The Thelon River ~ The Barrenlands

DAY One - July 14 -

HOT!!! Arrive at Yellowknife airport by 12:30 to prepare for our departure which is scheduled at 2 p.m. Sit in airport lobby until 5 p.m., one delay after another. Ptarmigan Airways staff treat us exceptionally well. Once all is set, everything gets quickly loaded in the Twin Otter on the runway and we're airborne before we can shake the cobwebs out of our heads.

The landscape twelve thousand feet below us changes dramatically as we watch out the window. Hard glaciated rock covered sparsely with spruce gradually changes to open tundra with no trees. Almost no sign of people as we look down. Occasional hunting / fishing lodge, Indian Reserve or mining camps are the only evidence of habitation. We see some boats on large lakes [must check map when we get back]. Still see some ice fields on some river courses. As we get close to the Thelon, we see several forest fires in the south.

When we arrive at the Clarke, our pilot circles the gravel beach which will act as our landing strip several times in ever decreasing circles before making the final descent. We see several caribou as the plane circles. We find out latter that this strip had only been tried out once before and our pilot wasn't on that flight. AMAZING landing!!! a lot smoother than I would have believed.

Getting out of the plane is a bit of shock. There is a significant difference between the temperature at Yellowknife and Clarke River. We would have been comfortable in shorts and tee shirt back there but this is cold, Parka cold! I shoot video of stuff being unloaded. Eventually, our plane jockeys across the bumpy tundra to the lake where the other Twin Otter landed to deliver fuel drums. After both planes are refueled, our plane taxis back to the gravel beach and takes off over my head as I shoot video, it should look good.

Karen from Great Canadian Ecoventures who are providing the canoes comes over to great us. She is a native of Minnesota in the US and just finished guiding a 17 day trip on the river. We ply her with questions about her trip to get some last minute information. She tells us she is a newlywed. She and her husband John are heading out into the barrens for a honeymoon before coming back to guide a trip using the equipment we will be leaving at the end of our trip. She is greatly pleased to see our two kids coming with us. I paddle across river with her to fill some gas cans from a drum for Tom's plane which is en route with the last canoe.

Deb has the tents up and supper underway by the time we get back. See several caribou as we cross the river. Tom comes down as we are just about ready to eat (steak, the last meat we'll see in a while). Tom points out chipped rock under where we set up camp, indicating (in his opinion) that its an area where natives camped thousands of years ago. We look long and hard, but it still looks like nothing more than a pile of rocks to us. Eventually the last plane leaves and we are left to our own devices. In spite of apparently not having done a lot, we're all very tired. We had hoped to spend the first night downstream, but that was not to be. It is an unusual feeling of abandonment for me when the plane leaves. I guess the extra burden of worrying about the children causes me more concern than normal. I wonder if the early explorers ever had these feelings. I expect the sudden transition from "civilization" to wilderness that you get when the plane leaves is something the explorers didn't have to contend with. Their arrival into the wild was a more gradual transition which is probably less disconcerting.

Weather - windy and cold, but clear.

July 15 -

It was a very short night sleep, it is going to take a while to get used to the almost constant light all day long.

On the water by 10 a.m. Paddling into a fairly brisk wind, but nothing like the night before. Within minutes of leaving camp we spot a caribou cow ambling along the shore. We think it is one of the ones we noticed the night before. When we hit the actual river, it is quite shallow, which Karen (the guide who helped organize our boats) warned us about. The rapids that can be run but are very technical as we try to find the route with the most water in it. Doing fairly well but we still have to get out and wade fairly often. After wading past a sweeper(a downed black spruce) I notice something unusual as I wait for the rest of the crew to come down. The river bottom is composed of large boulders which is fairly porous. The river follows not only in the channel, but also flows through the rocks. I am standing in a small pool which is being fed by water seeping out of the river bottom. Normally this is a fairly good place to get your feet warmed up a little. Not so here. The permafrost must affect the underground flow because my feet are tingling and becoming numb.

I think this is the first trip I've been on where I got to put my poling and snubbing technique to good use. We brought along some long aluminum poles for sails and tarps (above tree line and anticipating needing supports). It was actually a lot of fun standing in the loaded canoe and snubbing the rapids for long sections.

We stop at the bottom of a nice rapid for lunch. I didn't mention it to the rest, but I noticed some dark shadows moving in the water as I pulled in. After lunch is organized, I suggest pulling out the rods to test the water. I think almost every cast pulled in a substantial Lake Trout or Grayling. We keep enough for supper and release any of the rest we catch. The area is a strange mix of lush valley, desert like and mountain like foothills in appearance, hard to compare to anything I'm familiar with.

The river valley grows deeper as we progress downstream. We have seen a number of caribou, singly or in twos and threes, though there is lots of signs that large numbers have been through here earlier. The 1:250,000 maps I am using are not very helpful on this section, I would recommend using 1:50,000 for the Clarke. We camp at an adequate gravel beach campsite. Bugs are tolerable and there is a bit of wildlife to look at, a cow and calf caribou get halfway across river right at our site before they notice us and turn back. There is a plover chick that the kids notice on the gravel. His camouflage is excellent but he must be hungry because he chirps too much, which is the only way we can track him down. We see several Bald Eagles along here. Not sure of where we are on river, Topography is too similar to be of use with this scale of map.

Weather- warm with light wind.

July 16

I am writing the events of today inside the tent at two a.m. using nothing but the available sunlight, amazing!

Saw lots of caribou today, though still no herds. Quite a number of raptor nests, Peregrine, Gyrfalcon and Rough Legged Hawk (I think). Have to look at books and photos when I get home to figure out which chicks belonged to which adults.

We have been running rapids most of the day, though few of any consequence were encountered. The campsite is a fairly pleasing setting just were the river widens for a bit. There is lots of evidence that we have chosen a traditional caribou river crossing and we see quite a few from camp. The view from the tundra at the top of our camp is inspiring. The kids find a few caribou bones up top. One lone wolf was spotted just before we hit camp.

Weather - sunny most of day, turning to gradual overcast in evening. Temperature pleasant.

July 17

Our timing must have been excellent, it started raining just after we went to bed and continued hard the rest of the night, then let up just before we got up. Slow start today which seams to be becoming more of a habit as the trip progresses, probably a function of the extended daylight, you don't feel sleepy and have to force yourself to go to bed.

Found a good landmark to confirm position on map. We are about where I was expecting so we are on schedule. The river has cut into the banks to create deeper cliffs that are showing beautiful multi-coloured layers. Still more rapids which are now getting a little more challenging though there is still nothing too difficult. Low water is still causing us some problems and we must still do a fair bit of wading. The multi-layered cliffs give way to some very interesting sandstone formations with islands and caves that the river has eroded from the bank. Still more raptor nests.

The canyon run finishes in a beautiful gorge that makes us want to linger with our necks hurting as we are craning up all the time. Still more raptor nests.

Suddenly we are out of the cliffs and into sand eskers. As we pass our first esker, my partner Brendan looks across at the beautiful sand beach and stops paddling. After thinking about it for a moment, he turns to me and asks if that (the beach) is the sandbox for the caribou. Leave it to a five-year-old to put life in perspective. After feeling confident by being on track with the map for quite a while, we find ourselves back again, not being sure where we are. It seems to be taking too long to get to the Thelon (should have been there by now judging by the last confirmed landmark on the map) and there is a large island and a substantial river coming in from the south that don't appear on the map we have. We push on until we're certain that we're on the Thelon.

The wind picks up as we are pitching our tents. We have a quick supper and retire to the tents, exhausted.

Weather - changeable, warm and hazy at the start, cold and windy at the end of the day with dark clouds moving in.


journal entries for July 18, 19 & 20

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