In the first 3 days we had covered about 50 km and we had about another 10 to get to the Geike river itself. On day 4, we started out at about 11 am, which is pretty late. We all had slept in to trying to recover from the portage from hell.

The lake we had camped on was quite small; less the a km across. We paddled to the end and portaged down a stream to the next nameless lake. This portage was a dream compared to the previous days nightmare.

The next lake was small as well. We exited it through a small stream.

In the middle of the stream was a huge beaver dam and beaver house. The house was 20 feet high; at first we thought it was a hill. We had no idea if beavers still lived in it or why it was so huge. The next picture is three photos stitched together of the largest beaver dam I have ever seen. It was at least a 100 meters long.

We had to carry over a this dam and a few others. In a few spots we dragged our canoes through the mud. On previous trips we would have considered these portages awful tough, but compared to the previous days ... Here we are dragging the canoes across a few hundred meters of grass and swamp. Tim is tied to the front of the canoe like a donkey. Warren is standing in one of the many, invisible potholes.

The next lake was McPherson Lake; it was only about 3 feet deep everywhere. You could have easily walked across it. We portaged from McPherson to Hunter Lake, which is also only a few km across.

From Hunter we had less than 1 km to get to the Geike but to get there we had to go down a creek that was full of rocks. There was lots of current but not much water because it was very shallow. In places it was just deep enough that you could actually ride the canoe. Below Mike and I are sitting on the ends of my canoe. You had to use your feet to minimize the weight in the canoe.

Most of the time we had to drag the canoe through the rocks. The procedure was: pick the canoe up, lift it over a rock or two, try not to break an ankle on rocks and set it down. Again. This was toughest in my canoe because the damn thing sticks to rocks. Most of the time we were in about 4 inches of water and trying to drag over rocks about 1 inch under the surface. The bottom was rocky and uneven; it was very hard on the ankles. Alan was having quite a bit of problem with his bad ankle. Below you can see Alan and Rick walking their canoe and Mike and I dragging mine.

Although it was toughest to pull the aluminum canoe through here, it was toughest on the roylex canoes. Rick and Warren left quite a bit of plastic behind on the rocks.

Mike and I fell a ways behind the others and were getting kind of discouraged. After the other canoes had disappeared around a corner we heard, "Don't tell them how bad it is." That certainly livened our spirits. Around the corner was the rock garden you can see below (no Mike and I didn't really run it). We carried our canoes and packs separately through it and finally we were on the Geike river.

We paddled about 1 km up stream to a rapid. In case you want to know where we were in the guide book, this is the rapid referred to by the second paragraph below:

There follows approximately 22 kilometres of rapid-free travel down the Geikie River.

Following this calm stretch the river narrows and turns abruptly to the right or east. Most of this set of rapids must be waded, but portions can be run if water levels are high enough.

We always try to camp by a rapid if we can. The roar of the rapid makes great background music for sleeping and the fishing is usually very good. We set up camp near the top of the rapid just off from the portage trail.

Before supper we went fishing below the rapids. There we some large deep back eddies that looked like they would be full of walleye. Rick and Tim were in one canoe and Warren and I in another. We drifted around the back eddies and caught quite a few fish. Tim finally got the good fishing we had promised him and it took almost no effort to there. Yeah right.

We cooked the fish, fried in butter of course, for supper. Tim and Mike ate and ate and ate. By the time we finished eating it was dark and we were tired. When we tied our food bags in a tree like usual (to keep them safe from bears), we got lazy and only pulled them about 3 feet off the ground. It seemed ok that night but in the morning we had quite a laugh. At three feet we would have only kept away midget bears or ones that were laughing so hard they couldn't get up.

On to the next day

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Mail me! Warren Long