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On Captain Back’s Route: Retracing the First Descent of the Back River in Canada’s Northwest Territories
We had been
preparing for this trip down the Back River for a year. The logistics of getting six paddlers, three
canoes and close to a thousand pounds of gear all the way to Yellowknife in the
Northwest Territories had been formidable.
We wanted to retrace the route of Captain George Back; his was the first
expedition to run the full length of the river in 1834. So the Captain Back’s Journal became required
reading. Once we finally got on the
river we found many echoes of our own experience in his words.
"I
had escaped from the wretchedness of a dreary and disastrous winter...from
wearisome inaction and monotony....Before me were novelty and enterprise; hope,
curiosity and love of adventure were my companions...In turning my back on the
Fort, I felt my breast lighten and my spirit, as it were, set free again..."
With these words, Back and his crew of
nine left Fort Reliance on Great Slave Lake on June 7th, 1834, bound for the
Arctic coast along a completely unexplored river. A similar lightness of heart
overcame me as our Twin Otter floatplane droned out of sight, leaving us on the
shores of Musk Ox Lake -- the headwaters of the Back River. Over a century and
a half had elapsed since the redoubtable captain and his hardy crew set out on
this epic voyage but my sense of overwhelming relief at finally getting on the
water was the same.
Our journey could hardly be described
as an exploration epic. We had good equipment, state-of-the-art survival gear,
a generous horde of freeze-dry food, a VHF rescue radio and best of all, highly
accurate maps based on aerial photography, all impossible to even imagine in
1834. Back and his crew didn't know where
they were going. Surely one definition of courage must include, as Back wrote
in his journal, "heading off across the Barrens in a large row boat with
nothing but aboriginal legends as a guide."
The Back
River has a formidable reputation: Back’s route was not repeated until 1958
when a group of Americans ran the entire 600-mile length of the river. There
have been several drownings since then.
We were all competent paddlers but none of us had tackled a river with
such a treacherous reputation. Although
we has all paddled together as Outward Bound instructors, none of us had been
north of the 60th parallel.
And none of us had ever been so far away from outside help.
Our minor
discomforts were trivial compared to the hardships on Back’s expedition. We drove to Yellowknife from Toronto in seven
days; it took Back almost a year to paddle up from Montreal. Once in Yellowknife we were able to fly to
the headwaters of the river in 90 minutes; Back and his crew had to drag their
boat across lakes and upstream through rapids for 20 days to reach the same
point. Once at our put-in, we were able to back all our gear in three 17-foot
ABS canoes. We didn’t have to depend on
food drops along our route. Back had to
employ local hunters to go ahead of him to leave caches of caribou and
pemmican. These food caches covered less than one-fifth of the total distance
his team was to travel.
Even the
weather favored us. On July 19th,
1834, Back and his crew were trapped by ice on Pelly Lake and were forced to
drag their boat for miles to find open water. They were frequently battered by
rain and snow squalls. We never saw lake
ice during our trip; for the first two weeks we basked in T-shirt weather.
As we paddled
out of Musk Ox Lake we began to run the first of 83 sets of major rapids before
reaching Chantry Inlet on the Arctic coast.
Our new canoes proved to be responsive and stable in whitewater, good at tracking on flat water and forgiving
of the occasional scrape over a hidden rock.
Back’s crew,
by comparison, traveled in one 30-foot boat built from local scrub pine. This wide-beamed boat had a 23-foot keel,
masts, tiller, oars and a hull coated with tar.
Although Back could boast that “considering the knotted and indifferent material of
which (it was) constructed, (the boat) did much credit to the builders”, we
cringed to think of running those heavy rapids in a large wooden rowboat. Field repairs were not an option for Back’s expedition;
their entire route lay above the tree line.
Two weeks
into our expedition the summery weather gave way to bitter, wind-swept days
that had us wearing most of our clothing.
But for the fact that the interiors of our tents remained dry, Back’s
journal entry for July 26, 1834, could have been written by us for the same
date over a century and a half latter:
“The men, with great resignation, making the best of their damp
lodgings, looked about for the most sheltered place to lie down; some wrung out
their blankets while others, as a last resort, put on their entire wardrobes in
the hope of a little warmth.”
Although we
were chilly at times, we were infinitely more comfortable that Back’s crew in
their wool, hides and furs. With
synthetic clothing – polyvinyl-coated nylon, Gortex, polypropylene, nylon
bunting and pile—we could keep warm and dry.
Our footwear varied from neoprene booties to laced rubber boots. We all agreed that it would have taken a very
special kind of fortitude to endure icy water in the bilge of what surely must
have been a leaky boat for up to 14 hours a day in wool socks and frayed
moccasins.
Part of our
comfort was due to our superb tents. No
matter how miserable the weather was outside, life inside our domes remained snug
and dry.
Often during
the last two weeks of our expedition – two weeks of stormy weather, strong
headwinds, aching muscles, lack of sleep and frayed tempers – we marveled at
the fortitude of Back’s crew. Despite
having superior equipment, much better food and a far greater chance of
surviving an upset swamped in the rapids – we were all strong swimmers and wore
life jackets—we were still itching for the comforts of home. Imagine the terror those explorers had to
face at each rapid: Life jackets had not been invented yet and few of them even
knew how to swim. In our canoes we could
ferry back and forth, pick our lines and avoid stopper waves and bus-eater
holes. Running rapids in Back’s rowboat
must have been the 19th century equivalent of rafting minus all the
floatation and most of the maneuverability.
Our respect
for Back’s crew extended beyond their courage in whitewater. Our rotating menu meant never having to face
the same dish more than three times every two weeks. Our bland lunches (crackers, cheese, trail
mix, dried sausage and on rough days hot soup) included a different chocolate
bar every day. Back’s crew lunched on
far rougher fare:
“The meat had suffered considerable
mutilation from the wolves. The cache
was most welcome...it consisted of deer and musk ox, both very poor, and the
latter impregnated with the odor to which it owes its name. This was so disagreeable to some of the party
that they declared they would rather starve three days than swallow a mouthful;
...I thought it right to counteract the feeling, and ... impress upon their
minds ... the necessity of accommodating their tastes to such food as the
country might provide.”
Who were these men who endured so much while travelling down
the river we were on? Back came to Canada
with four Englishmen – Dr. Richard King, the expedition surgeon and naturalist,
and three others. In Montreal, Back
accepted three volunteers, all British soldiers stationed in Quebec. In Norway House, an outpost en route to Great
Slave Lake he recruited two Metis from the Hudson Bay Company.
In the evenings we would read Back’s Journal to know what
the river would be like during the next days.
We were eager to get to a chain of mountains that Back described as
being “formidable
summits of Alpine grandeur”. When we arrived at the point on the map where these
peaks should have been, we were amused to discover that Back’s lofty mountains
were just a cluster of low hills. The tallest of these – perhaps 200 feet in
altitude above the shore – he named Mount McKay, in honor of one of his
crew. We strolled up this hill in less
than 10 minutes after lunch. Back had applied a generous dash of hyperbole to
his journal in order to impress his sponsors back in England. In the 1830’s the Royal Family could have
hardly ordered their Auditor General to verify Back’s claims by dispatching a
mission to fly to Yellowknife then rent a floatplane to inspect the river.
On August 13 we arrived at a small island in the mouth of
the Back River where it emptied into Chantry Inlet on the Arctic coast. A motorboat was supposed to meet us there and
take us across to Gjoa Haven, a hamlet on King William Island, from where we
could catch a flight back to Yellowknife.
Our boat captain was not there.
We hunkered down to wait, assuming our boat was held up by bad
weather. Two days later we started
broadcasting requests for help. No
reply. We sent messages that our boat
was overdue and the crew possibly in trouble.
Again, no reply. We switched
frequencies, attempting to make contact with high-altitude commercial
aircraft. No return calls. During our 35 days on the river we had seen
aircraft on average every four days. Now
the sky was empty.
We were in no danger.
We still had enough food for a week and our two fishermen were at last
catching huge trout and Arctic Char. We
made ourselves comfortable by erecting a large windbreak made from the wreckage
of an abandoned nursing station. We knew
that if we did not arrive back in Yellowknife by August 22 that our families
would alert the authorities. Still, we
were marooned.
At last we made contact with a cargo plane. The pilot knew where we were from our
description of the land and the river.
He relayed our message to Yellowknife.
It turned out that our boat captain had been trapped by sea ice and was
unable to leave his harbor. Two days later a Twin Otter droned over the
horizon, circled three times and landed at our beach. In minutes we had loaded our gear and were en
route to hot showers and cold beer in Yellowknife, five hours away.
In late August Back and his crew began their return journey
to Great Slave Lake. It took them over a
month to row back upstream to their base camp.
We arrived just before dinnertime in Yellowknife; we were
soon settling into motel rooms, flipping through surreal TV channels and
squabbling over which restaurant we should go to for a final feast. Back arrived home to a very different set of
circumstances.
“Late in the forenoon (of September
27) we arrived at Fort Reliance, after an absence of nearly four months; tired
indeed but well in health, and truly grateful for the manifold mercies we had
experienced in the course of our long and perilous journey. The house was standing, but that was all; for
it inclined fearfully to the west, and the mud used for plastering had been
washed away by the rain. Nothing, in
short, could present a more cheerless appearance for a dwelling, and after
three hours’ rest, the men were set to work about the necessary reparations.”
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