Day 3 Sunday May 29 – Alcan Spillway Recreational Site to Private Barge Crossing
- Wake Up Time: 4:00 am
- Departure Time: 5:40 am
- Arrival Time: 12:00 am
- Distance Paddled: 30 kms (Total: 81)
- Total Paddling Time: 4 hours and 54 minutes
- Weather Conditions: Good to Very Good later
This day of paddling would be very good. The water started out very calm with a bit of wind picking up later but then back to dead calm. The previous two days of paddling were 25 km days but today we would step it up to a 30 km paddle. Our conditioning was definitely improving and our paddling became stronger.
As we paddled on, we started to come across a lot of the dead trees in the water. Some of these trees had Osprey nests.
Perhaps the most noteworthy point of the paddle on this day for me was when we came into a very narrow part of the lake, which was more like a river. The water here was dead calm. It was quite a contrast from the massive expanse of Ootsa Lake. The sun was now shining with clear skies and really warmed us up.
We finally arrived at at an old cable ferry landing (now defunct), where we intended to camp for the night. This spot was recommended to us by the lady groundskeeper we met at the Alcan Spillway the previous night. It turned out to be a really nice camping spot. Our tents were set up on a small hill overlooking the lake below and also gave us a clear southeast view, in the direction we would be going tomorrow.
When we arrived it was dead calm, no wind. However, the wind did eventually pick up as it usually does in the afternoons. In fact the wind became quite strong and blew my tent over. We had to reset my tent pegs. It was at this point that Arnie showed me the tent pegs that he was using. They were much stronger than the ones I had and could be hammered into the hard ground without bending. The ones that came with my tent were quite cheap. I'll have to pick these up when I get back. Thanks Arnie.
Maria knitting again??
Also, as I was resetting my tent I found an old dime on the ground. This dime would become an important part of my tool kit. How could a dime become so important you ask? Well, one of the food barrels (i.e. a proper bear barrel) required some kind of screw driver to undo three bolts that fasten the lid. As it turns out, this dime was an excellent tool to unscrew these bolts. Up until this point I would have to ask Arnie for his multi-tool to open the barrel. Well not anymore for the rest of the trip. Maria and Arnie also noted, several times during the rest of the trip, that I was now in the “black” on this trip (i.e. showing a profit on the balance sheet). So there you go. Wealth can be found in the most unlikely places.
Here we are at this old barge site, camping away, and I needed to get up for a leak. Well I thought I would go to a cliff just a little ways from where we were camping to take in this spectacular view while I was peeing. It was also a good spot because the wind was blowing in the right direction.
However, this particular spot was also facing the old service road that came down into the barge landing just to my left and, wouldn't you know it, as I was relieving myself a truck starts coming down this road. These two guys (first nations) drive down the road and they were looking right at me as I'm whizzing away. I thought, fuck it, just keep whizzing. They came down the road past me, swung right around and pulled up right next to me. By the way, I had been holding it in for quite a while and needed to go for a really long piss.
Anyway, I shook it off, turned around and walked up to them and said: “You caught me at a bad time”. They laughed and made like it was no big deal. That's when I realized that they were first nations men (don't know which band). So I walked up to the window on the passenger side and noticed that they were smoking and drinking beer. They said that they were just taking a few minutes out before heading into a nearby logging camp for their first night of a four day shift.
By this time Arnie and Maria also came over to talk to them. They offered us a beer and Arnie immediately accepted. I actually didn't feel like having one so I passed. For about ten minutes we were talking to them about our journey. They seemed quite surprised that we were doing the whole Nechako circuit. They told us that they had also paddled parts of it but never the whole thing. In fact, they said that they had never heard of anybody doing this before.
As we were chatting with these two guys, we started to notice the condition of this pickup truck. It was really beat up and had no license plates. I also noticed that the windshield was completely smashed up. I stuck my head inside the cab, looked out the front and asked the driver if he was able to see where he was going. I couldn't see a damned thing. He said: “Ya sure, no problem”. I asked him what happened and he proceeded to tell me that his girlfriend got really pissed off at him one night and took a baseball bat to the windshield (on the driver's side). But the entire windshield was busted up. Then he went on to say that his buddy thought the windshield didn't look right with it being smashed up only on the one side so he did the other side.
Of course these two guys were chuckling about it. So I said to the young kid on the passenger side, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. He chuckled and said: “Yah whatever man”. So I chuckled back. Anyway this young kid started talking to me about his work at the logging camp and seemed really proud about this job he had. I thought to myself that it was nice to see a young person taking pride in his work especially since the work he was describing seemed quite tough. But he didn't seem to mind the hard work at all. Very refreshing to meet someone who didn't complain about a good day's work. He was telling me that all his work was on the night shift because of forest fire risks. Not sure why but there you have it.
So, even though we knew that bears were everywhere in the area we asked these guys if they had seen any around here. The one guy said: “oh ya, they're everywhere around here. We saw one about two kilometres from here on the way here. But they won't bother you. Usually they just come down to the lake to drink and then go right back up into the forest. I've been in the bush around here for years and they never bothered me.” Then he proceeded to say: “But one time, a group of us were in this one area picking mushrooms and a big black bear started coming at us hey. I took a couple of shots over the bear's head hey and his ears went back. Then he started running at us hey. So I had to shoot the bear in the head hey”. I tried to warn him hey but he wouldn't listen. I felt bad but I had to do it. That was the only time I had a problem hey”. So that was reassuring.
Now I've spent years trying to get rid of my Canadian “hey” word in my sentences and have pretty much worked it out of my system. But within ten minutes of taking to the guy on the passenger side (while Arnie was talking to the driver) I started talking to this guy like he was talking to me and every second word was this “hey” and that “hey”. Dammit. From that point on I was using that word for the rest of the trip and Maria caught me on it almost every time.
We then asked the guys if they knew anything about the Redfern rapids and the portage trail because we still knew nothing about it. The driver told us that he had worked on that trail at the “Redfern Lodge” a couple of years ago and that he thought the trail was pretty good.
It is very important to note at this point that this would prove to be a very costly piece of misinformation. This would turn a one day portage into a three day, exhausting ordeal (see days 7, 8, and 9).
The one guy asked me if we had seen anything swimming across the lakes yet (e.g. moose, bear). We told him that we haven't seen anything yet. Anyway, they finally had to go and drove off.
Since there were no good trees to cache the food barrel in this area, we decided to place it down the hill from where we were on an old piece of sheet metal (tied to a small tree). This proved to be just fine. Off to bed we went for the night. Hey!
