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Arctic Unravelled: The trip that wasn't - and was
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We asked Chris Morris to tell us something about last summer's planned trip from Yellowknife to Yellowknife via the Arctic Ocean. Though he didn't fulfill his ambitious dream, we wanted a few thoughts about the trip that wasn't - and was.
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By CHRIS MORRIS.
More than one traveller on the barrenlands has sat in a windswept campsite and watched the best laid plans unravel. In fact, it is hard to think of any explorer to whom this didn't happen at one time or another. Even the best of them, like the Tyrrell brothers, on occasion only made it out by the narrowest of margins. In most cases there was one apparently overriding reason that lay behind the failure, but of course it is never as simple as that. Often (I think, always) the deeper and perhaps more important reasons, never come out.
As I sat at my desk and tried to work through September and early October, I would periodically gaze out my window wishing I was elsewhere and reflecting on why my trip had ended a month and a half earlier than planned. The basic facts were clear enough, indeed they had been as we sat beside the Back River measuring our supplies and looking at our maps. We had one full week's food less that we needed, factoring in an unduly optimistic amount of fish, greatly reduced portions and assuming nine uninterrupted days of ocean paddling making 50-60 kilometres a day. I had nearly starved once before on a trip (on James Bay when the bush pilot came a week late) and had no desire to face that again; my brother John wasn't too keen on the idea either.
For two years the trip had been taking shape in my head. The previous summer's journey from Yellowknife to the Hood River served as a practice run. The idea was appealing: no one since Franklin had made the round trip from the treeline to the Arctic coast and back in a single season. The closest was George Back and Anderson and Stewart in 1855, both of whom returned the same way they had come. Even Hanbury took two seasons, wintering on the Thelon. I thought it could be done, but with the way I had planned it, things were going to be tight.
As planned, the trip seemed too ambitious; it wasn't impossible, but too many things had to work perfectly for it to succeed. Without a doubt, the deciding factor was the delay we suffered because of our friend's illness on the first three weeks of the trip. Barring that, I think we could have made it. But with no leeway in any other area, it started a domino-effect that proved to be decisive.
To begin with, we departed to late. It couldn't be helped, because of my academic and rowing commitments. but it was still too late. When we got to the point on the Thelon River near Baker Lake where we had to go north and began to worry about food, we couldn't afford the time for the trip into Bake Lake to pickup more supplies. The extra four or five days that that would have taken would have left us on the Arctic coast far later in the season than was wise. And being stranded somewhere on the coast would have been at best, an expensive proposition to get removed from.
Furthermore, we went too far east. When our friends flew out from Artillery Lake, we could easily have altered our route and headed north to Bathurst Inlet via the upper Back River and the Western River. That, in retrospect, would have been the wise thing to do. But instead, we headed all the way east to the Meadowbank River, thinking we could make up the time. Why? For no better reason than because I wanted to see that part of the country. We were strong paddlers and I wanted to see what we could do. I thought we could make up the time, which we did. On the Hanbury and Thelon Rivers, we had many consecutive days when we made 60-80 kilometers. But we lost it, again, waiting out windy weather.
So there we were, unable to even try the return leg south from the ocean, for want of a couple of weeks of food. Yet even with the extra food, we would still have been dangerously late scuttling south towards the treeline. We had to go somewhere and the only possibilities were Baker Lake and Gjoa Haven. The latter was more risky-we had enough food to make it, but only just and given the difficulties that canoeists have had with Chantrey Inlet, it would be no cake-walk. But heading south to Baker Lake seemed a fate worse than death, at least Chantrey Inlet was new territory for us.
In normal circumstances, paddling up Chantrey Inlet and over the Simpson Strait to Gjoa Haven would have been the sort of adventure I look forward to. But this time, it was, at best, anticlimactic. We were running for an airstrip with our tails between our legs and there was just no denying it. From the moment that we headed for Gjoa Haven, the trip ceased to be fun. In effect, it was over. But there were still hundreds of kilometers to paddle and every stroke became a chore.
At the final Water Survey cabin on the lower Back River we read with dismay the entries of previous paddlers, many of them passing through much earlier in the season than us, who I knew had subsequently become stranded somewhere on Chantrey Inlet. Out food was very low and the fishing had been poor. But there was a fresh entry as well by some paddlers five days ahead of us who were being picked up in just two days at Chantrey Inlet. We caught them, a mere three hours before their pickup [Ed. Note - See their letter on page two] and with the remainder of their food we had no reason to take any chances on our paddle up Chantrey Inlet. Getting the extra food made things, psychologically, even worse. We now had no reason to hurry and still no reason to dawdle. Under the circumstances it was no longer any fun just being out there.
Crossing the Simpson Strait was a relief in many ways, not the least of which was the actual crossing. For half a day we bided our time on Ogle Point until impatience, all-pervasive sand and the lack of freshwater became too much. The 17 km jump to Hovgaard Island was uneventful (despite what the maps show there is only one island and some shifting sandbars). For the first half hour we were paddling towards bare horizon. We stopped and made dinner and then decided despite the gathering darkness to make the final 18 km crossing to Gjoa Haven. Less than a kilometer out though, the wind began to pick up and the snow began to come down heavily, reducing visibility to a few hundred yards. Despite the lack of water on the island, we turned back and spent the night. But it was clear in the morning and Gjoa Haven was an easy landmark to aim for.
It would be untrue to say that I didn't enjoy the trip but it would also be untrue to say that I went back to work feeling good about it. It is an unhappy experience at best to watch fall to pieces what one has so carefully put together and be powerless to do anything about it. But it is even worse to carry on with just as much effort and just as much danger, when the trip is effectively finished.
Yet the lure of a round trip from the treeline to the Arctic coast and back is still out there. There is something so tempting about covering a great amount of the country in the course of one trip, of starting with the ice and finishing with the snow and showing that airplanes aren't as important to canoeing as canoes are.
This story first appeared in Che-Mun Outfit 91 in 1997.
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