Day 5 - July 8
Partly sunny, 20C

Half the sky is brilliant blue and basking in sunshine, the other half is cloudy and overcast. No hope of figuring out which will prevail, so we resign ourselves to accept whichever comes our direction.

The bugs are still quite bad, so we use the dinning tent again. Today is Sunday. We've brought along a Globalstar satellite phone and we've promised to phone home to let grandma know her grand kids are all right. The phone works like a charm and we're surprised by the quality of the reception.

As we paddle downstream, there are nice dunes around us. A bald eagle flies ahead of us stopping in trees until we get close again. Eventually, he tires of the game and flies over the ridge and out of sight. Around a bend in the river, we spot our first wolf on the bank. It's a young animal. He's curious about us, but also at least a little afraid based on the way he's holding his tail between his legs. We head to shore, but the wolf climbs the bank and disappears in the tangle of alders.

As we head back downstream, a Tindi twin otter flies low overhead up the Clarke, obviously on the way to drop off some other canoeists.

We stop at the confluence of the Clarke and Thelon Rivers and park the canoes on shore. Our plan is to hike back upstream for a look at the rapids and canyon which we didn't get to do last time. We climb the bank behind us and barge through the tangle of alders. After walking over some tundra to skirt the bogs and scrubby black spruce, we reach a clearing that leads to the river. Surprisingly, once out of the clearing we see a Pakboat canoe surrounded by packs on the tundra and there's no sign of paddlers. The canoeists must be heading back for another load. We film the river a bit and take some photos of the canoe for our friend Alv who makes the boats. As we start to head back to our canoes, we see the paddlers walking towards us - they found a more direct path along the river and we walked around them on our way upstream. We stop and chat. They're both very friendly paddlers from New York - hot, sweaty and tired from the 5 Km portage around the canyon. We offer to help carry some of their gear and they accept with delight. Since we didn't have much with us on our way here, the six of us are able to get the majority of their gear across in one trip.

Once back at our canoes, we chat with Dave and Mike for a little longer, then shove off to negotiate the rapids ahead. The Thelon is much more powerful than the Clarke and we move along at a brisk pace. The canyon walls are much more shear here and there's a lot of ice jammed in the caves. The Thelon is much wider than the Clarke and it takes us a bit to adapt to the distances. Peregrine falcons nest in profusion along the cliffs.

We negotiate the first rapids we encounter with ease, there are lots of clear downstream channels that avoid the major rapids and its very easy to find good routes. As we paddle past the large island in the river, we see some movement that turns out to be two people walking along the left shore. From this distance its hard to tell, but it looks like they're carrying packs. The last time we traveled the Thelon, we saw no other paddlers for the entire trip - this time we've seen 10 already.

The last drop on the Thelon, just before the Hanbury junction has some teeth. We stop on river left and hike up the cliff to scout for the best path. When we did this trip before, the water levels were significantly lower. Its clear from looking at the river that there's a lot more water than normal. When we ran these rapids last time, we chose a channel on the far right. It required a bit of negotiation, but there was lots of room and we didn't take on a drop of water in our open canoes. The channel on the right isn't a good option this time. There is a possible route in the center of the river, but large waves at the bottom make it unappealing. On the far left right along the bank we see an easy channel that has few obstructions. We can't see one part because it goes right under the cliff we're standing on. At the very last drop there's a good eddy turn which should get us out of harm's way with ease. Once back on the water, we confirm that the section under the overhang will present no problem and start paddling down. Both canoes come into the eddy at the end of the left channel with no problems and neither takes on any water.