The 1000 Hour Day

by Chris Bray

  It was when we got to the far side of the lake that the real fun started. The lake drained into the outflowing river, picking up pace and volume, sucking us into it. We hopped aboard HMAS Nugget and directed our efforts towards keeping her facing downstream so that when we did touch the bottom (every minute or so) the wheels would just roll, rather than if we snagged broadside, in which case the wheels would likely be ripped right off and we’d abruptly sink.

  We got better at it, and in between, marvelled at how fast the bottom was slipping past beneath us, without our having to lift a finger. It was absurd. I snatched up the GPS: 5 kilometres per hour! We actually laughed aloud. ‘Think how far we could go in a single nut break!’ Already it was an obsession. ‘Let’s see how fast we can go if we really paddle hard!’ 6.5 kilometres per hour, 7 … 7.6 kilometres per hour!!! Miracle nine. At that speed we could get an entire day’s hauling in, even before first nut break. Silently hurtling towards our goal, we slipped and spun-out around corners as confused and curious muskox and caribou watched in awe from the banks.

  We just can’t believe our luck. Our timing is perfect. It looks to me that about 90 per cent of the snow has only recently melted around here, filling the rivers to their maximum depth over the coming days. Miracle ten.

  We’ve pulled up onto the river bank here just as it opens out into another lake, and rolled about 10 metres up onto a patch of dry grassy tundra that’s so perfect that it would put any commercial camping ground to shame. We’ve strung up our bear alarm—and for once its tent pegs slid in effortlessly, sealing a perfect end to a perfect day.

  DAY 36: HMAS Nugget

  After yesterday’s glut of good fortune, we expected the law of averages to kick in today and to cop our fair share of misfortune, and we weren’t wrong, although as always, things could have been worse.

  After brekky we set about making our PAC, HMAS Nugget, seaworthy. We unloaded everything and opened each drybag to check if yesterday’s little water frolic had caused any water ingress. Our clothes were all okay. Our oats and milk powder were fine, there was a little water in one of the freeze-dried food bags, but as they’re individually wrapped in foil packets that didn’t matter.

  And then Clark opened up the bag containing our nut rations, and his mortified groan of ‘Oh no …’ made me cringe inside as I turned to look. He was holding up one of our ten-day ration cliplock bags of ‘trail mix’ (sultanas, peanuts, cashews, Smarties, almonds, etc.), which was completely awash with water. Well, it was likely ‘water’ yesterday, but it was now a vile greyish slurry of mashed nuts, decorated by splashes of colour where red, green, yellow, blue or brown Smarties had dissolved. He fished out another ration pack from the drybag. It too, was swimming. And the next. And more. In the end, five of our remaining six ten-day bags of trail mix lay on the tundra with serious to medium water damage, and we crouched in disbelief around them, silently mourning their loss.

  Thankfully, our ration packs of cashews and peanuts were unharmed, and everything else was bone dry. We dug out some spare cliplock bags and—as though performing surgery—carefully sliced open the drowned ration packs, and set to work delicately extracting what was salvageable. We were relieved to find that if we turned a blind eye to ‘slightly damp’ nuts, we managed to recover perhaps as much as 30 per cent of the trail mix. Unfortunately the rest—about 35 days’ worth—was now reduced to a sticky pile of rubbery cashews that could be bent back upon themselves without breaking, sultanas that were well on the way to being grapes once more, and silicon-like peanuts and almonds … it all lay there in a stately pile of regret. There was nothing else we could do but tuck in before they went bad.

  We gorged ourselves silly. It was, after all, nut break time. Over the course of the day, I think we probably ate about fifteen days’ worth of trail mix before our stomachs started to emit warning groans. It was fantastic. We figure that the next ten or so days along the river will involve substantially less energy output compared to hauling, and so we can do without trail-mix breaks for the next few weeks. Anyway, I don’t think either of us will be able to face eating trail mix again for at least that long.

  Converting HMAS Nugget to ultra-water-mode took longer than expected, but our philosophy is to ‘do it once and do it properly’, rather than do a poor job and regret it later. We deflated the tyres, pulled off what’s left of their shredded Kevlar covers and pumped all four inner tubes back up. We’ve no need for the covers when floating, and as Kevlar degrades in water we’ll keep them safe in a drybag for later. We tied on tow points and handles to all four corners of our raft, and even installed a grab-line all the way around the perimeter in case we suddenly find ourselves in the water one day and wishing we weren’t. It was already 5 pm by the time she was ready for the high seas, so we only had time to roll her into the water and wade across the small lake in front of us.

  We are now camped near to where the river sucks out, ready to give our new river-worthy craft a real test run tomorrow. There’s just one more large lake in our way, and then after that, it’s the real deal—the big, wide, flowing Kuujjua—for over 100 kilometres. Looks like we might just get there in three days’ time—Clark’s birthday—as promised!

  DAY 37: Kuujjua, here we come!

  Our watch alarm went off at 7.30 am and we fought to maintain some form of conversation with each other to prevent us from slipping back into unconsciousness. With an effort we verbally slapped ourselves around enough to pull free from the clutches of sleep, and sat up to an eerily quiet tent. There was absolutely zero wind, and a quick peek outside revealed the start of yet another perfect sunny day. Brilliant.

  The first little section was along the remainder of yesterday’s lake, and we found it faster to wade and haul HMAS Nugget as she floated in the shallows, taking the opportunity to shuffle a few heavier bags around to level her out onto an even keel. The far side of the lake swept us into a short river-like section leading to another, much larger lake—the last one. This linking river was rather shallow too and we mostly walked beside the cart helping her over mossy shallows, preventing her turning broadside. We’ve got this technique well refined now, but we really hope the Kuujjua is going to be significantly deeper!

  Once spat out into the big lake, we drifted idly around and prepared lunch—once again, peanut butter on flatbreads with a thermos of coffee—and enjoyed what was probably our best lunch break yet. We lay stretched out on the deck of HMAS Nugget, spinning slowly in the current and wind—which, amazingly, was pushing us in the right direction! The sun beamed down into the transparent water perhaps 2 metres deep, glinting off the sandy bottom. Gazing dreamily down, I suddenly noticed several dark shadows moving around us. ‘They’re fish! Huge fish!’ I shouted, pointing excitedly. They were lake trout, and big ones.

  I set up our fishing rod with a lure and flicked a few hopeful casts, but the lake did not provide. The wind died, and adrift in the body of the lake itself, we were going nowhere fast—even paddling—so we struck out for the shore and resumed hauling along the side. The surface of these bigger, deeper lakes is still partially frozen over with a thin pancake layer of floating ice—too thin to walk on, but impossible to paddle through. Unfortunately this means we can’t cut across these lakes, and we’re forced instead to wind around their convoluted shoreline. Our polarised Dirty Dog sunnies are awesome at letting us see through the surface glare, and after several monstrously thick fish lazily wafted right past us, I reached back and grabbed the fishing rod again.

  For about half an hour, we both simply waded along, hauling through the shallows, while I repeatedly cast the lure. It was lovely, and as Clark said, ‘This is something I’d actually do for fun!’ It felt like a luxury fishing trip; we didn’t even feel HMAS Nugget drifting along behind us. Just as I was starting to wonder if these trout even knew what they were supposed to do with lures, a large shadow followed it all the way back towards us. Having wound the lure right in until it hung from the end of my rod—perhaps 2 metres from where
I stood in the water—the huge half-metre trout sidled up to it and simply sucked it into his mouth. I struck at the same instant and the lure dug in, but only for about a tenth of a second before he just flicked his head sideways and dislodged it.

  Now, normally, after a scare like that, the game’s up, and all fish I’ve ever seen take off in a flash, but this guy just continued to swim lazily around our feet while I basically kept bumping the lure into his nose until he eventually grew bored and slid away. I tried all afternoon, but didn’t ever have a second strike. Still, it bodes very well for the upcoming days. Some char or trout would go very well with our couscous!

  So here we are, pulled 10 metres up onto the grassy shore, with only about half of this last big lake still to go before the real river starts. That leaves us all of tomorrow to get across, so that the next day—Clark’s birthday—we can wake up to our first full day of (hopefully) luxurious river travel.

  Checking our emails, we received one particularly interesting one from my dad. He’s contacted a biologist about the crazy dancing caribou we reported the other day, and it seems it was likely trying to run away from warble flies. Warble flies are delightful little parasitic flies that lay eggs on the fur of caribou, which then turn into grubs that walk down the hair follicle, chew their way into the leg of the animal, and then spend the summer chewing their way underneath the skin all the way up along the back beside the spinal cord, where they proceed to cut themselves a breathing hole through the skin until they’re ready to pupate and turn into a fly and flap out of the unfortunate animal’s back to go and find another to lay eggs on. Lovely. I’d be running and jumping too if one of them was chasing me. Disgustingly, these flies can apparently do the same thing to humans.

  DAY 38: Something fishy about this lake

  Determined to reach the ‘proper start’ of the Kuujjua by the end of the day, we performed a textbook wake-up, and got ready in record time. We were just about to slide our PAC into the water and head off, when a big old caribou bull materialised in front of us.

  We leapt for the video camera and Canon DSLR and lost all track of time, staring in awe as he gradually ambled closer and closer. He knew we were there, as every now and again if we spoke too loudly or moved too fast he’d lift his head, balancing his impressive pair of antlers high in the air, and regard us with mild interest for a few seconds before lowering his lips back to the lawn to resume mowing. Eventually, after he was joined by two females and we exhausted even these photo opportunities, we snapped out of our trance, remembered our goal for the day, and relaunched HMAS Nugget.

  We waded onwards, listening to our iPods, fishing, chatting away and generally expending no more energy than one would on a pleasant morning’s stroll along a sun-soaked foreshore, beside an ice-strewn lake rimmed by snow-clad hills. The landscape is spectacularly beautiful around here. At last, as we drew nearer to the end of the big lake, our hauling ropes went slack, and for a few irritating seconds HMAS Nugget kept bumping into us from behind, until we realised what this meant—flow!

  We hopped on, hoping to be whisked along to the last, much smaller lake before the Kuujjua ‘proper’, but it was disappointingly slow—even slower than hauling—so we hopped back out. ‘Please let the Kuujjua have a bit more flow than this!’ we begged, for the umpteenth time.

  As we drifted into the last little lake, I suddenly spotted a monstrous lake trout lazily finning its way almost right between our legs. I grabbed the fishing rod and put a cast well behind the fish, and began reeling it in. Wham! A different fish struck the lure almost at once, but after a few lethargic splashes it pulled free. Adrenalin kicking in, I re-cast and before I had managed to reel back in more than a metre or so, WHAM, an even bigger strike, and this one stuck!

  ‘I—I’ve got one!’ I shouted in disbelief at Clark, and being only 10 metres from shore I simply walked backwards onto dry land as I reeled the giant in. Clark followed me ashore and we both stared down at the gigantic fish in absolute awe. It was a 63-centimetre monstrosity, and weighed just over 2.5 kilograms! Smiling from ear to ear, we divided the fish up in our minds. ‘We’ll have half of it tonight on our couscous, and then dry the other half!’ (Dried in the traditional Inuit way, which we learned in 2005.) I filleted the fish with my Leatherman, stuck two hiking poles out the back of HMAS Nugget and webbed some string between them to form a drying rack. Then—as we’d been taught in 2005—I sliced one of the fillets the traditional Inuit way, and draped it over the string to dry, just as we always dreamed we would. The other fillet I put aside for dinner.

  While I finished, Clark got the rod and waded out and had a crack at the whole fishing thing too. On his first ever cast—he hasn’t even touched the fishing rod this whole trip—WHAM, a strike. But it got off. He enthusiastically cast again. WHAM—and this one stuck. ‘I got another one!’ It made awesome footage: me filleting one giant in the foreground as Clark dragged in a second through the shallows behind me. Clark filleted this one—destined entirely for the drying rack—and then I had another cast, and dragged in a third fish. Three huge lake trout, each over half a metre long, and all in the space of about fifteen minutes and a total of five casts. That more than makes up for our lost trail-mix rations!

  With the stern of HMAS Nugget dangling with nutritious bright orange fillets of fish, we hauled the remaining distance to the end of the lake, to the ‘proper start’ of the Kuujjua River, as happy as we have ever been.

  And here we are—just as promised over a week ago. We are camped on a grassy patch of tundra, at the exact point that the Kuujjua kicks in, on the night before Clark’s 24th birthday. We made it! First up on tonight’s celebratory dinner menu is a Mexican Chicken dehydrated meal (of course) and a cup of hot chocolate. Clark the sugar-Nazi even decided on the spur of the moment to spare enough sugar for a random mug of coffee after that too! Next item on the menu: pan-seared arctic lake trout with cashew-grain salt (that we’ve been saving especially), resting upon a bed of couscous flavoured with paprika, chilli and ‘miscellaneous spice #1’ (we forgot to label some of our spices).

  DAY 39: Clark’s 24th birthday

  I’ll let Clark speak for himself today, it being his birthday and all:

  As I snuck back inside after a quick toilet break at about 3 am, Chris woke with a start beside me—‘Happy birthday, guv! Here, have this!’ He handed me a small something wrapped in a piece of paper from my notebook with string drawn on it to look like a proper pressie. Perplexed, I unwrapped it. CHOCOLATE! Chris had amazingly saved his last square of yesterday’s chocolate ration, which I wasted no time popping in my mouth, savouring the taste, thanking him profusely, then drifting happily back to sleep.

  Ready for a leisurely day of free kilometres floating down the Kuujjua and eating double rations while lazing on the sunny deck of our houseboat, when it was time to get up we found there wasn’t any of the usual regret synonymous with facing a day of hauling. I wasted no time cooking up a storm in the kitchen with double porridge and extra sugar in our coffee. As we sat there sipping, staring at the Kuujjua, a mere 10 metres from our camp, Chris reached over and handed me a birthday card (another piece of paper stolen from my notebook, craftily drawn on to resemble a fancy card) and another small package similar to the piece of chocolate. I grinned widely as I read the card and then unwrapped my pressie. In an instant it all made sense: I had seen Chris busily cutting and shaving bits from a piece of muskox bone for the last two weeks and had no idea what he was doing because he was strangely secretive about it. Anyway, it turns out he has masterfully crafted a miniature replica of our ‘Nugget’ PAC, complete with matchstick men hauling in dog-team style, all wrapped up and packaged in a matchbox!

  We wasted no time packing everything away, ready to push the final 10 metres before we could realise our long-awaited dream of floating down the Kuujjua. What happened next can only be described as a typical Victoria Island moment. With a ‘One, two, three …. push!’ we started rolling the short distance towards the rive
r when suddenly—PSSSSSSssssssss! Chris and I looked at each other in total disbelief as we watched one of the tyres deflate—it had snagged on one of the folded tent poles and punctured itself with two huge holes. We have managed to fight our way to the Kuujjua for the last 39 days without a single puncture—over Death Terrain and all—and now, with only a few steps left, over lawn-like grass, it finally happened! When we finished laughing, we quickly repaired the puncture with our bike repair kit and, grinning, pushed onwards. Being my birthday, and with the sun shining and the river flowing, it would take a lot more than a puncture to dampen our spirits. As we rolled HMAS Nugget into the river, it instantly took off at around 3 kilometres per hour with us on top, and we literally had nothing else to do but sit back and enjoy the view.

  Chris then busted out with yet another birthday surprise—a balloon! He handed me a bright yellow balloon on a string, with the words ‘Happy Birthday’ printed on it—very cool. I tied it to the side of the PAC and it floated happily beside us for most of the day.

  The weather started to look a little grimmer after lunch, and we could see rain pouring from clouds all around us except for the little patch of clear blue sky directly overhead that adoringly followed us for several hours, until that too turned into rain. This of course didn’t matter as we were already in our drysuits and it really made no difference to what we were doing, which was nothing. As we sat there happily in the rain, we watched in excitement as our GPS told us we’d travelled 12 kilometres as the crow flies—our new daily distance record—without having done a thing! It was about time for camp, but since it was raining and we were making great progress, we decided to cook dinner aboard HMAS Nugget mid-river. Moroccan Lamb was on the cards tonight—another favourite of ours from Back Country Cuisine—and we just sat there enjoying our meal and watching the kilometres tick past on the GPS: 12.5, 12.6, 13 … all up, we managed to travel 15.1 kilometres as the crow flies, and a spectacular 23.5 km as the PAC floats today—double our previous record!