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- By Land … hiking over the “grease trail”.
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- By Sea… paddling the inner channel.
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- By Air …canoes are flown over the mountain trail.
Most St. John’s canoe trip experiences involved paddling the rivers and lakes of this great country. But on occasion they can involve a little more. The Nechako trip of 2008 included travel by land, by sea and by air. While only the canoes experienced the air portion, it was still an interesting aspect of the trip.
What are you memories of this trip? Send us your story.
August 17, 2016 at 8:46 pm
My second trip had an air component. Dave Neelands and Frank Felletti, I think started from Yellowknife in an attempt to retrace Franklin’s journey to the Coppermine. The plan was to get to Winter Lake where they Franklin’s group overwintered, cache the canoes, fly back.
Next year they would go the rest of the way to Coppermine.
We flew in. There were patches of ice on Winter lake, but after several passes the pilot decided we could land. Soon we were ashore. The canoes had not been disturbed. (One local source thought they may be pummelled by polar bears.)
We started out after doing some makeshift repairs on the canoes — caulking the keel, applying some ambroid and canvas to obvious rents in the canvas.
Lakes that have floating ice tend to be fed by chilly water. Tracking and liining up the Lockhart (Or was it Snare going upstream, and Lockhart later….Memory fades…)
We got into trouble on MacKay lake. This is a fish hook shaped lake with the entrance and exit on the shaft of the hook. 2-3 miles straight across, 15 miles or so out of our way to follow the shore. The lake was solid ice except for a band of water near the shore.
How hard can it be? We lifted the canoes onto the ice and became sled dogs, pulling the canoes balanced on their keels. Got a bit interesting on the other side of the ice, but I’ve told that tale elsewhere in these chronicles.
Just about every lake that was a decent size had ice on it.
And our repairs only slowed things down. After each portage everyone would hunt up a couple of flat rocks to lay in the bottom of the canoe to keep your feet out of the ice cold water. As a steersman (most of the time) I used thicker rocks, as the stern always collects more water.
About once an hour we’d bail the boat. That kept the water at my end under 2 inches most of the time.
August 18, 2016 at 7:08 am
We didn’t have a radio on that trip. We’d arranged with the RCMP that if we didn’t contact them from Coppermine by day 18, they would overfly our route.
We reached Aylmer Lake, which was the first decent sized lake on the route, and found it solid. It was clear we wouldn’t be able to finish the trip. Day 15. 3 days left. Try for the other side of Aylmer, sledding from island to island, paddling from point to point? Aylmer was big. If we did that, the plane might miss us.
We settled on a largish island near the entrance. We moved the canoes to the top of the island, tarped them and weighed the tarps down with stones. Someone else would have to finish the trip.
By choosing an island a bit over a km long, we were pretty sure that no matter which way the wind blew we would have a clear stretch of open water for the plane to land.
Three days passed.
No plane.
Middle of the 4th day, a twin otter in RCMP colours flew overhead. It turned and made a second pass. A paper bag dropped from the plane. Lunch bag weighted with a couple of plums. “If you are the SJSA party and need a plane, form a square. If you are not, form a single line.”
A few minutes later we got the co-pilot’s bag, weighted with an apple core. “We will inform O’Reilly Air of your location” (Parent of a boy in the school owned the Yellowknife air charter company — this part we’d set up ahead of time)
Back to waiting.
Next afternoon, a twin otter on floats came by, landed on the lee side of the island. We’d collected everyone on the top of the island with gear so that whatever side he landed on we would see, and be able to get there in reasonable time.