Aug.23: Figure Eight Rapid

Cold morning...we woke up to find ice on our tent and collected beneath some mugs on the kitchen table. Brrrr. As we got out of our tent, we saw a squirrel run up a nearby tree with a leftover S'More from last night in his mouth. He stored it high in a tree, beyond our reach, and chattered down at us. I got the feeling he was laughing.

Breakfast consisted of freshly-baked oatmeal-carrot muffin squares, hot oatmeal with fruit, and sliced melon. The whiskey jacks around the campsite flitted from tree to tree, eyeing our food. In a careless moment, I left part of my muffin square unattended while I turned away to get my juice...at that moment, a whiskey jack swooped down and snatched my breakfast right out of my lap! After breakfast, we packed up and portaged our gear and canoes around Virginia Falls. The portage is only 1.2 km, but seems a lot longer when you're carrying a heavy pack or barrel on your back and trying to navigate the tricky footing near the end of portage to avoid slipping on the loose rocks. It took each of us about three times across the portage to get all our gear across to Virginia Falls.

After a quick lunch, we donned our wetsuits and rigged up all the canoes with splash skirts (covering over the canoe, with two holes large enough for paddlers in bow and stern). The wetsuits would help insulate us in case anyone went into the water, and the splash skirts helped keep water out of the canoes. The cata-canoe was rigged up similarly. A friend of ours was on a trip here several years ago and said her group had four canoes tip in this section of the river.

Karen gave Frebis, Ginny and me some tips on steering the cata-canoe. "If I sound worried or frantic or angry when I'm asking you to do things," she added, "Please don't take it personally." Dave had already half-jokingly advised us, near the beginning of the trip, to make a habit of apologizing in advance to our canoe partners each morning for things we might say to them later that day under stress. :-)

Dave also gave a general prep talk reminding us about river communication and how to handle certain emergency situations. One of his tips and Al's was to always keep your paddle in the water...even if you were uncertain about which way to paddle in a stress-filled situation, using your paddle simply as a brace would keep the canoe more steady in the water. After a final check of all the canoes, we set off!

We launched the cata-canoe along with the other canoes just below Virginia Falls at the entrance to Fourth Canyon (also known as Painted canyon), a gorge lined with yellow and orange vertical rock cliffs. The current here is very swift, with large standing waves. Rapids run throughout the canyon with a usual range of difficulty of Class I to III, often higher during higher water levels.

The cata-canoe was absolutely wonderful. It was immediately clear to me how secure the contraption was, and the four of us had a great time careening through the rollercoaster waves. Lots of shrieking and laughing, I have to confess...one of the other guides told us that she got more fun out of listening to us go through those early rapids that she did going through them herself. We tooks turns being in the bow, which gave you the biggest thrill ride but also the wettest. :-) Karen would yell out her instructions: "DRAW, FREBIS!" "PRY, DEBBIE!" and so on. At first Karen let us crash through the waves head-on (we purposely aimed for the biggest waves), but then gradually began teaching us how to manoeuver through them without getting wet. The most useful technique seemed to be back paddling. By doing a series of small back strokes, we could slow the speed of the cata-canoe so that the waves didn't break over our bows. Wasn't as fun, but it also kept us drier. We did lots of bailing in the first hour. :-)

The first major rapid was Figure Eight, so named because of the pattern of eddy whirlpools. This rapid is also known as "Hell's Gate" and some claim it to be the trickiest rapid in the park, varying in difficulty from Class II to IV, depending on the water levels. At high water levels, even experienced paddlers sometimes portage here. We later ran into a group who opted to portage around the rapid. A guide told us (after we had gone through) about seeing a canoe loaded with gear once being pulled underwater for several minutes by the strong hydraulics. Bottom line: none of us wanted to go into the water here.

After scouting out the rapid on foot via a cobble beach overlooking the swirling eddy, we decided to send the cata-canoe through first. We would then wait around the corner as a potential rescue vehicle in case one was needed. Karen, Ginny, Frebis and I were ready for the challenge! The river bent sharply to the right as we approached the rapid, and then made a 90 degree turn to the left. The trick was to turn your canoe to the left before being pushed into the canyon wall. If you turned too early, you risked being caught by boils of unstable water and large standing waves. If you drifted too far to the right, you risked being pulled into the whirlpool eddy.

We cata-canoe types had already worked out our strategy, thanks to Karen. At her signal, some of us would do a hard draw, some would pry, and then we'd do a hard forward paddle which would hopefully propel us out of the rapid into calmer water. And it worked!! As we moved into the eddy beyond the rapid, we all yelled out, "YE-ME-YA MAMAS!", which was the name we had just picked for our cata-canoe group. According to Karen, the word "yemeya" is an aboriginal word for "goddess of the water"...which of course suited us perfectly. After we finished congratulating ourselves, we pulled up onto a short gravel sandbar further downstream where we had the perfect vantage point in case anyone needed rescuing.

Fortunately, all the canoes got through safely, though Jeff R. and Jeff O. had a close shave at one point. Jeff O's comment in that night's issue of Nahanni News: "Honking big waves. Jeff R. was paddling air. He's the fastest draw on the Nahanni!"

After setting up camp at around 7:30 pm, we feasted on shepherd's pie and cabbage salad, then had Frebis's rice pudding after. The rice pudding mix wasn't working entirely properly, so we ended sipping the hot concoction out of cups instead of out of a bowl. I also had leftover rice pudding with my hot oatmeal the next morning; it was delicious.

When Jeff and I went to bed that night, we found a half circle of stones around the entrance of our tent and a piece of bark in the centre with the inscription:

We both strongly suspected that the culprit was Dave, and I went back to the campfire to give him a hug. Somehow Dave had found out that it was Jeff's and my eighth wedding anniversary the next day. I still have that piece of birchbark. :-)

Very late that night, Frebis and Duane knocked gently on our tent flap to let us know there were Northern Lights. We stumbled sleepily out of bed into the frosty air, and were greeted by an amazing display of light stretch across the sky, shifting and changing. The pattern of light was different from what I was used to, almost as if we were watching a glowing curtain of material from directly below instead of from across the room.

Karen's Thought of the Day that day's issue of the Nahanni News: "Another day on the right side of the grass."