Spirit Journey to Tip Top Mountain

The White River

Todd was just 10 when his 34-year-old dad, paddling ahead of Kruger, capsized his canoe and was swept into the swollen White River’s Chicagonce Falls. The elder Cesar’s body was never found. Not by his partner, Kruger, who frantically searched the violent, boiling cascade all that day and the next. Not by the Ontario Provincial Police, who later conducted a thorough search from the falls on down to Lake Superior.

Racked with grief, with no closure, Todd lost his bearings. As a young man, he drifted from job to job, got married at 19, fathered three kids, and by his own admission drank too much. But deep inside he always felt that something was missing, some purpose to give meaning to his life. It was only when he became reacquainted with Kruger, after a long, painful separation between the famed canoeist and the Cesar family, that Todd discovered what he must do. He would close the circle that had haunted him for so long; he would finish his father’s last journey.

In September 1998, Todd Cesar, who had always avoided canoes and the wilderness because of his woods-savvy dad’s fate, teamed up with Kruger and two others in an attempt to retrace his father’s paddle-and-pack endeavor to reach Tip Top’s summit. To the best of their knowledge, the three-pronged route had been accomplished only once: by Kruger himself and Steve Landick, Kruger’s partner on the monumental 28,043-mile Ultimate Canoe Challenge around and through North America. A few months after Jerry Cesar’s accident, the men had returned to erect a commemorative cross at Chicagonce Falls and to attain what they knew Jerry would have wanted: the summit of Tip Top.

Green and totally untested in the art of backcountry travel, Todd was watched over by Kruger every step and paddle stroke of the way as they retraced that tragic expedition of 23 years earlier. Pushed to his limits both emotionally and physically, Todd often focused his thoughts on his family to gain strength. He had promised his wife, children, and mother that he would return home safe. His mom had already lost a husband to the river; she didn’t want to lose her only son.

Their run down the White River, with its many long and strenuous portages, and their first leg on storm-tossed Lake Superior were difficult, even dangerous at times for the fledgling Cesar and the aging, determined Kruger, but they accomplished it without incident. It was on the mountain trek, however, that the 76-year-old Kruger’s arthritic knees finally gave out on him. Reluctantly, they turned back after traversing only about a third of the distance to Tip Top. Now, in late July 2005, along with Todd’s 17-year-old son, Jake—the grandson that the elder Cesar didn’t live long enough to see—we are giving it another try. This time Todd is bound and determined to reach Tip Top. For his dad. For Verlen. For the Cesar family. Most of all, for himself.