or fall way behind.’

‘How do I get up it?’ I asked. ‘Or do I have to figure that out for myself?’

You’ve got it. I had to figure it out for myself. So, using the harness and karabiners, I clipped into the metal protection
loops that studded my ascent and laboriously made my way from peg to peg.

‘Is it hard?’ Russ called from below.

I looked down at him, one eyebrow cocked. ‘More a pain in the arse actually, mate. More a pain in the arse.’

It was knackering: one arm wrapped around the log while trying to move the karabiners from ring to ring.

Wade was no help. ‘Come on, Charley,’ he called. ‘If you’re not able to get to the top, you have to go back to the family
ropes course.’

You just had to love this guy, didn’t you? Undeterred, I climbed on and finally made it to a wooden platform, where I could
pause to catch my breath, though not for very long. Now I had a tightrope walk to perform – a cable extending between the treetops
with another at shoulder height to clip on to. Like some high-wire walker from a circus, with the crowd cheering me on from
below, I set out, sliding one foot and then the other along the cable. I made it, just, heart in my mouth. At the far platform
I clung on to the tree as if my life depended on it. Fortunately I didn’t have to go back the way I’d come – there was a regular
wooden-rung rope ladder to descend.

On terra firma once more, I was sweating like a pig when Wade came up with another impossible task. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘For this
next bit we’re free from our karabiners and you can jump, dive and struggle your way across.’ Gesturing with the kind of enthusiasm
only the most sadistic torturers display, he rattled on, ‘You jump off the platform, try to grab hold of that first hanging
pyramid, bear-hug it, get as high up as you can, then reach for the next one and swing yourself from one to the next.’ Pausing
for breath he added, ‘It’s impossible for an ordinary man, but from what I’ve seen today, I think you’ll be able to handle
it.’

I stared at him, wondering if Ewan wasn’t paying him or something, getting me back for all those sand dunes we’d had to ride
across on
Long Way Down
. Below me was a net, of course, but I still wasn’t convinced I could do it without
falling. I wondered what I was doing here; if I’d wanted to be a trapeze artist I’d have run away and joined the circus, wouldn’t
I?

I think I made it to the first pyramid and that was it. I peeled off and lay on my back with the net supporting me, just trying
to catch my breath. That had to be it now, didn’t it? But no, they were not done with me yet. Next I was clipped on to a single
cable with a series of hanging rungs to cross and the forest floor far, far below. By this point I reckon my blood pressure
was through the roof, and I was hanging on to the overhead cable for dear life, wavering around on the wooden rungs that bobbed
under my feet. They were wobbling so much I could barely get from one to the next. Why didn’t I just have a normal job? I
wondered. You know, one where the alarm goes off and you pack your lunch and drive off to work listening to the radio. I was
exhausted and beaten up to the point where my legs felt like hunks of immovable lead.

After acting like some sort of partially evolved ape for the past few hours, I was delighted to finally don a life jacket,
grab a paddle and head out on to the lake. Saguenay is a playground, it really is, and the fun doesn’t stop when the snow
comes; it just shifts to ice-fishing, snowmobiling and dog-sledding. You name it, they do it at Saguenay.

It wasn’t long before we found the most amazing waterfall: gallons and gallons flowing over a pinnacle of rock. Now we’re
talking. Paddling right up close, I finally washed the sweat from my aching body by diving in. God, it was cold! Saguenay
is a glacial mountain lake and it only sees the sun for three months of the year. That didn’t stop me. The adrenalin must
still have been pumping, because I swam the width of the falls then climbed on to the rocks and stepped beyond the torrent,
feeling
like Daniel Day-Lewis in
The Last of the Mohicans
. Eventually the wall of water swept me off the rocks and the others hauled me back into the boat.

‘OK, Hawkeye,’ Russ said. ‘I think that’s enough for today.’

S
aguenay really reminded me of
Deliverance
, the film my dad directed years ago with Burt Reynolds and Jon Voight: the water, the rapids, the way the woodland comes
down to the shore. I had really enjoyed exploring the place. But after a crazy few days, it was time to take a breather in
Toronto before the next stage of this epic journey.

Our few days of R&R meant I had a chance to visit the bike shop on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. The previous night we’d
been to the MMVA music awards ceremony – there’s a huge music scene in Canada, Toronto especially, which is partially supported
by grants, ensuring that Canada retains a separate artistic identity from that of the United States. We’d met a cool guy called
Nathan with a great mop of curly black hair, who played in a band called Midway State, and spent much of the evening trying
to persuade him to do the music for the TV show. He’d been a fan of
Long Way Round
and joined me at the shop to get a feel for the bikes. I suggested he hop on the back and we’d do a couple of blocks of Yonge
Street; it’s the
longest street in the world, according to the
Guinness Book of Records
, running from the shores of Lake Ontario all the way to Lake Simcoe, 1,896 kilometres further north. Nathan had never even
swung a leg over a bike before but he soon got the hang of it. We cruised the streets for a while, and when we were done he
said he’d work on some music for us.

After saying goodbye to Nathan, we set off up Yonge Street, aiming for the Fathom Five dive site in Tobermory, which is regarded
as the scuba-diving capital of Canada. As I’d spent so much time hanging from a rope above water, I thought it was time to
get below the surface. Pulling in to Tobermory four hours later, we stopped at a shop called Divers Den, where I met Mike,
a young guy in a polo shirt, who was to be our dive master for the afternoon. He was going to take us to the wreck of the
Niagara II
, a steel-hulled ship that had been sunk deliberately in 1999 for the enjoyment of divers. He told me we could dive inside
the wreck itself and swim up through the smokestack. It sounded awesome, although apparently the water was going to be pretty
cold.

‘So, it’ll be peeing in the wetsuit to keep warm, then?’ I said.

‘Only if
you
want to wash it, Charley,’ he told me.

In total, twenty-five ships had been wrecked within a five-kilometre radius at Tobermory, and I was delighted when Mike said
we could also dive on
The Sweepstakes
, a much older boat that had foundered in a storm in Big Tub Harbour back in 1901.

While I’d been talking, Russ had been out back suiting up, and he came through flexing his biceps like the Adonis he clearly
is. I’m not sure how he was feeling, but I was a tad anxious. I’ve dived a few times in my life, but never in fresh water,
where the visibility isn’t so good, and never in cold water.
I knew this was going to be very, very cold, and my fears were not allayed when they gave me
three
wetsuits to put on.

As I grabbed a couple of air bottles and hauled them aboard the boat, the skipper blasted out an old sea shanty to get us
in the mood. I danced along to the music, no doubt looking like an overstuffed seal. Just in case you haven’t been following
on the map, we were on Lake Huron, which is the second largest of the Great Lakes and the third largest freshwater lake in
the world. It’s named after the Huron Indians, part of the Iroquois Confederacy. Contrary to popular belief, they rather than
the Mohicans were the ones with the ‘Mohawk’ hairstyle.

Leaving the dock behind, we hugged the coastline until we were over the first dive site, where Mike began his safety briefing.
All he kept talking about was the cold.

‘I want to make sure you guys are adding air to your vests while you’re going down,’ he stated. ‘Try not to do it while you’re
breathing in, because I want to avoid a reg freeze-up at the bottom. As I said, this is extreme cold diving.’

You see? All I’d done was Indonesia and the Caribbean, where I barely needed a wetsuit – now it was
extreme
cold diving.

Russ was listening carefully. ‘What’s a reg freeze-up?’ he asked.

‘Well,’ Mike said, ‘in cold water if there’s too much air going through the first stage of the regulator it can freeze up,
which means you’ll be getting air all the time. That means your tank isn’t going to last very long, and we want to avoid that
so you can have as long as possible under water.’

We got the rest of the gear on – rubber helmets, tanks and fins – and were ready to make the descent. On the steps at the dive
platform I covered my mask and dropped in. Bloody
hell, that’s cold, I thought. Holy shite, that isn’t cold – it’s
freezing
.

Forty-two degrees Fahrenheit, which in our language is about eight degrees. The breath seemed to stop in my throat. It was
really unnerving, and this was only on the surface. God knows what it was going to be like when we went below. I could not
shut up. I kept on and on about how cold it was, while on deck Mungo and Nat were killing themselves laughing. ‘Funniest diving
I’ve ever seen! That’s backstroke, Charley,’ Mungo called. ‘Don’t be such a wuss, mate. Get below!’

The trouble was, I didn’t feel comfortable. I couldn’t get my breath, my chest was so tight I thought I was having a panic
attack and I found myself clinging on to the rope attached to the buoy that marked the position of the wreck. Mike was giving
me a pep talk while I tried to calm down and do something about my breathing.

‘Are you all right?’ he called to Russ, who was behind me and actually hanging on to the buoy itself now.

‘No,’ Russ admitted. ‘I can’t seem to get a breath.’

We had to get it together: this was extreme frontiers and we couldn’t just quit. Eventually we managed to go under, and submerged
at last we made our way down the rope, hand over hand, from the buoy to the shipwreck a few fathoms below. I’ve never had
a panic attack in my life, but the feeling was still close, and it wasn’t helped by the fact that I kept having to clear the
skin-chapping water from my mask.

At last though, we were on the wreck. I stood on deck, where a Canadian flag fluttered languidly, listening to the sound of
my own breathing. Moments later I was diving through the engine room deep into the bowels of the ship before ascending the
height of the smokestack. Russ was ahead of me, and there was
something eerie about being in that tunnel of darkness watching his fins fan the water into the light above. We passed through
open doorways, peered through gaping portholes; I found an old enamel mug and pretended to drink from it. We dived inside
the wheelhouse, into the living quarters still with their tables and bunks. It was amazing to realise that once upon a time
people had been living and working here. Despite the fact that I knew this vessel had been sunk deliberately, I couldn’t help
but think of the
Titanic
and all those headstones I’d seen in Halifax. I tried to imagine night-time on the lake, with the weather storming; I thought
of being on a sinking ship with no one to call for help and feeling the first freezing bite as you leapt overboard with no
hope of making it to safety.

I don’t know why, but on the way up I started to feel panicky all over again. I’d been all right on the bottom, but now I
couldn’t breathe properly. I don’t like the feeling of my face being enclosed, which is why I prefer to have an open-face
motorcycle helmet. There was something unbelievably claustrophobic suddenly about wearing a dive helmet. On the way back to
the boat I had to pull the rubber mask off so I could breathe. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it before. It felt
as if the life was being sucked out of my face.

Both Russ and I felt a real sense of accomplishment having dived in temperatures like that. It’s not for the faint-hearted
and at the beginning neither of us thought we were going to be able to make it. As Russ came on deck we shook hands. ‘I tell
you what,’ he said as he stripped off his tank. ‘I’ve been to some places in the world with you, Charley, but down there,
standing by the ship’s wheel, I thought, that’s as good a place to have been together as any I could think of.’

*

By the time we were out of our wetsuits and gliding over the top of the sunken
Sweepstakes
, I wasn’t in the mood for getting wet again. We could see all the wrecks from the boat, just below the surface in some places.
This really was wreck city; no wonder it was the scuba-diving capital of the country. Mike pointed out a wreck from the late
1800s – at one time you could dive inside it, make your way the length of the hull and come out at the other end. They’d stopped
that now, though, separating each section with cages because divers left a trail of air bubbles that became trapped in the
wreck and accelerated the rotting process. Russ commented that the wooden wrecks were in good condition and that had to have
something to do with the timber they used, because fresh water rots wood just as badly as salt water does.

I was back in my street clothes, but Russ was going in again. ‘Good luck, mate,’ I said. ‘I’ll see you back here in time for
the ice hockey.’