Trip Report: Eric’s Far Northern Trip

Remoteness

We saw nary a soul until the last couple of days of our 45 day journey. Nunavut is the least densely populated inhabited region in the world, and that superlative certainly matched our experience. On average, maybe one crew completes the Dubawnt/Thelon river trip per year, and no one lives along the rivers or lakes that we traversed. We were really completely self reliant when problems arose--we had to repair a broken canoe seat on day 3, we had to fix up Mason's wounds when he slipped and fell and cracked open his forehead, and we had to just deal with the fact that we ran out of coffee and rum, with no resupplies available (ok, this last one wasn't thaaat bad). Each time a setback occurred, I was reminded of how on the edge a trip like this can be, and in the bigger picture, how much the Inuit lived on the balance when they lived on the land a couple of generations back.

To get to remote places in northern Canada, canoeists often use charter flights on float planes. We started the trip by cramming everyone, our packable canoes, and all our food and gear into a small prop plane called an Otter. As we took off from Lake Athabasca, I admit that I was a little nervous. I had never flown on a float plane before, and I knew that prop planes in the bush don't have the best safety record. To my relief, the flight was smooth and looking over the lake country was stunning. Still, as we approached our canoe trip starting point on Wholdaia lake, the idea of landing by flying full speed toward a body of water gave me the jitters. Luckily our bush pilot expertly stuck the landing, but landing on water was ROUGH and not nearly as smooth as wheels on pavement. 

Giant Lakes

This trip wound through Northwest Territories and Nunavut on a pair of rivers (the Dubawnt and Thelon Rivers). In between river sections, we traversed huge lakes, including the 37th largest lake in the world (Dubawnt Lake). I was used to canoeing in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, where the lakes are rarely more than a few miles long and are surrounded by distinct shores with significant topography. Often the lakes that we crossed on this trip were so large that you could not see the ends of them. After some research, I now know that from the water surface, the horizon line is a mere three miles away due to the curvature of the earth. On top of that, the distant landforms are distorted for the same reason, and since the topography in the area we were in was very flat, navigation was especially tricky. Throw in some wind, and now the canoe was rocking around, with giant waves sloshing the boat in different directions. Without a compass and the occasional satellite check, we certainly would have been lost at sea a few times. Lee and I often joked that we were in danger of paddling into the abyss and that we had to be careful to avoid it. We usually stuck to shore for safety but would occasionally do big open water crossings to shave off miles of additional paddling into large bays.

Despite our very optimistic expectations, we almost exclusively had headwinds on the trip. We had hopefully packed three wind sails to use on the front of the canoes, but I can only remember two days where we actually had a significant tailwind. On those special days, once we set up the windsail (the bane of my existence), the sailing was fast and easy. I guess two days is better than none.

Whitewater Canoeing

About a quarter of the trip was on river segments between the lakes, and almost always featured rapids that we had to navigate. We used past trip reports as a loose guide for hints at how to run the rapids, but the best lines through the rapids often changed based on the water level and so the reports were unreliable. Because of that, we scouted most rapids, and portaged a couple of the bigger rapids that would have for sure eaten our canoes. The rapids on these river segments were very wide and full of ledges and rocks. Some rapids were over a mile wide and multiple miles long. While there was usually a safe passage through, we often had to do a significant amount of maneuvering around the many obstacles, sometimes crossing back and forth across the river in search of the deepest channels. The big difference between canoeing and rafting/kayaking that I found was that the room for error was very small. We had canoes loaded with a month and half of supplies, so small waves would easily crash into the boats. We did have spray covers to protect us, but there was not too much freeboard to play with. Despite accidentally going over a ledge at one point and occasionally getting derailed onto the shoals, we made it through all of the rapids relatively unscathed without capsizing. Our track record wasn't perfect, though! The canoe material was not as sturdy as typical hard shell canoes, and we did get holes in two of the boats that we had to repair in the middle of the trip.

I had never really done much in the way of whitewater canoeing aside from a training day with Ron before this trip. I did have experience in flatwater canoeing and whitewater rafting/kayaking, and I was hoping that somehow those skills would combine and work out. To my relief, this was largely the case. The canoes that we used (packable canoes made of PVC with aluminum ribs that we assembled upon arrival) behaved like a nimble raft in the rapids. I really enjoyed the process of learning how to run whitewater with a canoe partner, rather than what I am used to when I guide rafting trips. Instead of just yelling out commands as I do in a raft, in a tandem whitewater canoe, one communicates constantly since both people are able to both steer and power the boat through waves, hydraulics, and ledges. The teamwork aspect was an unexpected highlight that I really came to enjoy and look forward to.

Life on the tundra

We started the trip in the forested regions, where the average annual temperatures are just warm enough to support stands of dwarf spruce trees. Finding a campsite was often difficult, but I learned to scour the map in search of the distinctive contours of an esker, which is a long (often many miles), winding remnant of a glacial stream, composed of sand and gravel that stands high above the trees and offers a flat place to camp, often with a nice breeze to keep the bugs away. We often stayed atop these eskers, especially in the beginning of the trip when trees were more prevalent. As we continued further north toward the arctic circle, the spruce trees gave way to the tiny dwarf willows, and we reached the vast expanse of the tundra, with its squishy hummocks and spongy ground. Now we could see for miles in every direction, and the campsites were numerous, but as any wilderness camper has experienced, we still found ways to nitpick over the niceties of each camp:

Is the landing rocky, requiring us to lug our gear over ankle twisting, slippery surfaces?

Is there a sandy beach?

Is there a deep fishing hole nearby?

Are the tent sites level and rock free?

The tundra's openness made spotting animals much easier, as well. We saw moose teaching their young to swim, herds of muskoxen grazing, caribou running at full throttle (presumably to ward off the bugs), along with cute arctic foxes, arctic hares and arctic ground squirrels foraging for food. We had no run-ins with a grizzly bear (not unhappy about that), but it would have been nice to see a wolf and a wolverine. On the avian front, we were attacked by arctic terns and peregrine falcons in scenes reminiscent of Hitchcock's The Birds. There were nicer birds too, like the majestic tundra swans and the agile sandhill cranes. The less welcome part of the tundra ecosystem were the infinite colonies of mosquitos and black flies. I have never seen so many bugs in my life, but the full covered bug jacket was my saving grace. I slowly learned to "make peace with the bugs," as one of the Inuit we met at the end of the trip advised us to do. For the uninitiated, black flies do not have the long needlike noses that mosquitos do, but rather they scrape off the top layer of skin, causing bleeding. The black flies have an analgesic and an anticoagulant chemical in their saliva, so I never felt the black flies biting, but the telltale sign of dried up blood showed that they had visited and took a chunk out of me. The welts that their bites left were far worse than mosquito bites, and usually took 3 weeks to go away. I learned how to battle against black flies, rolling my socks over my pant legs, always keeping my shirt completely tucked in, cinching the elastic on my bug jacket around my wrists and waist, and covering my face and head with a full zipped up head net. Unfortunately, bugs could breach this perfectly protected environment whenever I needed to tend to essential needs. Eating was a challenge. I learned to feel for even the slightest of winds and unzip my protective garments in the face of that wind. That was not a perfect solution, but it was the best one could do. I consumed probably hundreds of black flies over the course of the trip. At first, I carefully picked out the black flies from my cereal in the morning, but then I just gave up on this hopeless task and started eating them with gusto. If the fish and birds enjoy these, why couldn't I? Less enjoyable was using the bathroom because of the huge amount of skin exposed. The drill was to point your butt in the direction of the wind, and continuously rub the inside and outside of your thighs to kill black flies before they bit. Then close up everything as fast as possible once you finished!

A day in the life of..

What was it like on a typical an arctic canoeist? We started the day when Mason awoke us at 5am. Since the sun hardly sets in the summer in the arctic during the summer months, groups can travel really at any time. After hearing that some people wake up a full 12 hours later at 5pm and travel during the “night” hours, I started to wonder about the arbitrariness of the time in some senses. I think that the schedule worked well for me, though, because the sun was low in the sky when we were sleeping, and the expedition style tents were not overly hot during those hours. The wind may have been a little higher (not all bad: see the section on bugs!), but the tradeoff for good sleep was worth it.

Ok, I got sidetracked—back to the typical day. After we awoke, we packed up everything inside the tent to delay facing the bugs as long as possible! We often then put away the tent and ran down to a bug tent (10 ft X 10 ft mesh tent) where we cooked whenever the wind was low and the bugs were bad. We ate a quick breakfast of granola or hot cereal, drank some coffee/tea, and then packed up the rest of the gear into the canoes to head out. Moving camp almost every day made us very efficient, and the whole process took about an hour and a half.

At this point, we set out to “shovel water” all day, as Lee said. Two people traveled in each canoe, one in the bow (front) and another in the stern (back), with the bow person providing power to move the canoe forward, and the person in the stern steering the boat to ensure travel in the right direction. As we set out on this rather repetitive task of paddling thousands of strokes a day, our minds wandered. On some days, we talked for hours, and on other days, we mostly paddled in silence, only interrupting the steady, repetitive sound of the canoe blade sliding through the water, with the occasional needs based question—“When is lunch?” or “Could we pull over to the shore to use the bathroom?”

Some things unthinkable in normal society became commonplace in our days:

-Whenever we were thirsty, we would dip cups directly into the water and just drink without filtering because the water was completely clean.

-If we were too lazy to go to shore or if it was a really buggy day (black flies will actually follow you from shore and buzz around you for hours on end—not worth it to go to shore), someone might ask, “Could you pass the pee bucket?”, which was just a cut off jug that we would pee into while in the canoe and then dump out into the lake after finishing.

After a few hours of paddling in the morning hours, we would stop at a scenic point for lunch; eat a mix of crackers, cheese, sausage, bars, dried fruits, nuts, and a dessert, pausing to take a nap afterward before setting out for a usually shorter afternoon paddle. The feel of the stroke, stroke, stroke became meditative, as we listened and looked for wildlife, admiring the grand beauty around us. After a couple more hours of paddling, we set out to find a campsite, set up tents and the cooking area, and then settled into our afternoon routines. For many, this meant reading books and writing in journals, occasionally doing chores like hand-laundering clothes, repairing equipment, or catching fish for dinner. I often used the free afternoon times for subjecting myself to a 10-20 second bath in the icy lake or river waters, reading a book, picking berries, enjoying an afternoon lemonade, or going on a hike. We rotated dinner cooking duty, and on my nights to cook, I often spent most of the afternoon preparing the evening meal. After our dinner, our group would often play charades, except that in our version, Ron was almost always the performer, and John almost always gave Ron the word to act out. We might do some reflection on the day or read trip reports about the day to come. After cleaning up, we all retired to bed early, read some more and drifted off to sleep. It was a really a simple life, but at the same time one that felt meaningful. We continued toward our goal each day, always conscious of the timeline for trip completion. Even though that time pressure did create some stress, we found a way to enjoy the environment we immersed ourselves in, and learned to thrive in spite of the trials that accompany arctic canoeing trips. Reading back over this “typical day” in some ways makes it look very easy on paper, but there was rarely a day that was this simple. And the constant challenges were part of what made this trip so rewarding.

Inuit life

It was incredible to see signs of Inuit life at almost every campsite that we stayed at--cairns, kayak stands, caribou caches, fox traps, hunting blinds, tent rings, and more. Before the trip, I only had a vague notion of how the Inuit lived in the past and how their lifestyle has changed in recent times. I learned that Canadians do not call Inuits First Nations, and at first this puzzled me (why were they different?), but then I learned that Inuit migrated from Siberia in much more recent times--a few hundred years ago--rather than 40000 years ago like most of the other indigenous peoples of the Americas. For most of the last 1000 years, the inland Inuit have lived on the land as semi-nomadic peoples, eking out a living by hunting caribou, musk oxen, bears, wolverine, fox, arctic hare, duck, and ptarmigan; fishing for trout, grayling, turbot, and arctic char; and foraging for berries and other plants such as mountain sorrel. Coastal inuit also hunt seals, walruses, and whales (narwhals and beluga whales), and collect clams and other shellfish.

The interdependence of the Inuit with the plant and animal life extends beyond nourishment to winter survival in the barren lands. The average high in the winter where we were is around -15 deg F and the average low is -30 deg F, with temperatures sometimes dropping to -55 F. To survive these frigid winters, Inuit used (and still use) products from animals adapted to survive the climate, making parkas, pants, mitts, and boots from caribou, seal, musk ox, and wolverine. They light seal oil lamps (quilliqs) for warmth and light during the completely dark winters.

We were really only sampling a few of the typical foods that the Inuit eat and of course did not need to use animal material for warmth, but I felt the connection and appreciation for the land and the ecology to be profound. I had read about the connection of indigenous peoples to the traditional foods that they hunted and gathered, but I do not think that I had ever felt it this deeply before. There was this sense of abundance, where we often caught a large lake trout simply with the first cast, and there were countless blueberries, cranberries, cloudberries, crowberries, and bearberries to eat. We ate fish probably a third of the nights (and often had leftovers the next day), but we could have easily eaten fish every day if we had not brought other food with us! The fishing for the day usually only lasted half an hour, where one or two people would catch and fillet 2-3 fish that would feed everyone in the group. We did not hunt caribou or musk ox, not having obtained hunting licenses. We were there during the bountiful summer months, and certainly the sense of plenty likely diminishes in the colder, dark months of winter.

The Inuit have now all moved into permanent communities, prompted by environmental conditions and governmental intervention. In the 1950s, there was widespread famine in the area where we canoed because of changing migration patterns of the caribou, leading many families to seek the services and security of settlements. Also around the same time, the Canadian government relocated thousands of Inuit against their will to the farther northern regions of the Arctic, securing the High Arctic from possible Soviet Union and United States land claims. Thousands of Inuit were forced to adapt to a new environment and entirely different food sources. Despite this history and what I would assume would be a mistrust of people of European descent, I found the Inuit to be incredibly resilient people who welcomed us with open arms. Their culture is one of community, ensuring that each other is taken care of by sharing food from a hunt with everyone and just in general looking out for each other.

I am still fairly unknowledgeable about how all of this will play out, but I will say that the prices in the grocery store for foods from the southern part of Canada were absurdly high (at least quadruple what we pay) due to I'm sure the high cost of shipping. Many Inuit continue to rely on so called traditional "country foods", which are defined as any foods hunted or gathered from the land. The Inuit are caught between two worlds, the traditional one that they had carved out over hundreds of years, and the "modern" one that most of us are accustomed to. There are drawbacks to each way of life, and in many ways, they are incompatible lifestyles, but I am hopeful that Inuit will thrive by combining elements of both worlds.

Moffatt's journey and future documentary

Art Moffatt led a crew of 6 canoeists in 1955 on the Dubwant and Thelon Rivers on the first recreational long distance canoe trip in the Canadian arctic, which mirrored our trek. He was filming a documentary of their journey, trying to capture what it was like to be on an Arctic canoeing expedition.  As we paddled along the same route, we would often read the journals of some of the crew members while sharing dinner, imagining ourselves in their places. We even found a cairn along the way that the crew had built, along with the original note that they had left inside of a tobacco can. Toward the end of their journey, Moffatt's crew were caught by surprise on a rapid that turned out to have multiple ledges and resulted in two of the boats capsizing. A freezing cold day, Art Moffatt succumbed to hypothermia, dying after spending too long in the icy waters of Marjorie Lake. The rest of the crew of 5 survived that day and went on to finish the trek without their leader, running out of food, and missing equipment from the capsized canoes along with a prior blizzard that had destroyed a tent. Sports Illustrated covered Moffatt's death, and the article discouraged people from attempting canoe trips in the Canadian Arctic for a number of years.

Fast forward almost 70 years, and filmmaker Matt Boyd is using the original footage that Moffatt captured, along with new footage to create a new documentary film called Barren Grounds (trailer here: https://fundraising.fracturedatlas.org/barren-grounds/campaigns/5679). Matt arranged for one of the original members of Moffatt's expedition (Skip Pessl) and Moffatt's daughter Creigh to meet us at the end point of our journey in Baker Lake. It was a special opportunity to speak with them, learn how things have changed in the canoeing world, and ask Skip questions about their trip, comparing his notes to ours.

Last thoughts

This trip was a unique opportunity that I'll never forget. I am thankful for all of the crew who helped guide this newbie on a new type of travel. I learned so much from all of the others, finding that Arctic canoe travel requires different skill sets, and experience counts for a lot. This journey was at times joyous, scary, beautiful, spiritual, and uncomfortable. The barren grounds now have a special place in my heart, one of the last truly wild places on earth. Absolutely worth every black fly bite.