In the hot sun, it seemed like a long hunt at the end of a full day of canoe tripping. Energy was waning, and the group had divided into two when André and others, staying true to the original assertion, found the cabin remains close to that same dominant spur we had seen from the Horton. The search was made harder by the fact that the Coal Creek watercourse was completely dry and quite braided with troughs in mid-August.
As expected, we first saw marks and axe cuts in what proved to be close proximity to roof remains (five to seven logs lashed together). These markings were covered in lichen, showing their age. There were no walls evident. The sod dominant indented wood walls were not evident. No door, no windows. This was a one-season winter throw-up tilt.
Such a quest is an exciting bonus to any canoe trip. The Horton is not a significant historical travel route given its proximity to the Mackenzie to the west. Stefansson sledded on the Horton River from Dease Bay on Great Bear Lake in December 1910, returning to Coal Creek. He travelled in an interesting circle via boat and sled from Coal Creek: from Langton Bay east to Coronation Gulf onto the Coppermine and then to Great Bear Lake via the Dease River, returning to the coast again on the Horton. And we thought our six hundred kilometres of river tripping was a long route. Visiting Stefansson’s cabin on Coal Creek opened the door to his travels. We had something tangible to connect to. We had some passages from Stefansson on our trip, but I, for one, began reading his book in earnest following our trip. And a piece of the Arctic and another time lingers in one’s mind and remains a little closer to one’s consciousness.
Camped across from Whaleman Lake on an open plateau on the river, one might wonder why this curious name was chosen. Whalemen (men who hunted whales) walked south from Langton Bay on the Arctic coast, just as Stefansson and Anderson had done, to corral caribou for wintering-over food supplies. I had marked the site on my maps where the decayed remains of the corral and the funnelling wooden walls can still be seen. Problem was, I was about two to four kilometres downstream of the correct location. I figured all this out once the trip was over. Sometimes, that’s the way it goes. I even remember, in hindsight, noticing the flattening of the river shore and thinking it was odd for this river. I had noticed the caribou corral site but hadn’t realized it. Earlier we had seen a herd of muskox at a similarly unusual flattish shoreline. Oh well, something exciting for a return trip, perhaps. That imaginative spark of yearly groups of whalemen remains vague in my mind without the tangible evidence on the land that we were to have at Coal Creek in about ten days’ time.
I paddled the Nahanni River in the summer of 2005 with family members and friends Sean Collins and Diane Gribbin. The trip was from Rabbitkettle Lake to Nahanni Butte. We were twenty-four days on the water, offering ample time for hiking.
Heritage on this river is synonymous with Raymond M. Patterson’s 1954 book, The Dangerous River.[7] Patterson tells of his 1929–30 travels. But he also fuels the many stories that have made the Nahanni the dark river of fear. Added to this were sad Klondike Gold Rush stories. Few made it this way to the Yukon gold fields near Dawson in the late 1890s. Prospecting stories in the 1920s, too, seem to end badly, creating place names such as Deadman’s Valley and Headless Creek. I wondered what I could possibly add to Patterson’s rich treatment and descriptive prose of the river.
Then there was the surge of modern travellers gainfully serviced by regular bush flights and commercial operators (mainly Nahanni River Adventures and Black Feather). Books, articles, conservation, and park (and now park extension) initiatives all add to the coverage of this noble and, frankly, not so dark and fearful river. Again, what could I add? But once on the trail, Patterson’s The Dangerous River seemed to sing out to us. Quotes from my spring read in preparation punctuated the geography of Virginia Falls and the Hot Springs. Song verses rang out as the stories told came alive on the trail, and the chorus was the fast flowing downstream in the mountainous, canyon-filled river. This is a well-travelled river, Headless Creek be damned. More than once I caught myself borrowing the chorus from other river songs as I sang my way down the river: “and we go on and on, watching the river run.”
First off, I’m one of the rats to whom Raymond Patterson’s partner referred. In agreeing to join Patterson, Gordon Matthews is quoted as saying, “Any country, where the Indians were still hostile and you can shoot moose from your bed and mountain sheep with a pistol is well worth seeing before the rats get at it.”[8] I hope Matthews and Patterson might come to accept us modern rats, who fly into the country generally, not to mention flying into the river proper. Toronto to Yellowknife in one day isn’t bad. It took John Franklin and company, in 1818, over a year to cover this distance by canoe. As rats go, I think we canoeists can be okay for the river, particularly if we get involved in current park extension efforts bent on preserving the river’s watershed, not just its cosmetic corridor. When conveying his plan, at the stage when all was maps and geography and dreams, Patterson wrote, “Sometime soon I would do that [explore the South Nahanni, travelling upriver from the Liard River]. Strangely enough, I never doubted that I could, though exactly what I proposed to use in place of experience has since often puzzled me.”[9] Here is a noble learner’s enterprise in keeping with a favourite aphorism for explaining experiential education: “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.”[10] Patterson is a learner. He describes tracking upriver beaches, tackling a major upstream ferry below Virginia Falls, learning to live and travel through a Nahanni winter, and interpreting the crazy Nahanni chinook-ridden weather. We, as a family, were learners too in this grand country, far removed from our Canadian Shield base. Big water, like the Figure 8 Rapids, conjured up butterflies flying in formation.[11] We only hoped the formation matched the right river run. We too did an upstream ferry below Virginia Falls to enter Fourth Canyon. It was entered with a degree of uncertainty, shared with Patterson. The weather was black clouds and blue sky. The uncertainty was invigorating. Patterson had Albert Faille, a well-established trapper and gold seeker, to literally show him the ropes — the upstream tracking ropes to be exact. We had Patterson.
Quinn Henderson starting up Scow Creek/Nahanni River.
We planned a full-day hike at Scow Creek. From our camp on the river it looked ambitious. It was. Four thousand steady feet up and down with an on-your-knees finale caused the odd family member to experience a meltdown. Later we read Patterson’s tale of Gilroy and Hay carrying heavy loads and the third partner, Angus Hall, travelling light. All had their own meltdowns with upriver paddling work: “they had had enough rivering to do them for quite a while.” The prospecting partners hiked up Scow Creek with plans to ridge walk over to the north and west and descend into the legendary Flat River gold strike (an unproven claim). The lighter-ladened Hall had his second meltdown in frustration with the slow pace of his packhorse partners. He stripped down his gear and headed off with a rifle and a mosquito net. He was never seen again — a stern lesson for the meltdown type. I can almost see him now storming off in a huff along that well-defined ridge as the others, wiser and alive another day, struggle on below with supplies. We returned to our spaghetti dinner, thankful we didn’t have to travel upstream and devote copious amounts of time to hunting. Dessert was a chocolate cake, as I remember. Not that Scow Creek needed more than its own rocky personality to be memorable, but the story does help etch the place in my mind.[12]
An aerial view of the Nahanni River from atop the Scow Creek ridge.
Photo courtesy of Sean Collins.
Patterson shares accounts of building a wintering-over cabin across the river from Prairie Creek. The Wheatsheaf Creek