by Adam Shoalts
The thought of turning back to exile on the little island, failing to advance any farther, was a disheartening prospect. Instead I resolved to at least force my way through the ice to the mainland across the bay, which I’d tried yesterday without success. That way I’d at least be able to console myself with having inched a tiny bit closer to my end goal, rather than accomplishing nothing at all. On the mainland I could also hike ahead on foot to scout out the ice conditions. Thus I pushed through the ice, shoving with my paddle the bigger floes away from the canoe and struggling slowly to get through the pack.
An hour later and I’d come to the bay’s shore. It didn’t appear at all inviting, with dense alder bushes six feet high cloaking the coastline. Rocks extending off the shore into the shallows, combined with the ice, made landing difficult. I couldn’t parallel park next to the shore as I normally did, so instead I had to crawl carefully over my gear up to the bow and climb out that way.
Once on dry land, I crouched down to squeeze through the alders toward more open terrain inland. Here, away from shore, the ground rose up a small hill, thinly treed with spruces and some tamaracks, and carpeted with thick green sphagnum moss, blueberries, lingonberries, and lichens, although it’d be another five or six weeks before any berries ripened. On the bright side, there was ample wood for making fires, but on the downside it was much buggier, with swarms of mosquitoes that materialized as if summoned by black magic at my appearance.
I slogged my stuff through the alders, including my canoe, which was too dear a friend to leave all alone down by the shore. I always brought it with me to my camps, flipping it over near my tent if there was room for it. We’d sometimes have conversations about such things as which route to take, how the weather looked, the ice, and where to camp. I tended to do most of the talking, but the canoe was a great listener, very seldom interrupting.
Since it was still early morning I set up my tent and went back to sleep for a few hours. Thwarted as I was by the ice, I intended to make the most of it by sleeping and resting as much as I could. That way, when the ice finally did shift or melt, I’d be prepared to put in extra-long days of hard paddling to make up for lost time.
Light rain fell off and on during the day, while I occasionally crawled through the alders to stare pensively at the unmoving ice. Thick mist made seeing much of anything difficult, but again I consoled myself with the thought that the mist was vapour rising from the ice. Little by little, it must be melting.
Later I scouted north along the peninsula to get a better idea of how much water ahead was still frozen. The thick sphagnum moss, which I sank into as I walked, coupled with the uneven ground and mosquitoes, made hiking difficult. But I was hopeful that I might discover that open water lay just ahead.
Alas, I saw only more ice, miles upon miles of it, stretching off to a misty horizon.
After this disheartening exploration, I returned to my campsite, wondering how many more days I’d lose before being able to escape the ice. I decided to count my rations—I figured it might be a good idea to get a handle on how long they’d last. It turned out that there was enough for another four weeks, which might be made to last longer with some fresh fish. After that I’d need to arrange for a resupply with my satellite phone.
That evening, when I crept back down to the lakeshore through the alders to fetch some water for tea, I marvelled with surprise at a beautiful rainbow that had formed across the ice-covered lake, its bright colours standing out against dark grey skies. The rainbow disappeared into the mists rising above the ice in the distance. The floes, meanwhile, were a mix of snowy ice interspersed with pools of water, creating a dreamlike landscape. The rainbow I took as a good sign.
Hours later, as I lay in my sleeping bag with my head resting on my spare-clothes pillow, my ears detected a change. There was still the familiar drone of hundreds of mosquitoes trapped under my tent fly. But something else sounded different—I thought I could hear the faint sound of lapping water. Immediately I sat up in my sleeping bag with excitement; if I could hear lapping water, it must mean that the ice had shifted or melted! Quickly, I dashed out of my bag, tossed on my jacket and bug net, and went to investigate. Pressing through the green alders, I could barely believe my eyes—open water, and lots of it. The ice had mostly all melted; just the odd piece floated about. I glanced at my watch: two thirty-five a.m.—time I was on my way.
It took forty minutes to pack up camp and portage the loads one at a time through the thick alders to the rocky shore, where I carefully loaded the canoe. I needed to pack it just right, as I wanted to be optimistic that I wouldn’t be coming back to shore for a good while. By three-thirty a.m. I was at last on my way, paddling once more out onto the vast clear waters of Great Bear Lake.
It felt wonderful to be back on the water, paddling hard. The skies remained cloudy but my spirits soared. With open water on all sides, the closed-in, claustrophobic feel of the pack ice was gone, and I now had the thrill of wide-open vistas once more. I paddled on, passing mile upon mile of wild, beautiful tundra where the permafrost prevents trees from taking root. Elsewhere the landscape varied with stupendous cliffs, green hills, and rocky shores. It was the kind of scene that always refreshed my spirits.
The lake itself was remarkably clear and free of aquatic vegetation; looking down into those cold, clear waters was like looking into another world. The frigid, oxygen-rich water prevents underwater weeds from growing. The result is a lake that looks deceptively empty, with sand bottoms that in places have great, silent jumbles of boulders and rocks resembling a kind of sunken moonscape.
After hours of paddling without any a sign of life below the placid waters, suddenly I was startled by a glimpse of an enormous creature—it jerked violently then dove off into the depths as I passed by in my canoe. So abrupt had it appeared and so unbelievably massive it looked in the vast clear waters that it felt as if I’d just seen a shark. In fact it was only a lake trout, though one weighing perhaps seventy pounds or more.
Above water, especially when I came across sheltered bays, birds were plentiful. I saw pintails, loons, mergansers, Canada geese, bald eagles, arctic terns, and sandpipers; I suspected that as temperatures warmed I’d see even more kinds. At the close of each day, stretched out in my snug little tent, I’d tally up the birds and other wildlife I’d seen during the day, and it was always a thrill to add a new species that I hadn’t seen before.
Birds and fish weren’t the only things about. Paddling silently along, my eyes spotted a herd of five shaggy, horned muskox wandering the coast, looking like creatures from another time. A couple of them swam in the icy water, something I’d never seen before. Their thick fur, however, is reputed to be the warmest in the world, which I could appreciate from personal experience. Some years earlier, while canoeing in the High Arctic, I found my jackets and clothing totally inadequate for the biting cold of the fierce arctic winds. It seemed to cut right through my three layers to the bone. Scattered all over the arctic tundra in easily collected quantities where I was camping was muskox fur, which they shed in summertime. So I gathered up handfuls of it and stuffed it down my jacket and pants like a scarecrow, and never again on that journey did I suffer from the cold.
Paddling on, hour after hour, in places I encountered more pack ice, but I weaved through it without much trouble, as the leads between the floes had become larger. There were also more large icebergs, looking magical as they drifted in the clear water. I paddled by them, marvelling at the beauty; one was nearly forty feet long. Out on the lake, there weren’t any bugs once I was paddling, as the wind blew them away.
I finally stopped after fourteen and a half hours’ travel, during which time I never once touched shore. When I needed to stretch, I’d simply stand up in the canoe, while my lunch, as usual, was energy bars. The extra rest had paid off. I’d managed to cover approximately sixty-seven and a half kilometres, or an average of just under five kilometres an hour.
To cap off such a physically exh
austing but rewarding day, I camped on a beautiful tundra site amid pink and white wildflowers. Looking out across the lake, I could see far out in the centre that large amounts of ice still remained. I hoped it would stay where it was, either melting away out there, or if it was to shift, that the wind would carry it to the far shore, and not the one I was paddling.
* * *
Living outdoors, you get to appreciate nature in all its moods. The morning after my long paddle, the day dawned cold, wet, grey, and dismal. I got out my balaclava and my warmer pair of waterproof gloves. I was back to three layers: the wool-blend base layer, then khaki pants and wool sweater, and finally my outer rain pants with the warmer of my two jackets.
Fog and stiff headwinds slowed my progress, and I soon came across more ice. Fortunately, I was able to navigate the ice without too much delay, though there was still some icebreaking required to get through it. By midday the skies had mostly cleared, but the wind remained unfavourable. I put my back into it, paddling as steadily as I could.
To save the time it would take to snake down into a deep bay, I did chance one largish open-water crossing. It wasn’t by normal standards much of a big crossing, merely 1.3 kilometres in a straight line from shore to shore. In more temperate places or with a canoeing partner I’d often ventured far greater distances from shore. But things were different alone in the Arctic, when I could still see sheets of ice drifting. Remote as the prospect seemed, I had to consider what might happen if, in the middle of a big water crossing, I suddenly suffered some freak muscle spasm or cramp, leaving me at the mercy of the wind. Sometimes, though, you just have to play the odds.
By July I figured the last of the ice had almost all melted, and I’d have open water from here on out across Great Bear. The first of the month, Canada Day, I crawled out of my tent before seven a.m. and was pleased to see clear skies and calm waters. That morning I passed a long, sandy white beach where a lone grizzly was quietly wandering among the dunes. The beautiful beach extended for over six kilometres, and I thought it would be a wonderful place to rest, but I knew I couldn’t afford to stop when the wind was still down. So I kept paddling, snacking on some high-calorie energy bars to keep me going.
Rounding the beach and continuing along the shore, I was surprised to see the sun glinting off vast fields of ice! It hadn’t all melted, after all. This ice pack extended from the north shore out into the lake at least several kilometres, and it stretched as far as I could see along the coast ahead of me. In the midst of this giant ice field was one iceberg that rose up high out of the water, towering over the rest like a snow fort.
But surely, given it was July, I figured I could push through this ice. Paddling, however, soon proved ineffective: the ice pack was too thick. Trying to force my way through it was exhausting work—to advance just a few hundred metres involved continuously smashing and breaking up the thinner ice with my paddle combined with pushing the bigger floes far enough away from the canoe to squeeze between them. An hour’s effort had seen me advance only a kilometre into the ice.
Clearly I needed a different approach. So I tried poling through the ice, as I still had my trusty beaver pole that I’d found along the Mackenzie. Standing up in the canoe, I grasped the pole and used it to push off the floes, propelling my canoe along over thinner ice. The ice crunched and shattered as I moved along, breaking a channel as I went. Canoes are perhaps not intended to be used as icebreakers, but mine I found quite effective at it.
However, it soon became too thick to push through, and at the rate I was going, I was exhausting myself with little to show for it. I began to wonder, given that the shoreline here was not choked with willows and alders like earlier on, whether it might actually be faster to just portage along the shore. The shoreline was a mix of tundra plants, sand, and pebble beaches. Maybe, just maybe, I thought, that wheeled cart sitting in the front of my canoe might at last come in use.
I forced the boat through the ice to shore, alternatively zigzagging through the icy labyrinth or else breaking a passage when there was none. I pushed and prodded my way across the ice, occasionally causing floes to sink beneath the canoe, until I reached the shore. The underside of my canoe was looking rather scratched up, with some deeper gouges that somewhat unsettled me, but no fatal punctures, so far. Leaving the rest of my gear on the beach to pick up later, I strapped the canoe onto the cart, which consisted of two hard plastic wheels specifically designed for rough usage. Then I began dragging the cart, weaving between juniper bushes, willows, and rocks. It sort of worked. For a little ways. But overall, the cart wasn’t much of an improvement over simply dragging the canoe over the ground or carrying it over my head. The terrain was too cluttered with obstacles for it to work effectively.
So after half a kilometre of this I stopped on a stony beach surrounded by treeless tundra. I hadn’t even come close to bypassing the icefields, and I’d concluded that it was simply not worth the energy and calories expended to push on with portaging. My time was better spent resting, waiting for the ice to melt or shift.
Over a driftwood fire, I boiled water for a freeze-dried dinner while gazing out on the icefields that had foiled my progress, wondering when they’d dissipate. Things seemed encouraging when that night, lying in my tent, I watched through the screen-door as the ice began to smash up and shift, partly breaking off waves that were rolling in. I was hopeful that I’d have clear waters come morning.
* * *
The dawn—well, not exactly dawn, since the sun only briefly sank below the horizon, just dipping down and up again—brought the clear water I’d hoped for. But it also brought stiff opposing winds that promised to test every ounce of my mettle. I gave it my all, paddling for nearly thirteen hours and battling for every inch.
The winds were relentless now, as I’d reached the middle section of Great Bear, leaving behind the narrower Smith Arm. Here the lake opened up to impossible horizons, with hundreds of kilometres of open water for the wind to gather its full force over. I made sure to stay near the shore, normally not straying anything more than a half-kilometre out from it. This was harder at times than it might seem, given strong winds were often blowing offshore, meaning I had to counteract them with paddling. Otherwise I’d find myself drifting far off into the lake.
There was one place, however, where I debated whether to risk paddling far offshore. I’d arrived at the entrance to a huge bay shaped like an immense paint splatter, with wide inlets extending in different directions. I knew if I could just cut across the mouth of the bay, rather than trace out the shoreline all through its odd shape, it’d save me hours of paddling. But it was a gamble. The mouth was over three kilometres wide—a long way in a little canoe alone on an arctic lake. In calm weather I might have chanced it. But with the wind gusting as strong as it was, and with the icy cold waters all around me, my head said don’t risk it.
So instead I rounded the rocky shoreline and turned into the bay, resigning myself to tracing it out and adding considerable distance to my route as a result. The arithmetic was not at all encouraging: instead of a three-kilometre paddle across the bay’s mouth, tracing out all of its coastline (except for a narrow bit I was sure I could skip across), it would total over twenty-nine kilometres, which would take at least five hours of hard paddling.
With math like that, I was almost desperate to trim off some of the shoreline with whatever crossing I could manage. Fortunately, just around the rocky peninsula leading into the bay, a bottleneck was formed between the peninsula’s protruding rocky shore and the northern coastline. The distance between the two points was less than seven hundred metres, and if I could zip across it I’d saw off a good ten kilometres from the detour.
The wind was raging, with big waves rolling across the channel, but I was primed for the challenge, given what was at stake. I’d been using my bent shaft paddle for the extra power, but to safely navigate the waves I needed my straight paddle.
Taking up my well-loved traditional paddle, I kneele
d down in the canoe, and swung the blade deep into the waves, gunning hard for the far shore. The wind was coming straight at me—a perfect headwind. I swung my paddle hard and hard again, fighting the gusting wind with every stroke. The canoe surged up and down on the waves, the bow rising clear in the air on the breaks.
It was rough going. I’d battled my share of big waves before, but never with so heavy a load in the canoe, and my energy was already drained from the long days of paddling I’d been putting in. Determined as I was, not five minutes in I knew I was beaten. I couldn’t overcome the howling gusts. It was time to retreat.
I waited for a break between waves to safely pivot. Then I swung the canoe back in the direction of the near shore. There was nothing for it, I’d have to take the long way round, tracing out nearly the whole bay, unless I could pull off a crossing somewhere else.
There’s always a silver lining, though. Being forced to take the long way around meant I’d get to see more—and I loved exploring landscapes, especially ones hidden away in the wildest bays. I soaked in the majesty of the place, admiring its endless variety: the hardy tamaracks and spruces, the wiry willows, the ancient rocks heaped and jumbled by glaciers, the clear waters, the different birds, the hidden wildlife. It was a feast for the imagination, the kind of thing I found endlessly fascinating. The natural world is so full of mystery that there’s always more to see.
On the other hand, once I reached the bay’s inner shore, having taken the long way around to avoid the worst of the wind, my eyes looked longingly across the expanse of open water toward the bay’s outlet. It occurred to me that if I were to cut straight across here, making a beeline for the far shore, I’d still be able to save a considerable amount of time and distance by avoiding the northeastern section of the bay. I calculated the distances; if I continued to remain near shore, tracing out the whole bay, there was still another thirteen kilometres to get through. But if I paddled straight across, it was only 3.2 kilometres to the far shore—a significant savings on an expedition where every kilometre counted.