Day 30: Rivers burn, and then run backwards

I heard voices. A father, and two young children, perhaps. I am found, caught. When the voices pass I quietly begin packing my things. All of my tent and bedding collapses down into two 20L, waterproof bags, while a smaller bag carries my maps and reading material. As I pack the canoe the father casually walks over. "Hello," I offer first, but he either doesn't hear, or isn't ready to talk yet.

As it turns out, the man is Tim, the dierctor of educational assessmentin Saskatchewan, if I remember the title correctly. He has come with his daughter and her friend to this place where he himself has camped many times before. The girls are now catching the descendants of frogs he caught in the nearby pond, when he was a child. The beaver lodge has been there thirty years. He names some of the stones he has found.

When the water is this high, it erodes the shore. When they will recede again, the erosion will reveal all manner of Indian artifacts on the beach. There are teepee rings on the hills, and in one of the woods up there, a flock of feral goats. But he has never seen a boat here before.

"I was thinking of going that way," I said, "but I guess I'm heading north instead."

"You could take the Qu'Appelle river just over that dam," he says. "It will take you past Last Mountain Lake, Regina..."

"That's the way I want to go. I looked last night, but there was nothing there."

"Oh, there's definitely a river system over there," he insisted, "that's the pumphouse over there." I promised I would ride over to the dam again to check it out before heading out.

When I reached the top of the dam again, I looked down, and once again saw nothing. But perhaps my line was wrong. I went over to the pumphouse, and saw nothing under it, either.

Look up, Kevin, look up.

Looking a little higher I see patches of blue just barely revealed through the greenery. The river is thin, its banks are steep, and you can only view it from the correct angles.

The portage was difficult. My wheels work very well on a slow, paved incline, but this was sand and they just wanted to dig in. I emptied half the boat, dragging the stuff over to the road that goes down to the river's source, and continue shioving and yanking the boat up over the sand, and through the brush to the road. The roadis grassy and it is relatively slow progress to push the canoe over it, even when well-balanced on its wheels. But I am finally able to let the thing slide into the water just after the portal of rushing water that is the modern source of the Qu'Appelle.

The Qu'Appelle here is very small, and on the first day it seems that every little creek that joins it doubles its size. There is a weir with several feet of drop, water at its base violently rerising and thashing about to find its right way forward. I have to portage around it, dragging the boat over rocks, yanking it up on its wheels, pulling it over to the pool, sliding it down off the wheels in.

The river became channelized, a straight line between two banks of curious cattle, and the wind pumped up from the wrong direction. It was so strong I had to fight with all my strength just to maintain forward progress, my bones screaming out against the abuse they had already taken all day. I had to pull over several times to rest. I almost cried.

I have complained much here and elsewhere, but the hatred I had for the wind that day was very real. If any of my curses have any effect then you can be sure hell is a drafty place. There I was, on the Qu'Appelle River. I should have been celebrating to be on this river I wasn't sure would be there for me, indeed believed could not even exist the night before. But instead the wind threw up foot high waves against me in the channel. There ould be no rest or victory, the river was running backwards.

Day 30 ended: 50*58.392N, 106*21.446W

Day 29: Little boy lost

"We don't have any designated sites on the lake," she said, emphasizing the word "designated".

I guess I can't take a hint and pressed the issue. "So, free-camping then?"

"Just don't get caught!" came a voice from the back of the registration booth, and I promised to find some secretive hiding space to spend the night.

But before that, I decided to enjoy the park: Douglas Provincial Park, embracing the Qu'Appelle arm of the lake. I had a cheeseburger and a shake from the concession stand, and bought some groceries from a woman I overheard saying the lake was as high as she's ever seen it. "It's terrible," she said.

But looking out over the broken down boat launch, the washed away beach, and the undercut lakesde walkway, I was quite pleased at hearing this. My mapbooks had warned that the Qu'Appelle was frequently too low to navigate, and best traveled during the spring melt-off. But if you look on a map, you will see that the Qu'Appelle cuts almost directly east to Winnipeg, whereas the Saskatchewan River first goes into the north before you can take the long lake Winnipeg back down. High water means the Qu'Appelle is runnable, which means I can get east quicker.

I visited the interpretive center, which like all the ones I've seen in Saskatchewan Provincial Parks exuded a feeling of abandon. I went in and briefly scanned the taxidermy, then decided to check out the trails that begin here. The trail runs to an area of active dunes, which sounded like an interesting thing to check out until I had biked for an hour in the hot, humid summer air to get near there.

I had no water, and the bike would not run on the mile of sandy path before the dunes. I decided to come back on the other side of the loop. I proceeded to get lost on those cactus-riddled trails, and wandered over game trails, led by my GPS, to get back to the center, where I quickly downed a liter of water.

Back in the canoe and down the shore I found a spot that seemed as secretive as any I was likely to find there, primarily by virtue of being further down the lake than most other boats would spend time to go.

It could not wait until morning, I had to go check out the portage over to the Qu'Appelle. I figured I might as well walk along the shore, since the evening was young and I didn't think my bike could handle it, anyway.

I climbed up to the top of the bank, and walked along a closed road until I found a path back down to the beach. I follow it. It becomes increasingly entangles in trees, and I am alternating between wading beside the trees and bushwacking along old game trails towards the dam. Finally, I reach it, and pull myself up the large boulders supporting it. At the top, I look east, and see no water. If the river's there, it's hiding down in the trees. So I climb down the far side of the dam, on the left side, where my map indicates the channel picks up. I see no water.

I look down at my feet. The Qu'Appelle is a drainage ditch, and empty.

I knew this was a possibility, but I honestly didn't think it would come to this. Back at my tent, I went over the alternative routes available to me.

First, I could put the canoe on the trailer, and bike down to the Missouri River, taking up the original plan I had. But after spoending a week on a dammed lake, the series of huge lakes that comprised the modern, modified Missouri didn't seem like fun.

Another option was to bike the canoe east until I found enough water to put in again. There are certainly lakes on the Qu'Appelle, which wouldn't be empty, and perhaps I would eventually reach one that the authorities were letting drain into the river, to be nevigable. But how far would that be?

The final possibility would be to turn around, take the northern arm of Lake Diefenbaker, and take the Saskatchewan/Winnipeg route. It would probably be quite interesting and scenic. I just didn't think it would give me enough time after Winnipeg to start heading south.

I constantly shifted between the different possibilities all night, becoming sure of one, and then losing assurance and moving on to the next. I figured there was no reason to worry, no reason to leave my site until I made a decision I could be happy with, even if it took a couple of days.

Day 29 ended: 51*00.083N, 106*26.715W

Day 5: What are you going to do about... Food?

In the morning on day 5 I paddled to the dam, and it took some time to portage around it because a two-foot stone wall extending at least a mile before the dam on the right. So I could not just use my wheels. Slowly, since my things were not packed well for this, I had to take everything out, over the wall and to the road. Then I pretty much dragged the canoe up, put it on its wheels, repacked everything, and took it to the river below the dam. Some men in pickup trucks who passed by on the road seemed to find my wheeled canoe both impressive and humorous.

I had been warned that the water level below the dam was often too low to paddle, but it was very high for me, never shallow enough that I could feel the bottom of the main current with my paddle. The next river in my rough plan that could set me back is the Qu'Appelle, which one guidebook suggests is only consistently runnable in early spring.

In any case, I did not go too far before stopping to break my long fast. My guidelines during physical activity are:

Eat before you're hungry

Drink before you're thirsty

Pee before you can*

And I was clearly in violation of at least one of these. My breakfast was oatmeal - to me then, the best I'd ever had. I simply cooked it as normal, with a bit of extra water, added some milk powder and a huge dollop of honey.

Okay, if Sesame Street taught me anything, it is that oatmeal is boring, so I won't go into any details here, but I will take some time now to answer the question of what and how I eat. This is only a general pattern - every day is obviously different due to the course of the day and what is available to me.

Any cooking is done with a small alcohol stove. This does not put out much heat and essentially requires a small ring of rocks around it to more efficiently direct the heat to the pot. Its primary advantage is that the operation is foolproof - just pour in the fuel and light it. It cannot break and if you lose it, you can easily construct a new one with available tools and materials. This is important to me because my biking trip to Banff in the fall was cut short largely by a stove that I could not get to work. A disadvantage is that the cheap, denatured alcohol is harder to find than white gas, but I suppose if you are willing to pay there is strong enough liquor at any corner store to cook your food.

Breakfast is generally oatmeal, which I "shanghai" -- I put in the oats and water, and cover it with a lid to conserve heat. Lunch, if any, is usually snack food like crackers, peanuts, and granola bars. I also bought some of those packages of apple sauce or chocolate pudding which make for a good desert during lunch or dinner. The main course for dinner is usually some kind of canned soup. For this, Chef Boyardee is clearly superior to other possibilities, like Campbell's soup or Safeway baked beans. I sometimes have a container of cold canned meat on the side as well - think tuna or flaked ham.

And that's about it! My diet may change as I adapt to this new environment. I have some rough, perhaps contradictory categories of food to inform what I should eat, when:

Carbs: medium term energy, for both muscles and brain

Protein: long term muscle building and repair

Sugar: good for one short term boost in energy per day

Water: absolutely essential at all times for both brain and body

Fat: irrelevant (neither good nor bad) to an active individual

Day 5 ended: 50*40.115N, 112*28.831W

* - This is clearly not to be taken literally, but just to emphasize to myself that there are certain activities not to be put off.