8 Days on the Steel River

FROM THE MOMENT we rendezvoused with Gary at the Coach House Motel, just east of Terrace Bay on Trans-Canada Highway 17, we knew we were in the presence of a celebrity. At dinner in the Wilderness Café next door, proprietors Dennis and Patti Fisher hovered over Gary as if he were visiting royalty, ready to bring him a fresh cup of tea, another helping of grilled lake trout, or more fresh-from-the-oven pecan puffs. When the arrival of more guests momentarily diverted the Fisher’s attention from him, Gary slipped out to his brand-new Ford Excursion (compliments of the Ford Motor Company of Canada) which was parked in front of his (comped) room. He returned bearing three beautifully photographed hardcover books he had co-authored with Joanie, and, to the delight of everyone in the room, autographed all three and presented them to our awestruck hosts.

I could tell that Cliff, who isn’t used to sharing the limelight of fawning admirers in canoe country, was impressed—and maybe a bit jealous. “You know, Gary,” he said, while trying in vain to have Patti bring him another home-baked pastry, “if I had to do it all over again, I’d copy my life after you.”

Gary just smiled, and with a subtle nod toward the kitchen caught Patti’s eyes. In a flash Cliff got his pecan puff, complements of the house.

THE SUMMER DAYS BEGIN to blend into each other as we leap-frog from one clear blue lake to the next, humping our heavy loads across portage after portage through shady tunnels of brush or, to our dismay, the increasingly charred and skeletal remains of a once healthy boreal and mixed northern forest. “I guess these fires occurred after my last trip here,” says Cliff, astounded at the change of scenery. “Surely I would have remembered this. But then again, I don’t remember much of anything any more, which could be a good thing.”

On the faint trails connecting the lakes we see absolutely no sign of fellow human beings. But high-stepping through the maze of green tangles, boot-sucking bogs, and fallen or unstable nuked trees, we often spot the fresh tracks and scat of wolves and moose. Beavers, black bears, lynx, and river otters are some of the other creatures that call this vast and lonely expanse their home, but they, too, are secretive and rarely observed.

For three days, the only moving water we’ve encountered has been in brief and twisting sections, often partially blocked by small logjams or tree-falls. The monotony is enough to make us question whether our leader really has done this same trip seven times. “Where’s all those miles of lively whitewater you promised us?” we drill him. “Hell, where’s that river you promised us?”

Cliff is unperturbed. He is in his element out here, doing what he enjoys most. “I love solo boats,” he says as we load up and take to the water again. “I can’t get enough of them.” It’s a love affair that has been going on for more than three decades, ever since Cliff almost single-handedly launched the rebirth of the solo tripping canoe.

Back in the early 1970s, the only solos available were far too expensive for a starving elementary-school teacher, so Cliff, a frugal Minnesotan, decided to build his own. He copied the designs of J. Henry Rushton, one of the great American canoe builders at the turn of the 19th century, and went one better. What resulted was a very light, very fragile 15-foot wood stripper he called ManToy. “I paddled that thing all over,” says Cliff, “easy trips and tough.”

Cliff kept tinkering with designs, and eventually came up with a 14.5-foot canoe with a V-bottom and hollowed ends so it ran very quietly in the water and rose with the waves. Mad River Canoe bought the design, which Cliff named the Ladyslipper after Minnesota’s state wildflower. Once the canoe was renamed the Slipper—(“because macho guys wouldn’t buy it” says Cliff) the canoe became an instant hit among solo seekers. Cliff went on to help design a couple more solo canoes for Bell and Dagger, which also became successful sellers. And to satisfy his many adoring fans, in 1991 he wrote Basic Essentials: Solo Canoeing, which is still the only readily available book specifically on this subject.

IT’S THE MORNING of our sixth day, and we’re poised to leave our campsite at Aster Lake, at mile 46, roughly halfway through our loop. Now, it being precisely nine, we make certain a groggy Cliff gets his butt out of the tent so we can pack up and get moving. We first-timers on this Circle Route are excited to finally be done with the bulk of our lake travel, ready to cross over the threshold into the Steel River watershed.

The river is narrow and crooked, the color of weak tea. The banks are cloaked with a dense line of robust trees, as green and verdant as the burned-over areas of the preceding days were black and bare. Cruising ahead of the gang, I briefly glance behind me. It’s a postcard moment: three sleek solo canoes in a straight line glistening in the bright morning sun, long trailing V-wakes rippling behind in the calm water. All is peaceful, all is serene. Until Cliffy hollers, “Better hold up, Riceman! I’m pretty sure there’s a nasty rapid just ahead!”

I peer downstream, but see nothing threatening, just more gently moving current. Then, as I begin to relax again, unfastening the waist cord on my nylon spray deck and sitting back on my seat, I round a bend and not fifty yards away an ominous horizon line appears with dashes of dancing water below.

There’s no scouting this time either. Gary, who, with Joanie, literally wrote the book on canoeing techniques–Paddle Your Own Canoe: An Illustrated Guide to the Art of Canoeing--cinches up his spray cover and goes first, wanting to set up below for some photos. Holding our positions above the rapid, the rest of us watch intently as he expertly angles his boat into the leading tongue and vanishes out of sight. A few moments later he reappears 30 to 40 yards below the drop, where he gives us an upraised paddle sign and a celebratory whoop to indicate that the route he chose was a good one.

Next goes Cliff, who has his own version of the book on canoeing techniques—Expedition Canoeing. Jim and I follow the experts through the bouncy Class II+ rapid. It’s extremely tame compared to what I normally run in my plastic nine-foot whitewater canoe, but in a heavily-loaded, straight-tracking river-tourer, this is about all the whitewater I want. Trying to skirt the standing waves, I bury the bow into a hole and get slammed with a face-full of water. Elegant it’s not, but I feel better when I slip into an eddy beside Cliff. “On one of my guided trips,” he says with a chuckle, “four out of five canoes flipped here.

TWO EASY days later, we reach our take-out at a middle-of-nowhere logging bridge about fifteen miles north of Lake Superior. We could keep chugging toward this inland sea, Cliff tells us, but that would require several more hard days of boating, involving a long, flat stretch of river beset with tree-falls and logjams, another crossing of the often windy and whitecapped Santoy Lake where our journey had begun, and finally a Class III canyon with a large falls and a few man-killer portages. “I’ve only done the Circle Route once all the way to Superior,” Cliffy recalls. “But I was much younger then, and this ol’ boy ain’t up for doing it again.”

Hauling everything up to Cliff’s van parked alongside the dusty gravel road, we hear The Old Master’s distinctive, unexpected laugh spring from inside the cab. “Check this out,” Cliff says, holding up a scrap piece of paper that was on the dash. “It’s from our shuttle driver. He writes, ‘Thanks for the business. Hope y’all made it back okay. If not, I’ll let someone know. Though except for McGuffin, forgot the rest of your names.’”

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