We started out a almost noon; day 4 had been very tiring and we all slept in. We hit the first rapid after less than 2 km and ran it with no problem; it wasn't much.
The second set was only a another couple of km further down stream. This was a tougher rapid and was marked as about 1 km long on the map. Mike and I ran river right. We did all right but we near the bottom of the rapid we ran out of water; most of the water was going river left. We had to drag the canoe over the last few hundred feet.
Both Warren/Tim and Rick/Alan ran river left with Warren going first. The rapid was more serious on this side and full of boulders. Warren ended up blowing it and the back end of his canoe went sideways over a boulder the size of a Volkswagen bus. Luckily the boulder had a pillow of water going over it. Rick had been following too close and almost ran into Warren at this point. With lots of maneuvering, both canoes got to the bottom safely. It took Mike and I quite a bit longer to drag through the rocks.
After this there were no rapids for more than 15 km. The river opened up into a lake and a strong headwind started to blow. Everyone was paddling as hard as they could. Alan said that he was hungry but we paddled on. Just after some really tough paddling, Alan fell over backward in the canoe. We thought at first he was just taking a break, but Rick quickly headed for shore. Alan's entire body had cramped; he was unable to even speak. When we got to shore we had to pry the paddle out of his hands. We fed him soup mix and water and waited for him to recover. Within a few minutes Alan was fine again and reading a book.
We paddled a bit further and stopped on an esker for lunch. The shore was sandy as you can see below.
The esker rose quickly from the water. The picture below is from the top of the esker looking down on the canoes.
Just after the esker, the Wheeler river joined the Geike and the flow about doubled. This made me fairly nervous; the toughest rapid was coming up.
One km upstream from the tough rapid was a fairly easy one. Mike and I ran the rapid last. We ran it pretty well and at the end I told Mike to eddy out after "the rock". I assumed he understood which rock because the other two canoes were sitting in the eddy behind it. Mike decided that I wanted to eddy out one rock earlier. There is no way we could make the earlier eddy; if we tried we would end up broad siding the rock I wanted to eddy behind. Mike started paddling hard for the wrong eddy. I yelled to Mike, "Whoa". Mike kept paddling. I yelled "Whoa" again. Mike put in another stroke. I yelled "Fuck Mike stop paddling". Mike finally stopped. I had to spin the canoe around the rock to make the right eddy. As we came in, everyone else is laughing like crazy. This incident didn't help my reputation for yelling at my bowman.
The tough rapid was 1.5 km long. Rick/Alan went first and then Warren/Tim and then myself/Mike. We followed fairly closely and copied Warren's path down the river. Mike and I did great for most of the rapid; ferrying sideways to slip past rocks, turning around rocks, no problem. Near the bottom we blew a turn and ended up having to drag over the last 50 feet of rocks. All in all we felt pretty good about how well we ran the rapid. Having a guide pick the path helped a lot; it allowed us concentrate on our strokes. Everyone else made it down the rapid without incident, although Tim's eye were big as saucers when he got to the bottom.
We stopped at the bottom of the rapid to fish for arctic grayling. None of us got a bite. As you can see the day was quite gloomy.
It was 3 more km to the last rapid. We ran it on the left side, hugging an island. It was quite short and fun. Rick and Tim ran first. You can see them and the burned trees from the forest fire the year before in the background.
Next came myself and Mike.
We camped on the right hand shore beside the rapid. Tim was quite chilled from the wind and getting wet in the rapids. He was wearing all cotton which can really make you cold when you get wet.
We set up camp in the middle of the trees that had been burned the year before. The ground was fine but the trees were covered in soot.
It was Mike's turn to cook and he made something with dried hamburger and dried peas. It was okay but he had bought the wrong kind of dried peas; after cooking for more than half an hour they were still as hard as rocks. As a snack I made beef stew with dumplings, potatoes and carrots (I had dried the stew, potatoes and carrots in my oven before the trip). The beef jerky never really softened enough.
The trip was basically over so we started drinking at about 9:00. We had brought lots of hard liquor but we had paddled so hard every day that we hadn't got around to drinking any of it. Warren and Allen didn't drink. Rick's stomach was bothering him and he couldn't finish an ounce. Mike drank a mickey of scotch and went to bed at 12:00. I drank about a 26 of Crown Royal rye and I'm sure Tim drank at least a 40. Tim and I called it quits at 4:00 am.
