Day XVIII - Joyeux Calvaire. Quite literally.

Another slow but swell start with a good ol’poutine containing more cheese and gravey than potatoes (see comment yesterday on supplies we’re low on).

The view was gorgeous this morning. Cliffs are getting even bigger, just like the waterfalls flowing from them. There are rockslides everywhere.

We spent a good chunk of the day on relatively calm water with lots of current, spiced up with a few episodes of headwinds. Around a bend that I wouldn’t remember otherwise, Marcus spotted a porcupine chilling on a gravel bank.

Kids aren’t particularly energetic this morning. Everyone was napping during lunch. I got the UTM wrong for the map and we ended up being farther from the portage than I thought. Damn.

Today’s most important milestone definitely was

Yes, the goddamned Salmon Ladder, legendary portage for its cool and out of the ordinary aspect, but also for its brutality. In fact, to be honest, I was expecting apocalypse so I guess it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but it still was pretty fucking hard.

It was pretty much an all-inclusive package for hell.

A helicopter landed just like I was getting to the salmon counters’ cabin and forced me to drop the canoe that had started to vibrate heavily and was menacing to be blown away. It was doing a food drop for the two counters. All the boys came in running when they heard the helicopter because they thought Marcus was in some kind of death trap and had pressed the “911” button on the Spot. We made fun of them for thinking that:
a) Helicopters appear within 3 minutes when you call for help
b) Marcus had time to press the Spot as he was dying in a crevasse
c) Marcus was carrying the Spot on him while portaging a canoe

As the boys vanished back in the woods to get the stuff they had left back there in their panic, Marcus and I sat in the bushes and watched the helicopter take off. Pretty bad ass.

The portage went fairly well considering how hard it was. Bugs and batrachians of all kinds, shapes and colours abounded on the path. When I came back from sweeping the take-out, carrying the bucket, I knocked at the salmon counters’ door and asked them for a little info about the ladder and for the permission to go check it out. Richard and Denis, the two counters (by "counters" I mean that all they do, all day, is count how many salmons go up the ladder), were very generous with their knowledge and told me all kinds of cool facts about salmons. They were scandalized by the fact that we had not brought any fishing gear with us and insisted on giving us some wire and lures. As we went back on the boardwalk to go check out the ladder, Richard showed me how to tie a fishing knot and mentioned a couple of fishing tips and hotspots along the rest of the Moisie. When we came back from the ladder, they handed us a couple of freshly fished trout on a stick that we had for dinner with the pesto. They were delicious. This first encounter with human beings since Labrador City left me full of faith in man’s capacity to be kind and generous with strangers.

We are sleeping in a deserted fishing lodge tonight. Had there been the owners (Fred and Liette) around, we probably would have turned this in another pit day. They are well known for their kindness and have the reputation of offering food and hospitality to all paddlers that stop by. Despite their absence, they kept up their rep’: they had left a cabin unlocked for us on the otherwise closed down site. Not being particularly warm to the idea of squishing into a small and unnecessarily hot space again, Marcus and I decided to sleep in our tent anyways and to leave the cabin to the kids. Good call. It's like Shanghai at rush hour in there.

It took forever to set up the fucking tarp and to chop wood with a very unsatisfyingly sharpened axe.

The bannock will most likely taste like shit tomorrow. On the brighter side, dinner was delicious. Speaking of which; Luke and Nick nearly slept through dinner. They finally showed up after being yelled at several times. Close call, after such a long, demanding day, no dinner wouldn't have been a good thing.

I’d write more but I can’t keep my eyes open right now.

We stole chives and rhubarb from Fred and Liette’s garden.

Day XVII - A barrel in Middle Earth

Awesome sunrise this morning. Thank you, bugs, for keeping me awake so I could witness this wonderful display of light and colours… NOT.

It’s crazy how quickly one can get used again to the comfort of civilisation…

The landscape is getting out of control. Huge valley, terrifying rock slides. The forest is morphing slowly, too. Black spruce progressively disappears and leaves room to balsam fir and birch trees.




I was scouting today, therefore I spent most of the day:
- working my way through boulders the size of a Kandalore cabin
- sliding and scraching various parts of my body on boulders the size of a Kandalore cabin
- telling Emily what to do and feeling bad for leaving her by herself sitting in the canoe for extended periods of time
- spacing out as I gazed at the ludicrous landscape
- cursing and dry heaving repeatedly after hitting my (now even more) infected cut against rocks

We found a Kandalore barrel full of decaying food at a bushcrash campsite by some impressive waterfalls. Probably Bill’s. It’s been mauled by some wild animal but the straps are still essentially usable. When I first saw it I was terrified of looking inside… I guess 2 weeks in desolate, desert wilderness sharpen one’s imagination…



The landscape looks like:

- A golf green
- Middle Earth
- Scandinavia
- The Saguenay Kingdom
- Conan Doyle’s Lost World
- Some kind of tropical paradise, palm trees apart

There is a moose/caribou carcass lying in ankle-deep water just next to our campsite. We still don’t know why exactly the site is marked as “kooky”. Boys and girls are having a little bit of a fight about daily chores tonight. The conflict seems to have spread after an argument concerning who should be cutting the what's left of the cabbage for tomorrow.

We’re down two barrels. Hurray. Well, not really, since we just gained a full one. Hurray anyways.

We are low on:
Cheese
Potatoes
Onions
Oil (at least we took a little from Berny’s)
Snacks (ironically)

Miscellaneous facts:

The boys threw rocks at the carcass. None made it, so it still lies intact as I am writing these lines... Good thing.

Nat cut himself slicing potatoes.

The taco salad was good but scarce

Day XVI - paths are for sissies

PIT DAAAAYYY!!!

Woah, what a treat to sleep in until 11h00!!!

I spent most of the first part of the day cooking fruit and seed loaf. We hung out inside for a bit, playing cards and chatting in rocking chairs. It’s a weird feeling to have the choice between being inside and outside again.

We called in today. Gill answered. Apparently everything is going well. Bill and Blake lost a pelican case.

Nick, Nat, Marcus and I went on an epic hiking trip in late afternoon. 4h of GPS-led bushwhack through steep hills and a few hornet nests that paid off, as we were quite possibly the only human beings to ever attain that specific spot on top of the hill facing Berny’s cabin, across the lake. We took a few pictures and videos for posterity.

I stuck a twig in one of my blisters this morning, which resulted in excruciating pain for a little bit. I’m seriously considering stopping my track record of injuries, it’s getting depressing and I feel like a sissy for dedicating so much time and ink complaining.

My panzarotti wasn’t particularly good, partly because I built too big of a fire. Sarah and Luke, on the other hand, engaged in a professional flash-cooked pizza-making contest that made Marcus proud of his disciples and everyone else salivate with envy.

I wrote a message in French to Berny and Diane today. It’s funny how today’s call in and this letter are the closest we’ve been to being in contact with human beings since the float plane pilot. The weirdest part is that I don’t feel lonely or isolated at all.

Les OSTI de brûlots (Noseams ?) ont gâché ma nuit de sommeil supposément réparateur.

Day XV - “For the LOVE OF GOD, Emily, CROSSDRAW!!!!”

Sick day today. We faced a section of the river that I fondly renamed


As always, the perpetual and impossible objective to be on the water before 11h00 is a complete failure. The reasons why everyone dicks around in all kinds of irrelevant and time-consuming crap are still unknown to science.

The scenery is ridiculous today. Gigantic steep cliffs surround us and waterfall appear before our eyes as we go around each new bend of the river. I’d describe it in a much more detailed and lyrical way if I had time, talent and energy. The whole area is covered in moose tracks. I can’t help but think of Kawartha Dairies when I see them. We found a moose carcass in an eddy this afternoon. I wonder how the poor thing died.

Emily doesn’t listen when I ask her to do something in sets and it drives me insane. The most frustrating thing is that she could if she wanted to. That being said, the kids are pretty impressive paddlers as a whole.

The “Madness” consisted of a series of CIII-CIV-CV all lined up, followed by 13 km of heavy current, shallow river until an opening. Portage after portage after lining after carryover, our physical and mental health quickly eroded as dehydration, pain, uncertain weather and misplaced portages on the map made the day seem endless.

¡¡¡¡¡¡Ostiaaaaaa putas moscas de mierda me cago en la leche!!!!!! Nunca hubiera pensado que todavía me pusen molestar tanto los mosquitos y las moscas después de tantos años en campamientos…

Cuando por fín llegamos al fín del último portaje (que, por razones desconocidas duró 800m y no 400m), hemos decidido que empujaríamos hacia los límites de nuestras fuerzas hasta llegar a un sitio marcado como “Sweet cabin to stay in”. Guiados por la luna casi llena, muriéndonos de hambre y de canso, llegamos a la “cabin” prometida…

BERNY’S CABIN!!!

This place is just too cool. As we entered in this brand new wooden cabin, we were greeted by a stuffed moosehead beaming blankly at us. Marcus and I “shottied” the upper loft and spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the electrical system and the gas valves. We couldn’t make anything work besides two lamps that we turned on pretty much by accident after countless trials and errors. As we unpacked and Marcus tried to figure out “Santeria” with our guitar, the kids slowly cooked a gigantic pot of egg foo yong that turned (once again, I guess we’ll never learn) the cabin into a sauna. Bad call, especially since we were occupying the upper part of the building… To avoid low blood sugar-induced freakouts, I whipped out one of the boxes of candy that had been sitting in my barrel since we left and handed some to everyone.

I rummaged around the cabin, partly to try to figure out the power, but also just for the hell of it, coming across several clues of who that Berny guy might be. He seems to be:

a) Big on hunting
b) into helicopter business
c) the owner of a cute golden retriever, whose picture he framed in a somewhat creepy 3D collage

It’s a strange feeling to be exploring someone’s belongings and probably cherished possessions without ever even meeting the guy. I wonder if we’ll ever come across him some day...

Day XIV - "Is it raining?

Another wasted potential push day.

This morning, I woke up with my feet in a puddle and my back had about this shape:

For a change, we took forever to get out of the campsite. For some reason the girls were a lot more efficient this morning. The kids had decided that because of the shitty tent spots, they’d try to sleep outside last night. Unfortunately (but quite obviously), rain ruined their project and they all had to retreat hurriedly in the boys’ tent early in the morning…

The first set of the day was pretty sweet and kind of similar to the one we ran yesterday. Then we ran another set that seemed to be just a big C1 in the distance but that ended up, as we got closer, being a wave train of epic proportions. Hayley and Jacqui dumped. It was the first dump since the pinned boat.

The more time I spend on this river, the more I realise the scale of what’s around.

We are fucking ants out here.

We had a drifting lunch today, which coincided with the apex of nice weather for the day… but things got shitty pretty fast after that. After eating our 250418th snack with the intention of getting Black Betty somewhat lighter before Salmon Ladder, we started hearing thunder. We then started a time race against the approaching storm front that appeared from the mountains behind us. Quickly enough the wall of rain caught up with us. Ahead was a gigantic cloud shaped like a comic book villain about to punch us in the face…

We finally pulled over on what was supposed to be a campsite but was in fact a flat, overgrown area with some kind of a fire pit. While Marcus was working on creating crop circle-like tent spots in the barrens, I put together a pimped out fire pit back in the woods and picked wild leeks that we had with the mac and cheese.

Time had come to teach the kids how to use the outback oven and make lunch for the following day, and girls happened to be first. After a laborious effort, they ended up making an ok bannock without setting anything on fire. Good for them.

Tonight is the first night where we are going to bed before dusk. Our headlamp batteries are starting to run low. This is a little sad.

Health and physical condition update: before going to bed, I scoured the now pretty badly infected cut on my ankle with Bactine, Polysporin and whatever was left of my self-control. Hopefully it heals. Also, my hair is now long enough to braid it into one braid instead of two. Marcus’ hair isn’t, on the other hand.

We checked out what’s ahead for the next days on the maps and figured out that we aren’t that late after all. We might even be able to have pit days (at last). If only kids moved faster in the morning, that would help.

Slide show tonight. The video of Jacqui and Sarah is just absurd.

Emily asked again “Is it raining?” today. Ridiculous.

Day XIII - Bublé... I'm sorry I broke your heart

Hum, it’s nice out today.

What could start off the day better than a good poutine? A good conversation where we make fun of Michael Bublé, Avril Lavigne and Jessica Simpson around the fire, Luke gorging himself with gravy sauce (probably out of spite just for the hell of grossing everyone out), a good layer of coconut-scented Hawaiian Tropics (which I forgot to reapply later on in the day, causing myself a good old burn on my lower back), and here we are, on our way for another fantastic day on the Moisie!

I accumulate miscellaneous injuries. I know I’ve been writing a lot about this, but it’s worth enumerating them for posterity: hundreds of scratches, pain in my right heel, cut on my ankle that tends to infection, sunburns, eye swollen by fly bites… me tocó la lotería de la salud.

More portages.

We ran unreal sets with awesome standing waves. I shot a video of Sarah and Jacqui flying across a set and some cool pictures of Emily and Nick.

We saw a cool waterfall this morning.

2nd portage: war for the Nutella. Bugs drove everyone insane. We talked about baseball and hockey.

The Moisie is getting prettier every day. Hills turn into legitimate mountains and eskers are higher and higher. The last few kilometres of the day were swifty and led us to “Pope’s favourite”, a neat campsite with ludicrous granite formations, impressive waterfalls and eerie potholes. I wish we could have a pit day here. It’s a ginormous playground!

The sunset was beautiful: we couldn’t see the sun, but rays of golden light reflecting against the wet rocks turned the whole landscape into a jewel. The only problem about this campsite is the lack of decent tent spots. Our tent, for example, is set up on a rock that has about this shape:

We’ll see what kind of sleep I can get from that.

It was Jacqui’s birthday today. We let her choose the food we were going to eat and spent a great deal of time making a chocolate cake with an elaborate strawberry-marshmallow filling. I think she was happy about it. We also gave her the present we had bought for her, an inflatable shark she christened Sherman.

Everyone progressively turns into lepers because of their bug bites. Good thing we didn’t see any human being apart from the members of our group since we left.

Interesting exchange of words:

(Fallis, coming back from scouting the first 2o m of a portage) “This portage is a dick!”
(Basen, grinning) “That means she likes it...”
(Basen, later on) “Yeah, when I grow up I want to become a struggling comedian…”

Day XII -lama-like balsam firs and postcard perfect sunsets

Hum, let’s start with the end, today…



As we were enjoying our very first “early night” of the trip, all happy with our 6km of endless, shitty portages through swamps, black flies, and whatever fucking weird rock formations the glaciers decided to leave there, the Moisie decided to offer us the very first spectacular sunset since we left: the shadow of the narrow valley strained the light of the fading sun, splattering rays of red, pink, yellow and orange light all over the water and the clouds… We all went down by the water and sat on rocks to check out the breathtaking scene. Nobody dared to talk, and with our group that’s really a fucking exploit. It’s always a turning point in long trips when silence isn’t awkward anymore.



I’d probably still be sitting there right now if it hadn’t been of the bannock menacing to burn.

We left the maps to Jacqui today. It’s a little weird at first, kind of like seeing a child’s first steps… but I still can’t tell if it’s Jacqui or the maps themselves I felt insecure about letting go of alone…

I have blisters and a pretty impressive assortment of scratches all the way to the sole of my feet. And don’t even get me started on black flies. The comforting part is that everyone is the same. All men are equal in the taiga…

There is sand everywhere because of our beach campsite from yesterday.

Oh, I got stung by a bee this morning.

Cool elements of the landscape today:

- The valley getting deeper and deeper
- The various tree lines drawn by the shade of the mountains on the opposite shore
- “Pride rock” and it’s intimidating silhouette against the sky
- Pékans, even if really that was more yesterday
- The cottage-sized boulders and rock slide trails

Marcus showed me how to use the machete and got spat in the eye by a balsam fir. We had our first fit of the giggles in a while. That’s reassuring, I guess.



I put my head in a small waterfall this afternoon and everyone made fun of me since the water probably came from a bog on top of the mountain. Whatever, I can’t really be any dirtier than I already am.

Lining is fun.

I wish I could write some more but I’m way too tired.