Athabasca Update

Well, we have arrived in the town of Athabasca 1 week after leaving Whitecourt. Leaving Whitecourt was entertaining as it snowed whilst we were packing the canoe – we were dreading the weather to come after that! It was a cold and hard first day with high winds buffeting us and high waves – sometimes almost 2 foot high pushing against us, seemingly travelling upriver. We set up camp on a sandy beach with dense alder and with bushes behind us. Evidently a favourite moose spot as I had a close encounter: I got out the tipi and as I was stood there trying not to get pushed around by the wind Tallak barked at something behind me and went charging into the bushes. Just as he did this something huge with antlers behind me went crashing at high speed in the opposite direction. Thankfully we were visited in the day and not the night.

We have been fortunate enough to paddle past a black bear with 2 cubs getting a drink at the river’s edge, so are getting some good views of wildlife. We also began having our first experiences of beavers since leaving Whitecourt. It has been quite the revelation! On May 11 we were camped on another sandy beach and Tallak had been barking at something across the river for most of the evening. When it was dark and we were just drifting off to sleep there were loud splashes coming from the water close to the tipi. Well, I leapt up imagining again a moose was crossing the river to us or worse – a bear – but peering out the top of the tipi I could see nothing. Well, seeing nothing we went back to sleep but the splashes persisted. It took almost a week for us to see a beaver in the daytime and watch it sound a warning in the form of a loud slap and splash on the water. How silly did we feel! It really has been a week of learning what is around, where it is and what noise (or not as the case may be) wildlife around us is making, and how very curious deer can be during the night.

The trees had been starting to show signs of coming into leaf around Whitecourt, and now that we are in Athabasca the hillsides are covered in a carpet of varied greens. It is much nicer than paddling through what almost looked to be dead forest before the leaves came out.

We have been pushing hard and trying to cover over 50km a day which has been hard work; the river is quite slow and at most we are covering around 8km/h. We have also been battling strong winds almost every day, and for at least a portion of every day.  It was with hope that we fought our way along the river to a town called Chisholm where – we hoped – we would find a restaurant, a cafe, a convenience store or even vending machine, something to get food from. Unfortunately we were met by a family on ATV’s with the very dissapointing news that Chisholm is home to around 20 people and has no such thing. We were rather devastated but – coming to our rescue – the Pizzey’s took us in and fed us with all we could eat. It was wonderful, our thanks to Ed, Mindy & all the family for their hospitality and generosity. We are very grateful. Ed even gave us a lift back to our camp so we didn’t have to roll down the hill with our full bellies. Even Tallak had a enjoyable time with their dog Max and was soon snoring loudly in the tipi.

The following day was overcast, stuffy and warm as we paddled away from Chisolm and on to Smith for some resupply where we stopped at a restaurant called ‘Needful Things’ for a meal and were given a discount and locally produced honey which was great. 2 long days of paddling later and we arrived at Athabasca. We are in a good camp-spot with easy access to the town. We ate again at a restaurant called Mike’s Pizza which was good as they gave us directions to showers, laundromat and library. We were also given a few supplies like chapstick from Maria in the Shell garage next door which is appreciated – our tans are improving and Vicki’s Panda-eyes from wearing sunglasses are very entertaining. We will pick up some supplies from the town and head off for what I expect will be the toughest and most dangerous part of our journey from the paddling perspective as we head through over 100km of Class II up to Class VI+ whitewater before reaching Fort McMurray.

As the water is so low at the moment – we encounter rocks in the channels and shallow water around islands very regularly – we are expecting not to be able (or that it would not be safe) to run a lot of the rapids, mainly the Class IV’s that we will encounter. Our plan is to line the boat through the worst or most difficult sections so that we may safely get through. This will of course mean spending longer travelling throughout this section. But we were reminded of the danger by Tom (thanks for the update on the weather in Tuk! Will remember to wrap up warm) who lost a friend attempting to paddle through this reach a few years ago.

Our next update we presume will be from Fort McMurray in around 10 days’ time hopefully with no terrifically exciting news from the previous section! Tallak – as ever – is keeping us entertained, frustrated, and very safe by barking at everything that moves he is unsure of. In his defence I suppose, that was a very aggressive and dangerous looking beetle heading towards the tipi…