Tundra and Taiga
Keep your distance, Smokey!
One afternoon we steered into an obscure bay, attracted by a patch of luminescent white. A boisterous tributary was feeding the Nowleye between banks of shimmering blue-white ice. Near shore, John Schultz saw a flicker of movement under the surface and didn't need any more encouragement to try his luck. Two casts yielded the same number of plump lake trout averaging 20 inches and one thoroughly filling dinner. I've traveled with some fine wilderness chefs, yet never counted myself among them. The others were disinclined to take on the awesome responsibility of cook, thus I was anointed. At least we got enough to eat, and I never burned anything: end of resume.
Richard noticed it first and asked, "Where are all those bugs you guys told me about?" Happily, the early days of our trip were virtually devoid of mosquitoes and blackflies, as we enjoyed the brief insect-free window that happens after the ice goes out. Later on we donned bug jackets to keep the Arctic Air Force at bay.
The Nowleye flowed north in a series of lake expansions connected by swifts or easy rapids. The only previous canoe party had told us everything was runnable, but I had my doubts when we approached the last set of rapids before Nowleye Lake. Our early-season high water generated half a mile of frothing curlers slamming against VW-sized boulders. As much as our "mature" group of paddlers liked to avoid portages, self-preservation dictated that we do the carry.
Nowleye Lake had an open-water lead along the shoreline; otherwise, it looked pretty much like the Polar Icecap. Most of the time our rugged ABS canoes could bash through rotting "candle" ice when it was still attached to the bank. Once I tried to push a floe with my bare hand, and immediately received cuts on three fingers from the razor-sharp surface. The zigzag channel held out until we reached the western end of the Nowleye and our intended portage into the next lake, Kamilukuak.
It was one portage that never happened. When Bob's look at Kamilukuak revealed no shore lead, the options were fairly clear: either wait it out or get our charter airline to come in. Classic northern travelers would have had no choice, and waiting for breakup was part of the lore, but they didn't have satellite phones and Otter floatplanes for the ordering. There was a unanimous vote to bring in the aircraft and fly 90 miles northwest to the headwaters of our next river, the Finnie, rather than return to our van at the Points North base. Forgone would be paddling and portaging through Kamilukuak and Dubawnt Lakes, then up an unnamed stream to the headwaters of the Finnie, all of which could easily have taken a week.
This mid-trip flight went well and confirmed our decision, as the upper Finnie was free of ice. The river was named by the illustrious tundra traveler Jack Hornby for a senior Canadian government official. Hornby passed its mouth in 1925 on an early canoe journey down the Thelon River. Two years later he perished on the very same Thelon when supplies gave out. Hornby was a legendary explorer who once invited a partner to join him on a long canoe trip with, "There are few men who know how to starve properly, but I think you may be taught."
Starting near the headwaters of a small northern river can lead to unwelcome dragging, but the Finnie let us pass with only minor inconvenience. By noon on the first day, tributaries had swelled it to a volume that was pleasant as long as one kept an eye out for the elusive, twisting channel. Later on, we became concerned about an advancing weather front, heralded by powerful black thunderheads. Putting ashore at the nearest level spot, we had just gotten the tents up when it hit. For the next hour a wind-driven, almost tropical downpour lashed our camp, belying the designation semi-desert.
My journal for the following day recorded that it was "A banner day." Morning cloud cover gave way to a warming sun. We were running small, challenging chutes when I did something unusual at the bottom of one. I looked back upstream. To my surprise, a broad, tawny face was peering out from some willow that we had just paddled past.
Grizzly!
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