We loaded up the canoes and paddled across to Cochlan Fall's. There was an obvious portage trail on river left of the end of the falls (on the right hand side heading upstream). The portage trail was good to a lookout over the falls, which was about half way. Likely people from the fishing camps walked to the look out.
The falls dropped in many steps. The first picture of the falls shows the major drop of 20 to 30 feet and was taken from the look out.
The next picture is from further up stream.
After that there wasn't much of a trail, but most of the time the trees were far enough apart that the going was okay. Warren, Rick and I each carried our canoes. While carrying my canoe, I realized how much harder it is to carry a canoe when there isn't a much a trail. Carrying the canoe is one thing but pushing it through bush is another. I quickly realized that there was no way I could carry it by myself on the upcoming 2 km trip through the bush.
In the picture below we are loading our canoes above the last drop in the falls. We had to portage through the bush on river left.
On the trail Alan sprained his ankle. He tried taping it with duct tape, but it didn't do much good. Luckily I had my lace up ankle brace along and didn't need it. Alan put it on and liked it so much he bought it off me after the trip.
After the falls there were two more rapids in quick succession that we had to portage. For the third rapid, the river split into three and we portage across the island. We were about half way across when we hit a stream that was too wide and fast to wade across. We had to load up the canoes and paddle them across
After a few more km of paddling we hit some rapids that we could wade
up. Rick had brought along an aluminum pole and tried poling up through rapids.
We had read about people doing this in Maine. Unfortunately it sounded a
lot easier than it was; the pole kept getting stuck in the rocks under the
water. The pole never made it across the big portage the next day.
After the fast water there was one more rapid that we had to portage. After that we had about 20 km of open water to our destination for that day, which was the height of land we needed to cross to get into the Geike river system. We were not making very good time; the rapids had taken longer than we had expected. There was a strong wind at our backs so we decided to sail. Really it was Rick's idea and everyone else reluctantly agreed. Warren had tried sailing a few other times and, when he had tried in the past, by the time they had the sail ready the wind had changed.
We took two small trees, about 1 1/2 inches in diameter and tied them across the thwarts of the canoes. We left enough room between the canoes for their wake; just under two feet. We got a longer tree and tied small rope at the top and left a loop. We ran a rope through the loop; this was rope would allow us to raise and lower the sail. We tied two more ropes to the top of the tree. My canoe was the middle one and Mike sat in it with the tree between his legs. For the rest of the day, Mike kept making jokes about the size of the pole between his legs. We tied the two ropes hanging down from the mast to the outside of the other two canoes; they kept the mast in place.
Next came the sail. We used a tarp with one corner tied to the front tree holding the canoes together. The corner next to it was tied to the rope running through the loop at the top mast. As you can see from the picture, Tim held the rest of the of tarp. This all took less than half an hour and we were ready to go. Warren supervised the construction project; I'm not sure where he got the design from.
Amazingly it worked very well. Below you can see Mike with his paddle down as a dagger board and Tim holding one side of the sail. With the paddles as dagger boards, we were able to travel at a fair angle to the wind. The wind was strong enough to break the mast off once where the loop was tied. We simply tied it lower and continued.
In the picture below you can see me using my paddle as a rudder; at times there was enough force that it took two people to steer. The wind was strong enough and the sail catching enough wind, that the mast was pushing the front of my canoe down to the point that it was only a few inches out of the water. We thought about dropping the sail a couple of times.
With our sail, we traveled the 20 km in about 3 hours with almost no effort. Maybe the canoeing gods did not approve of this because we sure suffered the next day.
When the wind died down we left the canoes tied together and started paddling. This was also efficient because only one person had to steer.
We camped across from where we would portage. We were all nervous about the portage; it was 2 km through god knows what. It was Rick's turn to make supper and he made cabbage salad and soup. There was supposed to be chicken in the salad but he hadn't preserved it in any way and it was already rotten.
After supper, Tim made popcorn in our big cooking pot. He put a log through the handle that was big enough that the lid wouldn't come off and he shook the heck out of it. He was very careful and didn't burn the popcorn at all, which is quite an achievement over an open fire. It was late when we finished the popcorn and went to bed.
