Spirit Journey to Tip Top Mountain

PADDLING AND PORTAGING Before we could slog our way up Tip Top’s flanks, we too had to negotiate the dark, potentially dangerous waters of the White River. Our fleet of six Kruger-style expedition canoes—each 17 feet 2 inches long and outfitted with fabric spray covers, portage yokes, and rudders—were loaded to their cockpit rims when we launched from White Lake Provincial Park and headed west down the lower White. This rugged, watery route, one of Ontario’s finest paddling trails, charges 50 miles from rocky, forested hills to the shores of Lake Superior, the world’s greatest freshwater sea. Uncertain what kind of conditions we might encounter on Superior, well known for its fogs and violent storms that can sink huge steel freighters, not to mention tiny canoes, we had packed food and supplies for 16 days—sufficient time, we figured, for the multifaceted trip we had in store.

Designed and built by Kruger himself, our canoes—sleek, ultra-fast, and eminently seaworthy—were ideal for transporting a paddler and ample gear across great distances and varied waters. But for all their merits, these straight-tracking boats do poorly in whitewater, a consideration that was never far from our minds because the White has its share of swifts and rapids that must be respected and plummeting drops and crashing torrents that must be avoided. However, with over 20 tough portages ahead of us, the longest nearly a mile and a half, we decided to run some of the minor pool-drop rapids to save time and energy.

Only a few hours into our trip, Dan Smith, a stoic 54-year-old Michigander, followed Mark Przedwojewski down a Class II ledge-type run. The rest of us had watched from shore as Mark, a tall, strapping 34-year-old ultra-distance paddler who purchased Kruger’s boat-building business just prior to his death at the age of 82 in 2004, bounced through the rapid unscathed. Dan didn’t fare as well. His gear-laden Sea Wind clipped a submerged boulder, broached, and flipped. An old-school boater who shuns modern drybags, Dan glumly surveyed the damage after his flooded boat was pulled to shore: much of his stuff was soaked and his video camera was toast.

That evening, at a splendid bug-free camp below the Abitibi Rapid portage, we determined that we’d come seven miles that day. “Not too shabby, considering our late start,” chirped Scott Smith, 42, Dan’s younger brother, an expert boatbuilder who worked side by side with Kruger for a number of years. “But from what I remember about our trip with Verlen in ’98, starting tomorrow things are gonna get a whole lot tougher.”

We woke at twilight, shoveled down a simple breakfast, broke camp, packed the canoes, and were on the water by eight. Most parties allow five to six days to reach Lake Superior; we wanted to do it in four. Because the river level was on the low side, a few of the rapids marked on the map as mandatory portages were runnable by taking scratchy sneak routes, or by lining, dragging, and pushing the boats along the shallow, rocky edges. Even so, there were more than enough full-blown portages each day to make us wince, especially since each carry required two, sometimes three trips with backbreaking loads.

Late in the afternoon on our second day, we paddled past a large side bay and into a section where the river narrows considerably. Suddenly, everyone became quiet and pensive. Without a word, Todd took the lead, son Jake not far behind. Only then did it dawn on me that not far ahead, around a seemingly benign, lovely bend in the river, was where Todd’s father met his untimely end. A minute later, scanning the left shoreline, I noticed a wooden cross on top of a granite outcrop.

Todd and Jake at Jerry Cesar's Memorial.

With solemn reverence, we pulled ashore below a sloping ledge draped with overhanging cedars. The rest of us stayed a respectful distance behind as father and son made their way to the simple but dignified structure. Todd had built and erected it here seven years earlier after a river runner alerted Kruger that the original cross was missing.

A born-again Christian, as was Kruger, Todd reached out to the chest-high cross, ran his fingers slowly over the weathered cedar wood, and in a somber, cracking voice, read the words on the shiny brass inscription:

Choking back tears, the son who lost a young father put his arm around his own son’s shoulders. Both bowed their heads in silent prayer. We all gathered around the cross and spoke softly of that fateful day. Thirty years ago, in spring runoff, with poor maps, no guidebooks, and no marked portage trails, conditions were very different here. We could imagine how the untried river, with its deceptively mellow current at this juncture, could have lured a first-descent paddler to enter the funneling rock walls. Under a gray, dull sky, I shivered at the thought, knowing that just out of sight and sound was a chute of churning water leading straight into a boulder-sieve death trap. Finally, after everything that needed to be said was said, Todd picked up his paddle and pronounced, “We’ve still got a long way to go, gentlemen. Let’s get moving. We’re done here.”

PADDLING AND PORTAGING Before we could slog our way up Tip Top’s flanks, we too had to negotiate the dark, potentially dangerous waters of the White River. Our fleet of six Kruger-style expedition canoes—each 17 feet 2 inches long and outfitted with fabric spray covers, portage yokes, and rudders—were loaded to their cockpit rims when we launched from White Lake Provincial Park and headed west down the lower White. This rugged, watery route, one of Ontario’s finest paddling trails, charges 50 miles from rocky, forested hills to the shores of Lake Superior, the world’s greatest freshwater sea. Uncertain what kind of conditions we might encounter on Superior, well known for its fogs and violent storms that can sink huge steel freighters, not to mention tiny canoes, we had packed food and supplies for 16 days—sufficient time, we figured, for the multifaceted trip we had in store.