Day XXI - Storm cells and assholes.

Funny day today. Haha. I just wrote “Haha” to emphasize how funny the day was. Maybe it already was clear enough and I didn’t need to explain that, or maybe it was necessary but the additional comment on my hesitation to write the first comment was too much, or…

Moving on.

So our morning started with a conversation in the tent with Marcus about a few topics of interest until the few leftovers of a thunderstorm that occurred earlier in the morning dissipated. Our breakfast was brightened up by a debate on how we should get our revenge on the gros con that owns the pourvoirie and yelled at us yesterday. At lunchtime, Marcus will confess the evil plan he put in place in order to piss off the old fart:

“Custard pie for the yeti!!!”

My co-tripper is a criminal genius.

Other alternatives that came up during the brainstorm included:
- Writing “asshole” in giant letters on the cliff with broken parts of his lounge chairs
- Hide the chairs on rocks accessible only by canoe or motorless boats
- Actually take a dump on his chairs

After about 15 km we ended up at the gros cave’s basecamp. One of his clients said hi and asked how the thunder was the night before. As if he cared. Veux-tu ben me dire ce que ça lui câlisse? Ben oui, t’étais en dedans de ta p'tite cabane durant l’orage pis pas nous. Bravo. Tant qu’à ça, farme ta yeule, gros cave.

Our lunch today was probably a milestone of the trip : train tracks starting to run along the river, cliffs on either side, all the boats perfectly attached to each other, cynical comments and giggles about the girls’ « dirt loaf » (an attempt at making fruit and seed loaf that resulted in an unidentified material that was so dense it didn’t even float), Nick and I lazily steering us away from eddies and the odd occasional rock, the sun shining between storm cells, Marcus playing Santeria, St-Lawrence River and Cover This, everyone else chilling or napping, non-awkward silences, soy nut butter and strawberry-rhubarb jam stains all over our stuff…

Perfect.

And then of course came the rain and the wind.

The rest of the afternoon, we tried to keep moving between each storm cell.

Hail? What the…?

We remained entertained by a series of comical situations including:

- The collective rant about fruit cake (especially my grand-maman’s) and it’s mention later on in Passwort Deutsch I in the tent
- The first lightning drill with the rock throwing contest
- Pulling over at the last minute for a lightning drill when we noticed our hair was starting to stick out in the air by itself
- The apotheosis of the girls vs. guys during the second lightning drill

Hilarious. Too bad I don’t catch the last bit with Luke dumping water on Emily and Sarah’s heads with the bailer and them beating him up into the river on video.

Nat asked me how it was to be a tripper and if I always knew that I wanted to do that job. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Pope on the last day of my explorer… roles reversed, of course.

An aerial view of the campsite we are staying at (such as the one that can be seen from one of the millions of helicopters that fly above our heads since Salmon Ladder) would probably look more or less like that:

At least there is a beach on one side of the shingle bank so it’s not as hard on our backs as yesterday. The bank had no name so I kind of wanted to call it something clever and write it on the map, but all I could come up with was lame shit like “storm cell island” or, even worse, “trip island”. WAY too lame to stay for posterity.

I finally popped out the liquorice and jujubes out of my barrel today. Kids couldn’t contain their happiness. “I think I’m in love”, said Nat.

My ankle is still décâlisse, but at least my eye and lip are back to their normal size.

Je les aime bien, ces jeunes cons.

Tonight, I fall asleep with the rumbling of freight trains full of iron ore on their way to the distant north or back to Sept-Îles, the giggles of the kids around the fire, the melodies of the guitar, the first set of Train Tracks, and one of the hundreds of waterfalls we’ve come across so far.

I don’t wanna be anywhere else right now.

Day XX - Dans les petits pots les pires portages...

It's nice out!!!

Emily broke the water pump filter this morning. She was so sorry she couldn’t even speak. She also got burnt with flaming oil because Sam threw a perogie in the pan and she happened to be sitting next to it. It really was her day today.

I tried to fish and almost caught something, but then some dude came and yelled at Marcus in French for fishing with a stick and string on his pourvoirie. Asshole (dipshit). So instead of feasting on fish we had perogies made with unpurified water. It tasted pretty good…for giardiasis.

I got a Quasimodo eye because I got bitten in the eye by one of the 389 113 427 983 black flies on the campsite. I took Benadryl in a vain attempt to stop the swelling and spent most of the night combating the drug-induced drowsiness.

The 50m portage marked on the map sucked balls. It was more or less shaped like so:

We had a neat floating lunch today. I’d keep on describing it but the Benadryl is really kicking in now…

We had conversations about what the kids want to do for their paddle in the dining hall and about what it will be like when they come back to camp. I can’t believe we’ll be at train tracks tomorrow night…

Day XIX - "Nice bannock. Could use a little more concrete, though..."

Faits saillants

- Sam finding the “Indian Head” on the cliff (at least we think he did)
- Being on the water before 11h00 (10h45, but still...)
- The water as still as a mirror and the ludicrous cliffs in the morning
- Emily and Nick dumping in mysterious circumstances
- Having lunch in a derelict fishing lodge and the lunchtime anecdotes that included...

... A bottle of St-Émilion on the table (well, someone’s got taste)
...The rock-hard and yet partially raw bannock that met all the expectations I had when I saw it being cooked yesterday and the debate on the distribution of food
... The creepy 2nd floor I expected to find a dead body in
... The random display case with a statue of the Virgin Mary inside
... The surreal decaying boathouse with hundreds of dying butterflies on the porch and strange animal noises inside that alltogether looked like something Dali could have painted that I found on my way to pee.

- The continuous CIs
- The “poorly shat (mal chié)” set
- Screeing in the dunes in mid afternoon
- The clay war between Hayley, Nat and I
- The quicksand that greedily swallowed one of my Keens and nearly got away with it
- Cool conversations with Nat
- The pimped out fishing lodge where we met Liette (and a guy named Jacques and Molly, the small Pomeranian)
- Confessing to Liette that we stole chives and rhubarb from her and her telling us that we didn't even need to feel bad about it
- The weird heli pad indications (see diagram)... what is DRH supposed to mean? Is this some kind of UFO landing code or something I might get me to be stalked by men in black for the rest of my days?

- “Lucky” Luke and his injured ankle (THAT IS WHY you don't try to do 360s, as the guy with one arm in Arrested Development would claim)

- The glorious return of the black spruces (because of the sand dunes)
- The moose and its two calves we surprised along the river in the last kms (or was it the moose that surprised us?)
- The awesome, awesome curry... we've come a long way since day 3. Way to go, children.

- The ghetto campsite with out-of-control bugs
- Dinner while watching a breathtaking sunset
- Making strawberry-rhubarb jam

Random thoughts:
Irises and wild leeks… same thing?
The useless bag… before I forget how we ironically named it
We have two maps left. Almost done!
Reznick and his pimped out canoe… yeah sucka! God that kid is ridiculous...
The boys making bread for the first time and ending up with chapatti soup I won't even dare to classify in one of the food groups instead of legitimate bread
The girls giggling as they are playing "president" in their tent
Low on potatoes… how the fuck did that even happen?!?! Marcus must have been secretly shooting them up on his trips to the washroom...

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...