Alone Against the North (5 page)

THE FOLLOWING SUMMER
, I returned to the area for a second attempt: this time with a friend, Wesley Crowe. Wes and I had been fast friends since our days on the playground of E.W. Farr elementary school. We had shared in many adventures together—canoeing rivers, braving storms, spearing fish, sleeping under the stars—and the summer after our high school graduation, we had embarked together on a journey as deep into the wilderness as we could go. Sturdy, resolute, and as close to fearless as it is probably prudent to be, he remained my first choice whenever I was in need of an expedition partner. Wes, tied down with a construction job, had been unable to accompany me the prior summer but was now free to join me. He had spent the last seven months living with his girlfriend in Australia, but had just arrived back in Canada and
was burning for an adventure. However, his older sister's upcoming wedding in mid-August meant the expedition had a fixed end date. Naturally, I had presumed that missing his sister's wedding to explore an obscure river was eminently understandable—but I was made to appreciate that this was not the case.

Wes and I retraced my route from the previous summer down the tortuous course of Hopper Creek, dragging and wading with a canoe through shallow rock-strewn rapids and then paddling down a section of the Kattawagami River. Soaking wet and exhausted, at dusk on the first day we arrived at the decrepit log cabin on the large, weedy lake. The cabin looked like it hadn't been touched since my father and I had been there the previous year. I was content to set up our tent on the shore and sleep there, but asked Wes if he cared to spare the trouble of unpacking and just sleep in the old, musty cabin.

“This place reminds me of
Deliverance
,” he replied.

“There are no hillbillies around here,” I said.

“If you say so,” Wes looked suspiciously at the surrounding trees, “let's sleep in the cabin, then.”

We pulled the canoe onshore—it was an old fibreglass vessel that its previous owner gave me, thinking it was worthless. The battered fourteen-foot canoe was nearly forty years old and had several holes in its hull, which I had repaired as best I could. I would have preferred a sturdier vessel for this kind of expedition, but Wes and I didn't have the funds for one. We unloaded the canoe, strapped on our backpacks, and headed up the gravelly beach toward the cabin in the fading light.

“Watch your step,” I said, motioning to a bed of nails protruding from the crude porch in front of the cabin. The nails were
intended to serve as a bear deterrent. Black bears, adult males of which can weigh over five hundred pounds, sometimes break into cabins if food is stored inside. We gathered some firewood and lit a fire in the cabin's rusted cast-iron stove to cook soup and make tea. It was dark by the time we finished supper. Exhausted from the struggle along the creek, down the Kattawagami River, and across the large, choppy waters of the lake, we were soon asleep in the cabin's wooden bunks. But sometime in the night, our slumber was disturbed by a loud crash immediately outside the cabin door.

“What was that?” Wes whispered, sitting upright in his sleeping bag and staring into the darkness toward the door.

“A bear,” I whispered, fumbling for my hatchet, then my flashlight.

We remained silent, straining our ears to detect any sound from outside the thin walls. After a brief silence, we could hear something lumbering through the thick brush.

Wes and I sprang to our feet. Breathing rapidly, we moved as quietly as we could toward the door. Wes seized a rusty old axe that was propped up against the wall. We both peered out the windows toward the lakeshore, but saw no movement.

“Let's check it out,” I whispered, switching on my flashlight and slowly opening the door.

“Watch out for the nails.” I shone the light toward the bear trap.

“Maybe that's what we heard—a bear stepped on the nails.” Wes crouched down to inspect them.

“See anything?”

“Hmm … I don't see any blood or fur,” replied Wes as he looked over the ranks of nails that guarded the cabin's door. I
circled the light around the front of the cabin, looking into the spruces and poplars to see if I could catch sight of anything. It was a cold, starry night.

“Well, I guess if it was a bear, it's gone now,” I concluded.

“I think it had to be a bear,” said Wes standing up. “What else could have made a noise like that?”

“A lonely hillbilly,” I offered.

Wes laughed. We returned to the bunks, switched off the flashlight, and slept with our axe and hatchet handy, in the event that anything else should disturb us.

OVER THE FOLLOWING WEEK
, Wes and I fought our way down the Kattawagami River, dragged our fragile canoe up a nameless tributary that I had explored the previous summer, and then set about the arduous process of trailblazing our way overland to the Again's isolated headwaters. We had neither a GPS nor satellite phone and relied mostly on the sun for navigation, aided at times by map and compass. The sun, with a bit of practice, can be more easily relied upon to keep a steady course than a compass, especially in dense forest where both hands need be kept free to blaze a trail. We were making good progress until the sixth day of our expedition, when we encountered some difficulty crossing a vast swamp. It was uncertain if we would make it back in time for Wes' sister's wedding if we proceeded any further.

“I'd say we have at least a fifty-fifty chance,” I concluded.

Wes stroked his scrubby black beard. “Hmm … that's not good enough. I'd need a one hundred percent assurance we'd be back in time, or else my family will disown me.”

I sighed, disappointed. After a few moments of silence, I reluctantly said, “Well, in that case, we should turn around. With nothing to guide us, we can't be certain how long it will take us to reach the Again and then get down it.” It was a bitter pill—so close only to have to turn back. For the second summer in a row, I wouldn't reach the Again River.

Wes nodded, “All right, so now what?”

I pulled out the crude sketch map from my pocket. “We turn around, retrace the trails that we made, portage back to the Kattawagami, then paddle down it to tidewater at James Bay. Cross James Bay to the Moose River, head up the river until we reach Moosonee, and then catch the Polar Bear Express train south to Cochrane.”

“How long will—” Wes swore and slapped the back of his neck. Several dozen mosquitoes were feasting on him, “that take us?”

“About ten days,” I replied. Of course, stormy weather on James Bay—a body of water with a fearsome reputation for drowning canoeists and boaters—could delay us for days on end. But since the weather was beyond our control, I didn't mention this detail.

“Okay, sounds like we have nothing to worry about.”

“Right,” I cheerfully replied.

But by the time we fought our way back to the banks of the Kattawagami—through impenetrably thick forest, across mosquito-infested swamps, and over several pristine lakes—we had to concede our canoe had heard its death knell. The old fibreglass vessel was nowhere near as strong as the cedar-strip canoe my father and I had made, which had survived the
punishing rapids and jagged rocks without a single leak. But that beautifully hand-crafted canoe was a real work of art, and I was reluctant to subject it to the punishment of another expedition—preferring to save it for gentle trips on calm water. So I had acquired this old fibreglass canoe, which was now leaking like a strainer as we attempted to paddle it. The canoe had sprung numerous leaks on our return journey down the shallow creek, which was filled with sharp rocks. With spruce gum and duct tape, we repaired the leaks well enough to keep the vessel afloat, but not enough to make it withstand the damage that hundreds of whitewater rapids would inflict upon it if we paddled the Kattawagami all the way to the sea. Our only choice was to try to make it back to the remote mining road where we had started out.

“You know, it's sort of ridiculous that we do these crazy expeditions with the gear we have,” Wes observed.

I shrugged.

“Most people wouldn't attempt this sort of thing without a satellite phone or GPS, or the best canoes and Gore-Tex clothing,” Wes continued.

“Maybe one day we'll have sponsors who give us that stuff.”

“It'd be nice to have a canoe that didn't leak.” Wes bailed a pitcher of water overboard.

“You're going soft,” I joked while trying to paddle the half-sinking canoe from the stern.

Wes and I could travel at great speed when the occasion called for it—sinking canoe or not—and with only one of us paddling and the other constantly bailing, we made it back to the isolated mining road in four days. Just as we emerged from the
shadowy, moss-draped forest onto the narrow roadway—soaking wet from sitting in a canoe full of water—the dark sky above us began to rumble.

“That doesn't sound good.” Wes glanced skyward.

We headed for the shelter of a big spruce. The next instant, a hail storm of near biblical proportions descended upon us, furiously pelting us with golf-ball-sized ice. We photographed the gigantic hail, thinking no one would believe us otherwise.

Battered from the hailstorm and drenched by pouring rain, Wes and I huddled under the shelter of the thick canopy. We were stranded—after dropping us off at Hopper Creek, Terry O'Neil had driven our vehicle back into Cochrane and parked it at the train station for us—some two hundred kilometres away. We didn't relish the thought of walking the long, lonely road all the way back into town. I suggested hitchhiking, half as a joke. We had no idea when anyone might pass by.

Wes raised an eyebrow. “But who'd pick us up? A couple of scruffy guys decked out in army camouflage who don't smell very nice and just appeared out of nowhere. We look like bandits out to rob the gold mine up the road.”

“Right, well let's try to look charming.”

But no opportunity to use our charm appeared for over an hour as we huddled in the rain as night fell, the steady drip of rain filtering down between the spruce boughs. Finally, we could hear the sound of a truck coming down the narrow road. As we emerged from the woods, a black Chevy pickup came into view. Wes and I stuck out our thumbs, and the truck slowed to a halt. Behind the wheel was a middle-aged aboriginal man who looked rather surprised to see us.

We thanked him for stopping and explained our situation. It turned out that he was hired by the gold mine to keep the road open by trapping beaver. Beavers, when left to their own devices, were inclined to build dams, which would flood out the road. His job was to make sure that didn't happen. Just now he was coming from Cochrane on his way to the mine. He offered to drive us to the mine, where we could try to find a ride back to town. This arrangement seemed generous to us, and we thanked him profusely.

“You got to ride in the back,” he smiled sheepishly and gestured to the box. “I've got a little too much stuff in here.”

“Sure,” I replied happily, though I sensed the real reason was because the trapper believed that two men who appeared out of nowhere around these wild parts might not be people you wanted in your truck.

Wes and I, having left our backpacks, gear, and the canoe concealed in the forest, jumped into the back of the pickup, only to quickly regret it. The driver put his pedal to the metal and we were soon flying along at over a hundred kilometres per hour down a wet gravel road in fading light. Terry, the old-timer who shuttled our vehicle back to Cochrane, was adamant that he wouldn't drive this road after dark or even at dusk because of the bears and moose (“swamp donkeys,” as he called them) that frequently cross it—a deadly hazard for drivers. A collision with a moose has about the same effect as a collision with a backhoe. Even in daylight, Terry sternly complained when I was driving if he noticed the speedometer creep above sixty. Wes and I held on for dear life in the truck, flying up in the air with every bump on the gravel road and holding on as best as we could when we took turns at terrifying speeds.

“Is this guy trying to kill us?” Wes shouted in my ear as the trees swirled passed us in a blur of dark green.

“I think so,” I said, pressing myself down in the truck. We were quite literally in greater danger now than at any time on our expedition—though Wes had stepped on a nail at the old cabin and busted his middle finger on a bad fall while wading in the treacherous, slippery rocks of Hopper Creek. After a wild fifteen-minute ride in the fading light, the driver suddenly slowed down. An oncoming transport truck was returning from the gold mine. Our driver motioned the trucker to stop.

The trucker peered down suspiciously from his cab at the three of us. Our driver spoke, “These guys here are looking for a ride into Cochrane. Can you take 'em?”

The trucker boasted an Abraham Lincoln–like beard and shoulder-length hair tucked under a grimy old ball cap. After a pause, he said gruffly, “I only got room for one in my truck.”

This was a little bewildering—Wes and I thought both of us could fit in the truck. But the trucker insisted there was only room for one of us. I was curious to see the gold mine, so I suggested to Wes that he take the ride—he could drive back to the mine and get me once he had retrieved our vehicle from town. So I remained in the back of the pickup while Wes climbed up into the rig.

While he rode into town along the winding road that sliced through the vast forest, I was heading in the opposite direction toward the mine.

It took three hours to reach Cochrane, where Wes retrieved our pickup truck from the train station, refuelled it, and then prepared to drive another three hours to meet me back at the mine.

At the gold mine, flood lights illuminated the haul trucks, hydraulic shovels, and grey construction trailers that littered the landscape. Exploratory work was being conducted in the area to see if it was profitable to re-open the mine, as it had lain abandoned for decades. The high price of gold made the prospect of mining here potentially feasible once again.