The
Sig Olson, our most experienced
paddler, has said that this is as good as any canoe country he has ever
travelled. Would I go again? Most certainly!
From Dennis Coolican’s diary from the epic 1955
The
Dragon Lady and I invite you to join us on two cost sharing canoe brigades on the fabulous
I’ve been honing the luxury, lazy canoe trip for years—and we’re taking it to a new level. We’re doing this by going back to a Classic river—and adding two days. And it’s still startlingly inexpensive: $50-60CDN a day total depending on the route.
It’s
rare that I repeat a route—but the Churchill is just so magnificent that I’m hungry to return.
There is just no river like it—the great exploration and fur trade route of
The Churchill watershed
Who paddled this path and would find it, and the portages, as they left it? All the great Western Canadian explorers: Alexander Mackenzie was the first European to reach the Pacific in 1793, his journals spurring Thomas Jefferson to send Lewis and Clark on their quest which reached that destination in 1805; Sir John Franklin, who traversed the river on two different disastrous expeditions to the Arctic; that greatest of western explorers, David Thompson, who paddled 50,000 miles and mapped the entire west of Canada and the (now) Pacific northwest of the US; the enterprising Frobisher brothers and Alexander Henry who first crossed Frog Portage and pushed into the river in 1774, creating the aggressive North West Company in opposition to the monopoly Hudson’s Bay Company; the controversial and violent Peter Pond of the North West Company who extended European reach into the Arctic in 1778; Simon Fraser who first paddled into what would become Vancouver in 1808 and I honored by attending the university named after him; that intelligent, bookish and amateur mapmaker Peter Fidler; and the Little Caesar of the Fur Trade, Hudson’s Bay Company Governor George Simpson, in the early 1800s whose elite paddlers could punch out 100 miles a day when plied by rum. All paddled this route in their birch bark canoes several times, both ways, plus it saw several thousand more years of Indian use. And nothing has changed! It’s a living Natural museum.
Both sections offered
are the creme-de-la-creme
of the Churchill. This is a typical campsite. From my solo
last summer.
Routes, Dates and
Descriptions:
We offer you two choices:
1)
DATES: Saturday June 19 to Monday July 4 (includes driving days)
DISTANCE: 101 miles/162 kil
PORTAGES: 9-15 but
PACE: Lazy. Launching daily at the crack of 10. Four full days off to hammock out and enjoy Nature. Average daily mileage: 8.5 miles/13.6 kil.
Canoeing teaches that the journey is the destination.
ESTIMATED AVERAGE COST
FROM
Explorer Alexander
Mackenzie described this bear shaped erratic on
beautiful
Silent
Rapids. The perfect place to spend a
perfect day.
This trip is in memory of Jim
Munns, an outdoors buddy since Boy Scouts, who has done the lower portion of this route and
shot Corner Rapid’s #3s with me in 2002. A gentle man, he’ll always be missed.
2) Missinipi – Otter Lake -
Stanley Mission - Keg Lake – Trade Lake – Frog Portage - Reindeer River
Confluence
DATES:
Sunday July 11 – Monday July 26 (includes
driving days)
DISTANCE: 85 miles/136kil
PORTAGES:
9, though some
can be shot and there’s rollers on some others.
PACE: Even lazier. Four full days off
to hammock out and enjoy Nature. Average daily mileage: 7. 11 kil.
ESTIMATED
AVERAGE COST FROM
We'll spend our
last full day at
This section
drips with exploration and fur trade history. We’ll visit Stanley Mission Anglican Church,
the oldest dwelling in
* * *
Click on the attached Churchill 2010.kmz file to see the
Google Earth image of the whole double route which you can zoom in and out on
to study in detail. By clicking on the little blue squares, photo highlights will
pop up. (If you don’t have Google Earth—load it! It’s free and
amazing. For example, you can type in
your address and it’ll zoom in on your house from space.) [.***Just
don’t download “Earth Google” - a scam
site.]
Each brigade caps at 12. Only novice skills required. There’s
often shelter from wind, eye watering
campsites, excellent portages grooved from centuries of use if you
choose not to shoot the rapids, the Canadian Shield is predominant and at its
most magnificent, and the runable rapids are mostly straight chutes. I’ve
paddled end portions of the first route six times, It’s
gorgeous.
Tim Jones, who wrote The Aboriginal Rock Paintings of the Churchill River, has been a
friend since I interviewed him on the subject for my then column in Westworld Magazine, gawd, thirty-five years ago. I
shoot updates of the sites for him whenever we find them.
A major adrenaline rush:
Upstream view
Shooting at Missinipe
(empty, for those that choose to do so, and I’m one) the 600 meters of mighty
Otter Rapids’ Class 3s, the most magnificent rapids on the river. Here, on June
19, 1820, while Sir John Franklin was making his first tragic journey to the
Downstream view
This trip is in memory of Peter “Wakey-Bakey”
Swan who loved the Reindeer River 2008 experience.
At the confluence, where he flew out, I’ll raise a quiet drink in his
honor. He was bright, erudite, always smiling and a favorite of
everyone in our
Bookings:
You
can make a soft booking now but April
2nd we require solid confirmations and $700 advances.
All expenses with be equally shared. Please
note that $100
will be added as a capital cost donation. We’re still paying off the canoe
trailer and its numerous upgrades, and a GPS, and we need to buy a sat phone.
There’s always equipment upgrades. A
canoe trailer is like a yacht: a hole to shovel money into….
Recommended reading and
viewing:
-Canoeing the Churchill: A Practical Guide to the Historic Voyageur Highway by Greg Marchildon and Sid Robinson, the Bible of the river, loaded with everything including generous descriptive quotes from explorers;
-Northern
-The canoeing
Classic of Canada is Sigurd Olson’s 1961 The
Lonely Land. It’s the recollection of three canoes following the old
voyageur route from Ile-a-la-Crosse to Cumberland House along the Churchill in
1955. In other words: it takes in the stretch we’re doing and we’ll be staying
at some of their campsites. Sig wrote
about their experiences and the people they met – and dropped in observations
from many of the explorers and fur traders who paddled this same route. He writes about portages and rapids that
we’ll be encountering as well.
Highly recommending viewing:
-Available from your public library
(perhaps on inter-library loan if you’re in the
Other
information:
The party begins when you arrive in Toontown with a pre-paddle fete and ends with a post-paddle fete.
We carry historic journals quoting explorers’ observations along the route, particularly each portage which were noteworthy then as now and are the same.
There will be the always improving fare and the food has, I’m pleased to report, always drawn compliments. Look forward to Canuckisms such as moose stew, fresh fish done several ways, bannock, wild rice, pancakes and 100% maple syrup, back (“Canadian”) bacon, and more food in a wide variety than you can eat. And balanced, healthy meals (well, outside of bacon and eggs the first morning, but you gotta have bacon and eggs.) I enjoy cooking.
The Dragon Lady
and I have all the common gear (kitchen and all utensils but knives, first
class First Aid Kit, axes, saws, and safety equipment including a rented sat
phone, etc), tarps, a truck and canoe trailer, and will organize canoe rentals
and advise on hotels. We also have a fair bit of camping gear to lend. Fishing? It’s often a fish a cast so bring
your equipment.
This is the ultimate Canadian historic canoe route. If you never do another trip with us, do one of these.
Cheers – Captain Magnus Twat and The Dragon Lady