Extreme Frontiers: Racing Across Canada from Newfoundland to the Rockies (7 page)

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What happened to them?’

‘He ran out of the hotel at two thirty in the morning.’

‘You’re joking?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. He ran out with his shirt tail hanging out, kicking his suitcase ahead of him in an absolute
panic.’

I was incredulous now. ‘What happened?’

‘He woke up in bed and the room was freezing cold; for about forty-five seconds he couldn’t move, he couldn’t even blink.
When I spoke to him he was white as a sheet, and he told me that lying there like that, he knew there was somebody else in
the room. He hadn’t been drinking, he was just a regular guy, but he hated the feeling he got in this room so he upped and
left in the middle of the night.’ He smiled now, encouragingly. ‘Anyway, good night, Charley. Sleep well, won’t you.’

I didn’t unpack. I sat in the chair by the window and rocked. I had Mungo with me, filming just in case the widow appeared.
We sat around, taking the piss, messing about – Mungo pointed out that me being there was definitely going to stir the widow
up, rile her, stuff like that. On top of it all we had to be up at five thirty for the three-hour drive to meet up with the
guides for the Bloodvein River trip. Bloodvein. God, that was appropriate, wasn’t it?

S
he didn’t bother me. She must’ve liked me, because I did sleep and I didn’t wake up at two thirty, screaming and shouting
and rushing down to 207 and Russ’s double bed. I was so knackered after the two-day ride and the ice hockey that I crashed
out and didn’t stir until the alarm went off. I jumped out of bed, ready to board a floatplane for our trip into the wilderness.

When we arrived in Bissett, our guide Cameron White and his team were busy overseeing exactly what we were taking on the floatplane.
We’d each been allocated a watertight barrel for our belongings and these were loaded into the fuselage.

‘Make sure you’ve packed everything you’re going to need,’ Cam told us, ‘because if you haven’t, this is going to be a bad
trip.’

‘Like toilet paper, you mean?’ I asked.

‘Right … or food maybe. It would be an idea to take food. Having said that, we could always survive on fish – it’s good where
we’re going because people don’t go there to fish.
Now I come to think about it, people don’t really go there at all.’

There were four guides in all: Cam, Rob, Dave and Matt. Four boats, two men to a boat, and we each needed to be with someone
who had some experience. We also had to make sure we were not exceeding the floatplane’s payload. It could only carry so much,
and only two canoes at a time, which meant we’d be making two trips. Russ and Nat were going ahead, then the pilot would turn
around and come back for Mungo and me. We’d driven three hours north of Winnipeg already this morning and now the plane was
going to fly us fifty miles further. Last night when Russ and I had plotted the route on the map, we’d realised that we really
would be in the middle of nowhere.

With the gear loaded, the pilot began the very delicate process of strapping the canoes on to the struts above the plane’s
floats. It had to be done very carefully because we didn’t want them coming loose and falling off. He told us that if a canoe
did come off it would probably take the tail section and us along with it.

‘Would it?’ Russ gave me a quick glance. ‘That’s heartening.’

Finally the plane was ready and Russ and Nat climbed in. ‘Good luck, guys,’ I called. ‘See you up there.’ We watched as it
took off, bumping across the flattened surface of the lake and then into the air until the sound died and it was nothing more
than a speck on the horizon.

An hour and a half later it was my turn. With two more canoes strapped on, Mungo and I climbed aboard and I took my seat alongside
the pilot. The plane was pretty roomy actually, although very basic, with the seats in the back little more than benches along
the sides. We were in the air for about thirty minutes before I could make out the Bloodvein River cutting
through the landscape below us, just like an artery. This was like nothing I’d ever seen before, not a hint of humanity as
far as the eye could make out. I was really excited now. Cam had said we were going to a place nobody went to, and from the
air you could tell that he meant it. All I could see was a vast expanse of forest bisected by the river and its tributaries.
As we began the descent, I have to say my heart was in my mouth for a moment. I’ve flown small planes and landing is always
the tricky bit, and this was a floatplane coming down on a narrow river with trees on both sides. It would be very easy to
get this wrong. As we went lower, of course, that narrow strip of waterway became a lot wider, and our pilot knew what he
was doing. He had a massive grin on his face and you could tell he just loved this bit. Checking the wind, he chose his spot
and nose-dived into the canyon, pulling up to drop us on the water with barely a splash from the floats. Then we just cruised
towards the bank and tied off. Really it was as simple as arriving on a boat.

Once the gear was unloaded, we were straight into the canoes. The plane headed upriver for a few hundred yards before the
pilot brought it about and came hurtling down towards us, lifting off right over our heads. In a moment he would be gone and
we’d be on our own: eight guys in four boats in the Manitoban wilderness. The canoes we were using were open kayaks – Canadian
style with a single short paddle – a modern version of those used by the fur traders, or Voyageurs, who transported their goods
by canoe all those years ago.

We rafted up (as Dave put it) for a moment or two; that was when all four boats come alongside each other so we could discuss
what was going to happen next. As though he was somehow reluctant to leave us, the pilot made a pass overhead and performed
a little wing wave before finally disappearing
above the trees. Cam was busy giving us a short briefing: the plan was to paddle as far as the Akeeko Rapids and set up camp.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘before we head off I’ll give you some whistle information. If I blow my whistle once, it means listen up.
If I blow twice, it means raft up. That’s a position of safety: if we’re all together like this, nothing’s going to sink us,
OK? If I blow my whistle three times, that means there’s an emergency and we have to get to shore immediately. Everybody got
that?’

It was a sombre and important moment, though I have to say I was busy showing Mungo the name tag I’d written on my paddle:
‘Charley Big Boy’. You know it’s true; you only have to ask my wife.

Paddling downriver, we took the left fork and a little further on we headed for shore just ahead of the rapids. Once the boats
were pulled up and upturned, we strung lines of thin rope between the trees to clip our rucksacks on to. Another safety feature;
we’d know where they were at all times, which was important, because if we lost anything it was the end of our journey.

A hint of white bone half hidden in the dirt caught the sun, and looking closer we saw it was a skull – quite a big skull actually,
although Cam said it belonged to a small sturgeon. It was pretty savage-looking, but Cam reckoned it was all that remained
of a catch an eagle had brought up. We were close to some slabs of stone that formed the entrance to the rapids, and in order
to simulate what it would be like if one of us got tossed out of the boat, they got me to walk out and plunge in. Once in
the running water, I had to lie on my back with my feet up and ankles together, my arms spread in a crucifix shape. That’s
the most efficient and safest way of riding the water, because your feet are a far better buffer for obstacles than your head.
With
your arms spread out you have the least amount of body mass under the water, so there’s less chance that you’ll snag on anything
hidden below. Assuming the position, I rode the rapids to deeper water and was relieved to find that, unlike Lake Huron, the
temperature was beautiful.

Following my lead, Russ rode down next but somehow whacked his coccyx on a rock – I reckon you could hear the yell all the
way to Winnipeg. Nat and Mungo came down safely. Back at camp, Dave was cooking steak and potatoes with carrot and onion all
fried in olive oil, and the smell was really enticing for a bunch of hungry explorers like us. After taking that early bath,
some good food in the open air was just what the doctor ordered. The dining table was the hull of an upturned canoe and we
were serenaded by the rapids as we ate. It was good eating, as they say, and I really felt like I’d earned it, driving up
to Bissett, packing the gear, flying in and paddling, not to mention floating over the rapids.

When dinner was over, it was time for the plastic bag of toilet paper and the walk of shame; deep into the forest I went,
reminding myself to be careful with my mobile phone. The last thing I needed was to lose that to the waste pile, as had happened
on camping trips in the past.

‘Turn your mike off, Charley,’ Nat called. ‘We don’t want the soundtrack from back here.’

It was an eventful first night: we were using hoop tents, where you don’t need to put pegs in unless the weather is really
bad. We’d gone to bed with the sky clear, so that was all right. Sometime later, though, I woke to howling winds, pouring
rain and thunder. I leapt up, secured the tent and made sure all my
stuff was inside and the tent was zipped against the gazillion mosquitoes that occupied the riverbank. I was nicely snuggled
down in my sleeping bag again when I realised I’d forgotten to have a pee. Oh well, there was no way I was going to venture
out again. Somehow I managed to make it through the night without the needs of my bladder overwhelming me.

Cam told me that Akeeko is a First Nations word that means ‘kettle’ – apparently because of kettle-shaped formations in the
granite rocks bordering the rapids – and that these rapids were running at category four. That was too steep for the kind of
open boats we were paddling, so, like the Voyageurs of old, we had to portage the canoes around them. Dave carried a canoe
on his own; grabbing the central seat strut, he hauled its weight on to his thigh, then, with a bend of the knees, flipped
it up and carried it over his head. I watched him make his way through the trees to the other side of the white water without
any help. Then it was our turn, Russ and I taking an end apiece and walking it between us.

There was no livestock up here – no sheep to contaminate anything – so we filled our water bottles straight from the river,
then sorted what we needed for the day into the waterproof bags we’d been given and prepared to get on our way. The gear barrels
were sealed with a locking device that made sure they were watertight, even if one happened to go overboard. Fitted with a
harness, they were carried like a backpack when you were ashore.

A good way downriver was the Bloodvein community, one of the First Nations villages, where we were due in a couple of days.
I was looking forward to meeting the people. I’ve always had an interest in native cultures and met plenty of aboriginals
on our trip to Australia a couple of years ago. In North America
their story is as tragic as anywhere else, I suppose: they were subjugated and forcibly removed from their homelands. I knew
a little of what had happened south of the border, but I wasn’t sure how it had been up here. We’d find out in a couple of
days, but in the meantime we had the river to negotiate.

Suited up in helmets and PFDs (personal floating devices), we were finally under way. We had to be wary. The open-style canoe
is quite tippy; it’s easy to unbalance the thing and they have to be packed very carefully to get the distribution of weight
just right. As Cam and I rode that first eddy, I remembered someone once telling me that there’s only one rule in canoeing,
and that is ‘paddle or die’. There was a lot to remember. We fairly flew downstream, though; the current was swift in this
section, and keeping a bank of teeth-like rocks to our left, we rode the waves to the point.

The beauty of the way we were travelling was twofold: two people in a craft like this brings challenges you don’t get if you
float down a river on a raft; you have to work in unison. The other thing is that the canoe is much smaller than a raft and
it can get you places that a bigger vessel cannot. I have to say it also felt less like fun and much more like the kind of
expedition the first explorers of this waterway would have made. As Cam pointed out, the rivers have been the highways of
this part of Canada for as long as people have been here. Before the Europeans arrived, the native people cut dugouts from
the trunks of trees and used them to move between villages, as well as to hunt and fish. Canoes were the vehicle of necessity.
In the summertime they paddled down to Lake Winnipeg to hunt buffalo, and in the winter they would come north to trap for
beaver and other pelts. Like most native peoples, they rarely stayed in one place for very long, moving
their villages and utilising what the land had to offer. All of it was done by canoe.

As we paddled, the river opened into a languid meander with barely a ripple on the surface; the atmosphere was very still,
the sun high and scorching overhead. We saw an eagle skating close to the surface, where its shadow would be hidden by the
trees. We saw fish jump and heard the noises of animals we couldn’t see from deep within the forest. It was so peaceful, but
only a little further on we came to the next set of rapids. When you see that white water up ahead, it’s a dramatic shift
of emotions: instead of easy paddling and the space for your mind to wander, your mouth is suddenly dry. This set was running
much lower than Akeeko, however, and we glided down, the hull bucking slightly, with me dipping my paddle constantly while
Cam used his to steer. Looking back, I saw Russ and Dave following our lead. Russ had this way of digging deep into the water
with his paddle – there was something very earnest about it – and they hit the white water a little faster than we had. Everyone
was safely through, though, and we paddled on. The water was flat once more and I thought about how a river like this must
be full of ghosts, so many souls having passed this way: native people, French trappers, people like me. I was relaxed, thoroughly
enjoying just being out here in this enormous silence.

But once again, the silence did not go on for ever. Up ahead was a beaver dam that forced the river into some pretty serious-looking
water, and Cam directed us in close to the shore. When the boats were gathered, he and I paddled back to the middle so that
he could scout out whether we could run the rapids, and if not, check out landing spots where we could portage the canoes.
He thought they looked too steep to risk paddling with the boats loaded, so we would have to carry the gear around. He did
suggest that once we’d done that, we could try just running the rapids for fun, with no equipment in the boat. I was up for
that. I was having a great time, humming the tune to
Hawaii Five-O
and probably pissing Cam off a little by now.

With no beach to speak of, landing the canoe was easier said than done. The only suitable spot was a sloping slab of flat
rock that we pulled alongside with difficulty. I had to hold the boat steady against the current while Cam stepped on to an
underhang. Between us we swung the stern around and hauled the boat up the slab. Leaving the rest of us to sort the gear,
he walked up to scout the rapids from the shore. They were serious: class three with a hole, a vortex of thrashing water at
the bottom. That was where the currents mashed from opposing directions; if you were plonked in there, the pressure would
keep you at the bottom, churn you up and eventually spit you out. Not a good place to be, and looking on, I doubted we’d be
able to run them even with nothing in the boat. To be honest, though, I was a little blasé about it, more worried about the
way my arse was itching. You see I’d been bitten on the bum by mozzies, and after a morning spent sitting in the boat, I was
red raw.