Split Rock Blog

I wake up confused to the tingy sound of a watch alarm going off beside my pillow. “Time to go,” my tent-mate, Buck, eagerly says to me as he unzips his sleeping bag. It’s 4am.

Yesterday, we had just finished an incredible ten-day whitewater canoe trip down the Kattawagami river and set up our tent last night on the porch of a once, almost-beautiful, river lodge on the mouth of the great Harricana river which empties generous amounts of water into the ice-cold cauldron of James Bay. The still-under-construction lodge was under five feet of water during last spring’s flood season, ruining what would have been a pretty incredible hunting and fishing lodge. Without ever serving a single guest, it now looks like a set for an apocalyptic zombie movie. It’s an eerie mix of new log cabin construction with muddy debris strewn across the property surrounded by knee-high grass. 

“I’m up. I’m coming,” I reply, wiping the sleep from my face. 

This is the last leg of our trip, but it already feels finished. A simple shuttle across James Bay in motorboats. After paddling 215kms, we don’t mind the idea of a motor doing the last bit of work. Last night we made an arrangement with our hosts, the boat drivers who also stayed the night at the lodge, that we would help them push out the boats before the tide went out. It was determined that this should be done at 4am and would need all hands.

We walk down to the shore in the cool morning air. It’s still quite dark. The shuttle drivers aren’t out yet. We stand there with our hands in our fleece hoodies, not talking. Jacob, one of my three other paddling mates, steps into the 6” deep water and gives the one of the two 22’ long fiberglass freighter boats a light shove with one hand. The boat is fully afloat. The four of us feel the sting frustration about how we were all needed for this job, but we say nothing. Buck lets out more rope on the boats' lines so they'll drift out more. We stand there in the sandy mud, hands still in our pockets. We pull them out to swat mosquitos. 

The boat drivers come down from their cabin, pleased that the boats are floating. 

“Thanks for moving the boats out! Great job, guys!” they say.

We give them a half smile and start to walk back to our tents to finish an interrupted sleep. 

“We’re going to leave at six," one of the drivers says. Now, to members of the group with families that they are looking forward to getting back to, this is somehow good news. To me, dreadful. Still too early.

“We’re making breakfast for everyone. Bacon, eggs, beans, over in our cabin,” come on over. 

Ok, not so dreadful. 

The breakfast is worth the early rise. A hot, classic breakfast after ten days of dried canoe tripping food. How do they make such simple ingredients taste so good? We shared the meal with four others—two men from the outfitter, an 11 year-old boy, and one tough-looking woman in her 50’s named Ann with a wild sense of humour. As we eat, the sun starts to rise and we look at each other thinking that this is a pretty cool way to finish the trip.

After breakfast, we pack up our gear and get ready to go. Jacob, a father of three young girls and the one on the trip that faced down, and battled his anxiety, smiles at me. He’s holding the Spot emergency beacon over the opening of one of our canoe barrels, and let’s go. He’d clung to that thing in his life jacket the entire trip like a safety blanket. It feels like an important gesture; we made it. We pulled off an incredibly dangerous, grueling but amazing whitewater canoe trip. We’re ok. 

We pack all our gear and two canoes into one open-decked, fiberglass freighter. A second boat will take the passengers. The water is calm and beautiful. It’s still around six degrees and there's a chilly north wind, but still a perfect time for a two hour boat ride across the beautiful James Bay. 

Six of us climb into the boat. Myself; my co-paddlers, Buck, Shane and Jacob; Ann (who also worked with the shuttle service, though were not really sure how); and the boat driver. The boat with all our gear and canoes has one driver and the 11 year old boy sitting in the bow on an old mattress.

The first boat with the gear speeds off and disappears into the distance down the giant river. Our boat rumbles to life and we begin to follow. Smiles all around. We did it. 

Our engine stalls. I sideways glance at my compatriots.

The driver yanks on the ripcord and it starts again. Ok, all is well; we’re finally...

It stalls again. Crap. 

The driver, standing at the back of the boat, repeatedly pulls the ripcord and eventually gets it running. Revving it a few times, it seems good and we speed off. Ok, now we made it. We look out at the massive ocean horizon we’re heading towards. 

“Watch for Beluga whales as we go,” Ann tells us. “We often see them along here.” We smile. That’d be a cool way to top off the trip. 

Jacob stares out over the water, taking a light spray of salty water on his face. He’s probably thinking about his kids or something all sentimental while Shane somehow sleeps. Buck and I start singing a few nautical songs. 

“I tell those kids a hundred times, don’t take the lakes for granted. They go from calm to a hundred knots so fast they seem enchanted...” 

I take a few pictures and a bit of a video as we leave the Haricanna and head out into the bay. This is pretty cool; a nice cap to our kick-ass adventure. We’re crossing the great James Bay. 

The farther we go, I notice the waves keep getting bigger and the boat starts to go rhythmically up and down with the waves, spraying cold water as it splashes down after each wave. I hate that about motorboats. As a canoeist, the continual wham wham as these uncivilized, motorized beasts come down from the top of waves is both obnoxious and a bit painful. But, I expected it. 

Over the roar of the motor, Buck, the guy who grew up with motorboats, leans into me and points out some large cracks in the boat's fiberglass hull. “There’s no way this boat is legally seaworthy,” he says. “With a strong enough hit, the front of the boat could crack right off. I’m sure there’d be some deaths for sure,” he says with a bit of a crazy-person smile. Thanks for the charming thought, Buck. 

The temperature continues to drop the farther we get out into the bay. The waves are coming at us at an angle and Jacob’s side gets the bulk of the splashing. His expensive rain jacket is paying off, but I can tell it’s becoming a bit much as he puts his head down and just endures splash after splash of cold arctic ocean water. 

My hands are getting cold so I manage to get them into the pockets of my rain jacket, which is kind of awkward underneath my life jacket. Ok, this is starting to get miserable. It’s just a two hour trip, though. I can endure it. 

The wind picks up and the waves get larger. The up and down banging is becoming seriously jarring to my spine. 

We manage to catch up to the other boat with the gear. As it comes closer, I see that more than half of the length of the boat is out of the water at the crest of each wave and it completely vanishes in the troughs.

This sucks. With each slam of the boat down on the water, the four of us get a little more concerned. 

“It was bad like this when we took some European guys across the river last week,” Ann shouts to us. “One of them really freaked out and kept yelling, ‘I don’t want to die!’” She laughs. We give her polite smiles.

Buck adds to the undesired information, “Eleven people swamped out here doing this six years ago. They all died.” Great. Thanks Buck. Awesome. I can tell he loves this stuff.

The waves keep getting bigger. Seven, eight, nine foot swells. The slams against the water are starting to really hurt. My legs are shivering in the cold and now I can’t keep my hands in my pockets anymore since I need to hold on. I’m drenched. This sucks. 

One giant wave launches us into the air. The boat tilts towards one side in the air and slams down almost on its side then jolting back flat while tossing around its ragdoll passengers. Jacob grabs me. I can see in his eyes he believes he just prevented me from going over. I’m not so sure, but I’ll let him have it. 

Then the engine stalls. Wide-eyed, we stare back at the driver. Shane, the Pastor of the groups shouts some expletives at the driver. The quiet, dead boat floats sideways up the next wave. Jacob and I look at each other. We think the same thing. Did that just happen? 

The driver yanks the cord and the engine roars back to life. He pulls the motor to the right and we continue our way up the next large wave. 

“It’s an auto-shut off feature,” yells Buck over the sound of the engine and the boat slamming against the water. “If the engine tilts past a certain angle it will shut itself off.” 

“Cool,” I stupidly reply. 

I’m not sure what to think about that. Is this our engine’s way of saying, ‘This is too big for me. I’m out’? Regardless, our brave little ship pushes on through the angry chop.

A few minutes later the driver shouts something unintelligible. We all turn and look back. “We have to turn back!” he repeats. “We’re taking on too much water!” We look at his feet. There’s water half way up to his knees. Oh crap. 

Buck springs into action while the rest of us are still processing the gravity of what the driver just said. He leaps over the bench to the back of the boat. 

“Where’s the bailer?” he shouts to the driver. 

“We don’t have one,” the driver replies as splashes keep adding more water making us ride even lower. 

I’m sorry. Did I hear that right? There’s no bailer?

The driver shouts to Buck, “Pull the drain plug!” 

Ok, now I don’t know much about motor boats, but intentionally putting a hole in the bottom of a boat that appears to be filling with water doesn’t sound like a good idea. I hear the Buck tell us something about how it will drain the water if we go fast enough. Buck pulls it. I don’t even want to look back. 

So the science behind this is that if the boat is going fast enough, it will create a suction effect that will suck the water out of the boat; but you have to go fast enough. Now gunning it full speed, we launch off the top of the waves and lift off our seats on the way down then slam down into the bench as the boat hits the water. Any minute I’m going to be thrown out of this thing, I’m certain. 

I can tell the driver can’t get enough speed to drain the water through the plug. “It’s filling up! Put it back in!” he yells to Buck. Kneeling in the cold water, Buck finds the hole and plugs it. I’m relieved that he’s able to slow down a bit.

“We gotta bail it!” Buck shouts.

“Try this!” Jacob says as he throws Buck his Nalgene bottle. 

Grabbing the bottle, Buck frantically bails with it but can’t get the water out faster than it’s coming in. Tossing the bottle aside, he begins a frenzy of scooping water with his cupped hands, shoveling water as it keeps pouring in with each wave.

Is it just Buck’s bare hands that are keeping this boat floating, I wonder? None of us can go back there to help him since it would make the back end heavier. It’s all on him and the hand-bailing isn’t looking particularly effective. 

“We have a bailer tied to the canoes in the other boat,” Shane shouts to the driver. There’s a decent idea. The other boat is waved over; we get alongside them as best we can considering the height of the waves and shout for them to give us the bailer. The 11 year old, who incidentally doesn’t show the slightest sign of any fear or concern, climbs under the canoes and finds the bleach bottle bailer. Is he used to this?

“Throw it here!” Ann says to the boy. Oh no. No good can come of this. Before any of us can get the word, ‘No!’ off our lips, the bailer flies up from the other boat, straight over ours and into the ocean on the other side, quickly washed away by the waves. 

Buck continues to bail with his hands. I’m cold, wet, violently thrashed around, and it doesn’t look like it will be done any time soon. I close my eyes, take a breath and try to find some sort of internal peace in the insanity. 

“Get to the front of the boat!!” the driver screams. “Now! Go! Go! Get to the front!” I turn back and see the back end of the boat underwater. Yup, we’re sinking. Frantically, Jacob, Ann, Shane and myself scramble over the benches and toss ourselves in a pile of bodies in the bow of the boat. 

This is actually happening. We’re swamping. This is real. Any moment now we’re going to be floating in these huge waves trying to get to the other boat. How fast does hypothermia set in? How many kilometres are we from shore? Will we still have the strength to swim? Do we get to survive this? I can’t believe Jacob put the Spot beacon in the barrel which is in the other boat. I bet he’s beating himself up about that one. 

So another interesting thing about boats I’m learning is that with enough forward momentum, motorboats can stay afloat with their back end underwater. I would have preferred to learn this a different way. With the weight at the front and a rev of the engine, the driver is able to pull the back end up out of the water and stop the sinking. Buck stays with the driver, still hand-bailing. 

Now I thought the waves were painful when sitting on the benches, but laying on the floor is entirely different. Each wave tosses us up into the air and then we slam back down into the bottom of the boat. It hurts. It really hurts. We fly up again. This time Ann crashes down on the gunwale of the boat. Jacob grabs her life jacket and pulls her back into the boat. That one was real. 

I'm collecting bruises on my back. I try to adjust my landings to spread them out. We hit an especially large wave that launches us the highest yet. I hope we land back in the boat. The crashing of bodies back down on the boat somehow causes a wooden oar to stab through the hollow hull of the fiberglass boat, fortunately the hole is above the waterline. 

I hear some shouting that I can barely make out. I think they’re talking about going to shore. The boat turns slightly and begins to head towards land. As we get into shallower water, the waves begin to settle and we drag our aching bodies back to the benches. There are more rocks here which is apparently why they can’t just zip along the shore. Shane leans over the bow to watch for rocks. 

Our hearts still pounding, rubbing our sores, we feel a respite from the violent thrashing we just received. 

I hear a, "Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep…” What the hell is that? We look back at the driver. 

“It’s the oil pressure,” the he says. 

“Do you have any more oil?” Buck asks.

“No.” Of course he doesn't. 

“I think the oil is in the other boat.” The other boat is waved over and comes alongside. 

“Got any oil? We’ve got low oil pressure.” 

“That's the one thing we forgot,” the other driver says. None of us are surprised. 

After an unbearable pause of uncertainty, the other driver says, “Try this,” and tosses us a small bottle. I’m just glad he didn’t throw it to me.

It’s a bottle of gas mixed with oil, which can, apparently, give an engine that doesn’t normally need such gas just enough oil to get through. Clever, I guess, since it made the beep go away. 

The drivers talk about what to do. I can tell they have no idea. “We need to go back!” one voice suggests, which still seems to me like a terrible idea. I’m not interested in going back through that.

Ann says, “We need to get to shore and wait it out.” Now that sounds much better. Some cabins in the area are suggested. 

“We can go to Big Stone island,” Buck offers. They go for the island idea. 

It seems to be well named, but there are big rocks sticking up from the water surrounding the shore like some kind of shield. The drivers test the water depth with paddles and discover that it’s getting too shallow to go in any further, but the shore still looks at least a couple kilometres away. This is the same large shallow area which forces us to cross the bay way out in the middle. We can’t get to shore; the island idea is out. 

I seriously consider suggesting the idea of us just getting back into our canoes, grabbing all our gear and heading for shore, just to get out of this damn boat. 

“We have to go back to the lodge,” the drivers tell us. 

No. Not that way. Come on, Tim, say your idea, tell them we’ll paddle from here! Actually, on second thought, even though the waves are smaller here, they are still too big for an open canoe. I keep my idea to myself. 

The driver tells Shane to drop the anchor as Ann reaches into a cooler and pulls out a sat phone, which I have to say was a little surprising, but nice to see. It’s a small comfort. She passes it to the driver of the other boat like she was tossing him a beer at a barbeque. He calls their boss. I can hear him telling the person on the phone that we’re turning back to the lodge, closes up the aerial of the phone and looks at me. Oh no. No no no no…

“Here,” he says. 

He throws the phone. I am the worst catch. 

“Good lord!” I shout. Which instantly strikes me as a strange thing to say. I fumble the phone right on the edge of the boat but I manage to catch it with a hug. 

“He has no idea who he just threw that phone to,” Buck comments.  

We pull anchor and begin our trip back to the lodge as our hearts sink. We head back through the same waters. No good can come of this. All that pain all over again just to get back to where we started. We were almost halfway there.

As we pull back into the large waves, I’m quickly surprised at how much smoother the ride home is. On the return trip, we’re heading in the same direction of the waves, so though they’re still at least seven feet tall, we aren’t slamming into them head on. In this direction, we ride up and down them quite smoothly without the brutal jarring impacts. I’m relieved. This isn’t going to be so bad. 

I hear the engine strain. Without looking back, I quickly figure out what’s going on. Oh crap. Danger not over. We need to keep up and get on top of the giant waves. If the driver doesn’t time it right, doesn’t give power at just the right time, or if our troublesome engine stalls, a wave from behind the boat will swamp us in an instant. Great. Now the ride is smoother, but the risk even greater. 

Shane, experienced with sailing, is beside me and keenly watches the waves. He knows which ones are going to be a challenge, which ones to gun it over and which ones to take slowly. He tells me that the driver is doing a great job with it. I feel a bit better. It's also nice that it doesn't hurt as much. 

As we finally leave the angry waves of James Bay and motor up the mouth of the Harricana river, the waves begin to calm. Relief starts to spread. We’re going to make it. Everything’s going to be ok. 

“I’m almost hypothermic,” Jacob says as we pull up to the lodge. He’d been wet for the longest. 

Shane's the first to jump on to shore and says, “There’s no way I’m doing that again unless it’s glass!”

“I can’t believe that just happened,” I say. 

Our three-hour crossing attempt is over. We bring up some of our gear back to the unfinished, dilapidated lodge. We’re all both relieved and miserable that we’re back at this place. 

Jacob pulls off his icy cold shirt and states, “There’s no way I’m getting back into one of those boats.” 

A few hours later, we use the sat phone to charter a float plane to get us out of there. The waves don’t seem so big from the plane. Buck, ever an adventure seeker, stays behind to give it another shot the next day with all our gear and canoes which the plane can't carry.

When we land at the Moosonee dock, we have just a few minutes to get to the train station. I flag down a mini-van cab and the driver races us to the train station. He loves the excitement, but we’re not feeling it. Knowing that you can pay for a ticket on the train, we just jump on mere seconds before it starts pulling away. Collapsing into our seats, now we can legitimately say we made it. I want to nap, but my heart isn't there just yet.