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A Close Call
I’ve
spent three or four months a year for thirty years canoeing
the river systems of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut,
mostly in the Barren Lands. In all those years, I’ve
personally never had a scare or a close call on the water.
I’ve only dumped or swamped a canoe once. That was back in
1976 and I don’t plan on ever doing it again.
In all my years in business as a
professional canoeing guide, I’m proud to say that none of my
clients has ever had a serious accident or injury, on land or
water. Over the course of a summer, we often run hundreds of
rapids, but on average, my clients have upset less than one
canoe per year. There are probably a number of reasons for our
enviable safety record. The ones I would identify as being
crucial would be my experience in assessing my clients’
capabilities and my commitment to communicate clearly with
them on how to avoid the potentially dangerous situations we
encounter en route. Perhaps most important, I take charge of
my clients and I never take chances.
Only once have I ever feared for
the safety of my clients on the water. It was many years ago,
late May or early June, on a river about a hundred miles south
of the treeline. The river was in flood. I had gathered my
clients together to warn them that just around the next bend
in the river was a major rapid that we’d have to line or
portage. I told them to keep their canoes in single file and
follow me, staying close to shore on the inside turn of the
river. After we rounded the bend, we would come ashore using
an eddy turn, then tie up to scout the rapid below.
All went according to plan until the last canoe. By then, the
rest of us were safe on shore. When the last canoe came around
the bend it was way out in the middle of the river. I
shouted at the two men in
the canoe to paddle like hell and get over to our side of the
river. But the current was strong, and they didn’t have the
paddling skills required to make it to shore.
Just above the maw of the rapid
was a small island, now submerged in the high water. All that
remained of the island was a clump of white birch trees with
the river racing through them. As the men in the last canoe
were swept past us, I yelled to them to paddle into the
flooded birch trees and hang on. This they managed to do. They
were marooned about one hundred feet from us, but we strung
some lining ropes together, threw one end out to them and
hauled them ashore.
It was a very close call. They
were very lucky that island was there. With the river in
flood, the rapid below was a raging torrent. If those two men
had been sucked into that rapid they could easily have been
killed.
Lost
I’ve never been lost, but over the
years at least four or five of my clients have been
sufficiently confused that we had to go find them. In every
case, this occurred south of treeline.
Once, when we were portaging along
a raging cataract that could be heard for miles, one of my
clients, who had been bringing up the rear, went missing. It
turned out he’d wandered away from this thundering torrent at
right angles. We finally found him some distance away. How
anyone could get lost under these circumstances still
mystifies me.
On another occasion, we were
eating breakfast when I thought I heard someone calling
faintly in the distance. I quickly did a head count and
determined Mark was missing. When I asked Mark’s wife where
her husband was, she replied he’d gone off behind their tent
to do his business before coming down to breakfast. However,
Mark had apparently walked off in the wrong direction when he
tried to return to his tent.
I found Mark almost a mile behind
our camp. We were close to treeline and the trees were widely
scattered. I spotted Mark several hundred yards ahead of me,
dashing around aimlessly and yelling his lungs out. When I
called back to him he evidently didn’t hear me, but he failed
to respond again when I was close to him. I finally walked up
and put my hand on Mark’s shoulder and called his name. His
back was to me, and when I placed my hand on his shoulder he
spun around. I’ll never forget the panicky look in his eyes.
He was completely out of control.
As a boy, I’d often heard stories
about men getting lost in the bush and working themselves into
such a frenzied state that they crossed roads without
realizing it. When I saw the wild look in Mark’s eyes, I
realized those stories were true.
Bushed
Even men who are not lost can go
crazy after spending too much time isolated in the bush. I
never witnessed this “bushed” condition first hand until 1985,
on a nineteen-day canoe trip on the Thelon River. The trip was
scheduled during blackfly season, and it was clear from the
outset that Jerry, an American from North Carolina, couldn’t
handle the bugs.
I
provide headnets for my clients, and I make sure they all have
the openings on their shirts closed off with Velcro. On this
particular trip, the participants brought along their own bug
jackets, as well. However, Jerry didn’t have one and if ever
anyone needed one,
Jerry did. I never wear a bug jacket, but my wife sometimes
did, so on the second day of the trip she gave hers to Jerry.
Unfortunately, he lost it the very next day.
With each passing day, Jerry
retreated steadily from social contact. His excuse was the
bugs. After several days, Jerry was spending all of his time
in camp inside his tent. He only came out to paddle in the bow
of my canoe after we broke camp each morning. The only meal of
the day he ate was lunch. By the end of the first week of the
trip, it should have been clear that Jerry was headed for big
trouble.
On the fourth-last day of the
trip, Jerry burst into temper tantrums and became completely
irrational. He acted like a three-year-old and we had to deal
with him on that level. By then, he hadn’t shaved or bathed in
two weeks. He looked like a wild man. I remember one lunch
near the end of the trip when Jerry rushed in to attack the
food, stuffing his mouth with both hands like some
half-starved wild animal. The rest of us just backed off and
stared in disbelief.
On the third-last day of the trip
Jerry refused to paddle. After much coaxing and threatening we
managed to get him into the bow seat of my canoe where he sat
in silence for hours with his arms crossed. Fortunately, I’m a
strong paddler and we didn’t have any big head winds.
When the float planes showed up on
the last day of the trip, Jerry went berserk! As the first
plane circled our campsite, he burst out of his tent-running,
waving, jumping and shouting: “The plane, the plane, we’re
saved, we’re saved!”
I’ve never seen anything like it,
before or since.
A Dangerous Swim
It was a hot afternoon in August,
and we were camped where a barrenland river funnelled down
through a chute in a small canyon that we planned to portage
the next morning. The river was squeezed to half its normal
width by the canyon’s sheer rock walls. The water was fast and
full of standing waves, boils and whirlpools. So when Cam
asked me if it was all right if he swam through this chute in
the canyon, I replied with a firm no. It was a dangerous idea:
there was a good chance he’d hit his head on a rock and drown.
I don’t remember my precise words
to Cam, but I know what was going through my mind. Safety is
the first priority of every trip leader. Not only that, but if
Cam died in that chute, we’d have to lug his body five miles
up the river through several rapids and portages to a lake
where a float plane could reach us, and once there we could
sit for days trying to get a message out to our air charter
company on my HF radio. At the same time, we’d have to deal
with Cam’s grieving wife. The trip would be over-for all of
us. An accidental death would be tragic. It would also be bad
for business.
I told Cam to stay out of the
chute. I thought I had made myself very clear, but I had
underestimated his thick-headedness. A few minutes later I
heard him shout “Yahoo!” as he leaped off the canyon wall into
the river. Several of our party were fishing in the pool
below. They saw Cam come through and disappear underwater for
what seemed to them as long as five minutes at the bottom of
the chute. They didn’t think he was going to resurface. It was
probably less than minute, but in situations like that time
seems to slow down. Cam finally came to the surface,
uninjured. He was lucky to be alive.
I
was steaming mad. If there had been satellite telephones in
those days I would have expelled Cam from the trip as soon as
I could get a plane there to pick him up. I doubt
that Cam has ever realized how
close he came to death that day. He has probably forgotten all
about the incident. However, I’ve never forgotten it and I
never will. |
