After 14 canoe trips over the past 40 years, a fair conclusion might be that it is time to hang it up and rest on supposed laurels. But not quite yet — planning another trip is still the only way to go.

As friends and I searched for a river early in 2001, one criterion was paramount - minimal portaging - to accommodate our less than youthful physiques. So it was not surprising that the Horton River came into focus with attractions such as meaningful (410 mile) length, even gradient with few apparent carries, reputedly wonderful scenery, and a varied animal population. The three of us from the Washington, D.C., area: Joe Lederle, Bob Schaefer, and myself had an average age of 65; while the “youngster” of the party, Anders Karlsson out of Calgary, was 45.  

Western “discovery” of the Horton was on July 20, 1826, when the illustrious Sir John Richardson cruised by its mouth on an open boat exploration between the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers as the eastern detachment of Sir John Franklin’s second Canadian expedition. Richardson named the river for Wilmont Horton, Great Britain’s Under Secretary of State for the Colonial Department, noting that it was about 300 yards wide and that the presence of driftwood indicated it flowed through forested country.  In 1848 Richardson again passed by the Horton, this time on one of the early and unsuccessful searching expeditions for the lost Franklin expedition. His book on the Franklin search contains no further comment on the Horton, partly as they traveled by during the middle of the night of August 11-12. Recreational paddlers began regular descents in the mid-1970s, and word quickly spread about its appealing qualities so that recently the river has accommodated about a dozen trips each season.

Jump-off points are usually Inuvik or Norman Wells. We chose the latter as the total air charter cost was lower, given that our destination was the upper Horton. There is a satisfaction about starting close to the limit of navigation so we were not heading for the usual put-in on Horton Lake, but an anonymous tundra pond that drained into the Horton about 30 miles above the lake’s inflow. I had some doubts when Warren Wright of North-Wright Airways brought his Twin Otter over our landing lake and we found it half full of ice, but he set down smoothly on the liquid part. It was July 2nd. We were certainly abiding by that northern maxim “start early.” In another few weeks falling water levels would make this upstream section near impossible for water-borne travel.

July or not, the willows were still in bud and little new growth was apparent on the tundra. Dragging and wading through ice-packed shoreline shallows made for frigid travel to the outlet. There we found good volume in a creek that would carry us to the Horton itself. Clusters of six to eight caribou were everywhere, the sun was out, and life looked good. That is until Joe spotted a mother grizzly and cub coming toward us! It’s one thing to sight bear from the relative safety of a broad river, but quite another when working down a channel just a foot wider than our canoe. With nowhere to hide, we watched ursus horribilis rapidly closing in. I think Anders muttered something about a “bear banger” being at the bottom of his pack. Happily, mom caught our scent some 50 yards off and steered her cub to more desirable ground. For the rest of the trip, Anders kept his banger close at hand.