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94-06-12: Sunday Today we would paddle to the takeout. Once again, we loaded up and started paddling, assuming we were past the falls. Then we found the real Lewis Falls. A thirty feet drop, down a steep (50 degree?) slope. Lessons Learned: Don't trust the map and scout ahead. We landed on the large rocks on river-left and portaged down. From the top, we could see a bald eagle in its nest on the far side of the pool at the bottom of the falls. Looking back up Lewis Falls
In order to get out to that rock you see us standing on, we had to jump over a narrow stream, which dropped down the slope like a suicidal water slide. Mike slipped crossing it at the top and almost went for a ride of his life. I labelled the water slide "Michael's Folly"! Michael's Folly
This is looking down from where Mike slipped. After portaging down, we loaded up the canoes at the very bottom of the falls. However, the big surging water at the bottom made it difficult to paddle UP out of the eddy to the calmer water. The eddy itself had about a 2 foot drop, with the water funelling back upstream over a small ledge. The surging and pounding surf rolling in from the side made this daunting as we knew we wouldn't be able to hold the canoe upright if we got swept into the main wash from the falls. (might have been a hoot in a whitewater kayak though!) Rick and I tried anywasy, but we almost swamped the canoe within 30 seconds so we gave in. Plan B was to try and line the canoes up and out of the eddy. Since we weren't even lining up a rapid (just a "little eddy") we didn't bother making a bridle. The canoe flipped within 10 seconds. The bunch of us managed to hang on to the line, and drag it back to the shore. We rolled it back upright, none the worse for the wear. Lessons Learned: Tie in your gear. Always. The next time we set the bridle up correctly and lined the canoe up and down to other side of surge/boil. We got in and paddled across the pool to the outlet. This turned out to be an 8 foot drop, with a nice hole in middle that I had no intention of entering. But, it was too tempting to not try running it. There was a small tongue down the river-left side. I ran it solo, with half my gear in the canoe. I have my paddle on the left so as to be able to draw away from the hole just in case something goes wrong. The lean is because halfway down the tongue, I would scream into the eddy and turn very sharpley back upstream, whether I wanted to or not. Swoosh down beside the hole
The other canoes were lined and carried down. We then paddled on to MacDonald Falls. This turned out to be a small ledge going around a corner. The ledge wasn't runnable, so we tied lines to the canoes, threw them down over the ledges, caught them at the bottom and then paddled them to the beach. The beach was quite big and impressive, especially for a river in flood. Most unexpected. The Beach
We then did an easy paddle to a chute above Ford falls. Alan and Rick thought it would be fun to run it in my Madriver. Half way down, the front was thrown way up, and then a big bang as the rear keel hit a big rock (no damage). The big rock probably prevented the back end from totally submaring in the foam at the bottom. They made it through just fine. The picture is missing the top two thirds of the falls, and just shows them settling into the foam. The rest of us carried the loaded canoes down the big rock on river left. Alan and Rick Running the Chute
Ford Falls appeared soon, just a little way down the river. We lined the canoes down the first half, and then carried them down the second half. It was lunch time so we sat down and ate bagels, pita bread and muffins. The picture should capture the reason we lined the canoes down the first part, then carried them down the rock face for the second part... Brent, explaining Ford Falls to us
We then paddled on down to our takeout, arriving at about 4:15. While Rick, Brent and Darryl trudged off to get Brent's car, the rest of us started unloading the canoes and carrying everything up to the road. Half an hour later, Darryl ran back with the news that Brent's car had been trashed (two holed tires, broken passenger side window and slashed seats). I don't know why we don't have any pictures of this. Maybe we were all too stunned. While the rest of us tried to get the wheels off of the car, Rick flagged down a passing truck (lots of trucks going up to the mine at the end of the road, another three hundred or so kilometers north). He didn't so much as flag it down as stand in the middle of the road so that the truck couldn't squeeze by on either side. Brent hopped up with a 2 litre bottle of beer that he shared with the trucker during the hour long driver to Alan's car. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the rest of us struggled with Brent's wheels, but one of the lug nuts was quite rounded, and his tire wrench wasn't able to do anything but make them rounder. I tried stuffing all kinds of bits of metal into the tire iron but nothing worked. Eventually, Brent returned with Alan's car (no damage even though it was parked even closer to the road than Brent's. We figure the vandals were too tired by the time they got to Alan's car.). The unbelievable good news was that the Honda lug wrench fitted the nuts perfectly and we then completed taking off the wheels. Rick and Brent took off in Alan's car to go back into Pinehouse , fill up with gas and get both tires fixed. They found a young guy who popped the tires off with a jackall! (a jackall is a large all purpose jack usually used to jack up pickup trucks). On the way back to us, Rick and Brent also took the opportunity to remove the bottom of Alan's muffler! All the work that Alan and I had done straddling the berms on the way up was wasted. Lessons Learned: Heavily loaded Hondas are NOT good cars for gravel roads. The rest of us set up a tent and crawled inside to escape the bugs. With four of us there, we pulled out the cards and played bridge. Rick and Brent finally returned @ 8:30pm. and we loaded up the cars. We sealed up the broken window with an orange garbage bag and duct tape. Lessons Learned: Duct Tape, don't leave home without it. We then drove to Beaval, in the forlorn hope that the gas station stayed open till midnight. We got to Beaval, in the pouring rain at 12:05 and discovered that the gas station had closed at 9 pm anyways. There was however a telephone. I took the opportunity to phone Sandy (my wife) and tell her we were going to be later than planned. I had to use one of those automated collect-call agents and Sandy was always a little groggy when woken up late at night. I gave it the information and was then able to listen as Sandy replied. The SaskTel computer prompted "I have a collect call from Warren. Press 1 or say Yes to accept". I heard Sandy say "one", and the computer then informed that my collect call had not been accepted. I dialed a second time, with the exact same result, except that she said "one" a little louder. I dialed a third time, and heard "ONE". By this time, everyone else in the car was getting bored, and I was getting wet, standing in the rain. So I gave in. At least she knew I was alive. It wasn't until the next morning that Sandy figured out that she was meant to press 1 or say "Yes". We laughed about it all for the next half hour. We had enough gas to drive north to a government campsite at Little Amyot Lake where we set up tents in the rain and went to sleep. The rain fell hard all night. |
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