Day 7 Thursday June 2 – Looney Island to Portage Trail

May 25, 2016

• Wake Up Time: 4:15 am


• Departure Time: 6:00 am


• Distance Paddled: 15 kms + 7kms portage (Total: 197)


• Total Paddling Time: 2 hours and 30 minutes


• Weather Conditions: Very Good with calm water

A special thanks to Theo and Katharina who went out of their way to help on this day. They own and operate the Tetatchuck Lodge near the Redfern Rapids.. A beautiful, secluded resort that I would love to visit again some day.

This day would mark what I would consider to be one of the major highlights of the entire trip. It wasn't the most pleasant part of the trip but it was an experience I will never forget. There are number of key qualifiers that I feel compelled to inject into this part of the story to set the stage for what would become the most gruelling part of our journey. Our original plan accounted for one full day to get around the Redfern Rapids. The actual time would end up being three days. So here we go.

Warning! What is about to be presented may be offensive to some viewers. Tons of dead, fallen trees. Viewer discretion is advised.

One of the more enjoyable moments on this day

The first thing I would like to mention as a qualifier is that there is little or no information available anywhere about this trail to circumvent the rapids. Even at the Burns Lake forestry office, they did not know much about this trail. To make matters a little worse, the search and rescue fellow in that office assured us that the trail would be pretty good and that we would be able to use our wheels for a good portion of the trail. Unfortunately this gave us a false sense of comfort about what we would run into.

The second key point is that we were slightly thrown off by what the two “first nations” fellows told us back on day 3 at the private barge crossing camp. The one fellow said that he worked on this trail at the “Redfern Lodge”. While talking about this he told us that we would absolutely have to portage around these rapids. There was no way we could paddle through this. So we made a mental note of the name “Redfern Lodge”. After all, how many lodges could there be out there?

The final point that I would like to make is the fact that Arnie has a disability. I did ask Arnie for permission to talk about this and he said that I could mention it in my blog. It is a very personal matter for him and he does not like to bring attention to it. In fact, most people would not know this about him to look at him. Therefore I will try to be brief about this point but it is a major and quite remarkable part of this story. It is, in my opinion, very inspiring.

Arnie, at the age of 72, has a portion of one his legs amputated. Furthermore, the good leg would be questionable, at best, for most people because the good leg was severely affected as part of the same accident. Arnie, by all rights, should not be walking long distances. However, Arnie has beat all the odds over the past 39 years since his accident. He has done countless canoe journeys over the years including the Bowron Lakes ten times. Most people are lucky if they can claim to have done this only once. I have not done the Bowron Lakes myself.

I'll stop right there and say no more about that. But keep in mind that, when I talk about the next two days, I am talking about an exceptional person with great strength and determination. When I think of Arnie, I think of "Ability"not "Disability".

Alright, the day started off with a 12 km paddle to get to the lodge where the portage trail was supposed to start. The paddle itself was quite nice and rather relaxing. The weather was excellent. We finally came around a bend and into a small bay where we saw a building that looked like a lodge. So we thought that this must be it. As we paddled in closer to the lodge, Maria said that she didn't think this was it because her GPS indicated that we hadn't gone far enough and that we were probably about 3 kms short of the anticipated distance.

Here are just a few photos of the first part of our day which was actually quite relaxing:

Having a nice coffee at breakfast.

Deer looking at me - I was ahead of Arnie and Marie and missed this guy.

Deer looking back at Arnie and Marie. Arnie was taking the photo.

But our thinking was that it had to be it. How many other lodges could there be in this area. There wasn't much out here but wilderness at this point. So we paddled right up to the shore and got out of our boats to take a closer look. There was dock and Arnie walked up this dock towards the shore and noticed a sign slightly hidden behind some bushes that said “Redfern Lodge”. Because of this we concluded that we had in fact reached our destination. I must note that Maria was still a little puzzled by this because the GPS had been very accurate so far. Shoulda, woulda, coulda, listened to her but we didn't. Oh well.

Another strange thing, which should have been another red flag (at the “red” fern lodge), was that this cabin was severely dilapidated. It looked like it hadn't been used in years. This was very inconsistent with what we did find in our research prior to the trip. The lodge that we read about should have been an actively used lodge. Maria also thought that the lodge should have been called the “Tetachuck Lodge”. But, again, were thrown off by what the first nation's fellow told us about clearing the trail for the portage at the “Redfern Lodge”.

After walking around the property, we did find a trail behind the lodge. So that was it. We found the portage trail. Back to the boats we went to begin the process of unloading gear, putting this stuff into backpacks, and getting the wheels onto the boats. Half an hour later we were all ready to go and off we went down the trail.

All was going pretty good until we started running into a few trees that had fallen across the trail. This forced us to start hacking away at these fallen trees with an axe and a hand saw. But, before too long, a few trees turned into a jungle of fallen trees far beyond anything we expected. As I stated earlier in my journal, this entire area has been afflicted with pine beetle infestation and forest fires. As we got further into the forest there was hardly a trail to be found. We really weren't sure where we were going. Maria's GPS readings where getting a little confusing.

After about an hour or so we had only advanced about 1 km and the portaging was becoming almost impossible. The mosquitoes where also getting really bad. From my perspective, this was becoming a bit of a nightmare because it was also starting to get late in the day and it felt like we were lost. We got to a point where we started having a group discussion about things and came to the conclusion that Maria and I should take the backpacks with a couple of other items in hand and hike on ahead to see if we could find the end of the trail. If so, we could unload the packs at the other end to minimize our burden with the boats.

So we left Arnie behind with some mosquito repellant and bear spray and started to hike. The hike itself got so bad with trying to get through all the fallen trees that I really started to wonder about the whole thing. Maria kept checking her GPS and it seemed completely out of whack but a large grey band kept showing up on the GPS display, not too far from our position. We eventually walked out to this large grey band and it turned out to be an old airfield. Now all of a sudden we were completely out of the thick bush and in the open. We stood there for a minute and thought about what we should do next. The GPS was showing that the other end of the airfield would bring us closer to the lake again.

We decided to walk down to the other end of the airfield to see if any other trail would appear. About half way down the airfield Maria realized that she didn't have her GPS any more. She had dropped it somewhere. So we dropped all our gear and went back to search for this “critical” piece of equipment. We found it fairly quick. Of course we were also noticing a lot of bear scat. Lions, and tigers, and bears everywhere. Oh, wait a minute, wrong movie. Moving on.

Anyway, we finally got the end of the airfield and, sure enough, saw a more defined trail. In fact it looked like there were fresh quad tracks. We followed this trail down a ways until we hit a junction where we could turn right or left. The quad tracks looked like the were mostly going to the left which also would bring us closer to the lake. We dropped all of our gear at this junction and followed the quad tracks. By this time we were running out of water and getting quite thirsty. We had been on the move for a few hours by this time.

At the end of this trail we came across another lodge which turned out to be the lodge that we should have gone to in the first place. When we walked around to the front of the lodge we saw a man sitting on a bench talking on a satellite phone. We would later find out that his name was Theo. He looked at us somewhat surprised. I guess they don't see too many people drop by. Actually Theo would later tell us that only one other couple has dropped in at this lodge in the past five years. So, I'm sure we startled him a bit.

Theo finished his conversation on the phone and we started to explain to him what we were doing there. It didn't take him long to realize where we went wrong and told us that his lodge was the right lodge for the portage around the falls. The name of this lodge was the Tetachuck Lodge. Now we realized what needed to be done but the day was getting late. We needed to get back to Arnie and take the boats back down to the beach at the other lodge and paddle further up to the Tetachuck Lodge. At this point I looked at the time and it was about 2:30 pm. I told Theo that we would probably arrive at his lodge at about 5:30.

We asked Theo if he could give us a lift back up to the other end of the airfield in his quad and he agreed to do that without hesitation. He also let us fill our water containers before heading back. He and wife Katharina were both very helpful. By giving us a lift back up to the other end of the airfield, this saved us a lot of time. Theo told us that he would pick up the gear that we dropped off at the junction earlier, on his way back. Very nice.

By the time we got back to the other end of the airfield, Arnie had almost reached this area himself. He had cleared so many branches off the fallen trees. It was astounding to see what he had done. He came to the conclusion that we would need to lift the boats and just slide them over the fallen trees. So he just cleared the branches that were sticking out on the top side of the trees. It was a sight to see for sure. But, when we explained to Arnie what the situation was, he was relieved to hear that we did not actually have to get the boats up this way. It still would have been an enormous undertaking.

Getting the boats back to where we started earlier that day would be a lot easier because we had done so much clearing to get to where we were. Also, we didn't have as much gear to bring back with the boats since we had taken a good portion of it to the Tetachuck Lodge already. We finally got the boats back in the water and paddled up to the other lodge.

We got there exactly at 5:30. Theo and Katharina (a Swiss couple) were already outside to greet us. They seemed very happy to meet us and welcomed our company. One of the first things they did was to offer us some beer and something to eat back inside their beautiful lodge. We very happily accepted their offer. Katharina went into her kitchen and prepared a nice plate of crackers, cheese, and cold meats. Man that was the best beer and snacks I ever had.

Cooler Cabin - with Beer. Yes!

It was a very nice atmosphere with some really great people and we got into various topics of conversation. Arnie and Marie mentioned to Theo and Katharina that it was my 32nd wedding anniversary today and they all raised their drinks to toast this occasion. I was both honoured and thankful that they did this. I was definitely missing Sue that night especially after the day we had endured. We were quite drained.

Since I was sitting next to Katharina I started asking her questions about the lodge and the topic of the big fires of 2013 came up. She told me that she had created a full colour, hard cover picture book that documented the fires and the work that the fire fighter crews did. She went and got it and I started flipping through the pages. The pictures were amazing. I had no idea of the magnitude of these fires until I looked at her pictures. Some of the pictures depicted massive billowing clouds of smoke that looked like a huge volcanic eruption very much like Mount St. Helens back in 1980. Theo was saying that these massive smoke clouds actually created their own weather systems. Looking at these pictures, it became clear to me why there was so much death in the forests up here.

We asked Theo if there was anyway that he could tow our boats further up the river, perhaps closer to the rapids to reduce the distance for the portage. First of all Theo explained that this trail, that bypasses the rapids, is not a portage trail. It is strictly a hiking trail. He told us that we would have a very difficult time getting our boats down this trail. He said that we would likely have to carry these boats over stumps and logs etc.. As we would find out tomorrow, this would be very accurate.

He also mentioned that, if he could not tow our boats, that we could paddle upstream to an area where there was a calm pool out of the current. We would be able to knock off about 2 kms of the 5 kms for the portage. He told us that the current just before the pool shouldn't be too bad and, if we paddled strongly, we could get to this pool. He seemed confident that we could accomplish this. So we kept this in mind.

The first order of business was to see if he could tow us up the river. Theo said that, if he could get us to this certain spot, we would end up very close to a weather station where we could set up camp for the night. From the weather station we would only have about 200 meters to portage our gear and boats down to the safe launch point, past the rapids. So, after a nice visit with them, we decided to try towing our boats.

While towing our boats, Theo started to explain that the river will get quite shallow up ahead and that he would need to shift his boat into high gear to clear the bottom of the river. Meaning he had to speed up the boat to get some lift. When he started to pick up speed, we were watching our boats and my kayak was on the verge of flipping over from the wake of Theo's boat. We immediately told Theo to stop. It was clear that we weren't going to be able to get towed any further.

Unfortunately, Theo hit bottom when he slowed down. Now we were concerned that Theo would be stuck. We were all feeling really bad about this because we didn't want to cause Theo any major problems. Especially since he was so willing to help us out. After a bit of maneuvering, he finally got his boat out of this shallow area and took us back to the lodge. There was no point in risking any of our boats.

We got back to the lodge and asked Theo if he would mind us pitching our tents somewhere on the resort and he said no problem. But his wife intervened and started talking to him about something. As it turns out she wanted to offer us one of their guest cabins. We gladly accepted their offer. What a treat.

We went to the cabin, had dinner and some whiskey that evening. We toasted to my anniversary again and actually stayed up until 10pm. This was a late night for us as our normal bed time was 8pm. Little did we know what we would be up against tomorrow.

In summary, what turned out to be a very harsh day ended very nicely because of Theo and Katharina's hospitality. As mentioned earlier, Theo told us that we were only the second group of people to drop in at his lodge in over five years. Most people that go this lodge are booked, and flown in as guests. Very interesting point that highlights exactly how remote this area really is.