Return to the Peel Journal - Day 11

Spot the kayak! Graham dwarfed by huge cliffs along the Peel north of Snake River.

July 27, 2018. Temps cooler as we head towards the Arctic Circle. Mid teens still sunny.

Yesterday gave us the most hair-raising moment on our trip.

On Thursday, we left our campsite near the bend of the Peel and paddled straight north.

As we approached an island, Graham caught sight of a stretch of shallow fast-water and cut left around the island in his kayak to catch it. I can still picture the huge grin on his face as he darted away from us.

Fast water is becoming a rarity now as the water-speed slows in the river. We went right, preferring to keep the deeper looking channe, expecting to see Graham soon. There are tons of islands in this lazier section of the river, covered in Poplar and Willows. The islands are usually 100 metres long at the most.

Graham paddling ahead on the Peel River.

But the island between Graham and us turned out to be several kilometers long. Graham’s fast water proved to be so shallow that he had to drag for long stretches, a kilometer or more. Assuming he’d fallen way behind, he paddled hard when got back into deeper water. We also hit shallow and very slow stretches of river, so we were also not making great time. I began to worry after a couple of kilometers of being separated from Graham. Terry, God love him, started singing the Stompin’ Tom Connors song, "The Martin Hartwell Story," -- “Lost! Up in the no-man’s land of the Northwest Territories.” I could have strangled him. Instead I got him to tell me what the Martin Hartwell story was all about. It is harrowing and involves a plane crash in the barrens in the dead of winter and cannibalism. It had the odd effect of making me feel better because it was clearly a way worse scenario than we were in right now.

When Terry and I eventually reached the end of the island there was no sign of Graham.

Becoming seriously worried, and with no way of communicating with him, we decided to shoot off a bear banger (kind of a propelled extra loud firecracker to keep grizzlies at bay) hoping that if he was upstream he’d come to us, if he was downstream he’d wait. We waited for 30 minutes and still no Graham. The current was too strong to paddle back upstream and the odds were that he was okay and had paddled ahead. I was focusing hard on applying logic, because every fiber of me was saying that I should go back and look for him, that he was lying injured on the riverbank. Our situation was made worse by the braided nature of the river here, there were many channels you could take going north. We continued downstream to a point where there were no more islands and only a single channel that he’d be paddling through if he was behind us. We set off another bear banger and waited again for over thirty minutes. Still no Graham.

Growing more worried we continued to paddle downstream, stopping to plant one of our extra paddles into the riverbank, with a note scrawled in big letters in the mud telling Graham to keep coming, that we’d be camped downstream at Caribou River, as we’d discussed that morning.

We continued on, worry building. At what point do we fire up the satellite phone and contact police? At what point do I tell Renee that our son is missing? It seemed early to do either. Terry rightly pointed out the police wouldn’t do anything for at least 12 hours, and I’d just be worrying Renee unnecessarily. Three more hours passed as we paddled north, blowing the emergency whistles on our life-jackets and calling Graham’s name as we went, hoping at each bend that he’d be there.

Terry spent a lot of time reassuring me that Graham was a smart young man and very capable on the water and that he was fine. My concerns included the fact that the kayak didn’t have much gear and no food. The one thing that gave me some solace was that it was 24 hour sunlight. At no point would he be huddled on the river bank alone in the pitch dark.

At another bend in the river we were planting our extra kayak paddle upright in the bank and starting to write another message in the mud when I heard what sounded like Graham saying hello or help. At first I thought it was my mind playing tricks. I asked Terry if he heard anything. He replied “I think I see something ahead, on the right side of the river.”

Terry and Graham on the Peel River.

I started shouting Graham’s name. A voice replied. It was Graham with his kayak, pulled up on the river bank several hundred meters ahead. We paddled quickly to him. As we got close Terry turned to me and said, “Don’t be hard on him.” He needn’t have worried. I was way past that point.

When we reached him, I hopped out and we gave each other a huge hug. “I was really scared,” he said. “Me too,” I replied. I’ve never felt so relieved.

In the end, he’d heard our second bear-banger, or at least what he thought was a bear banger, and stopped at a point in the river where it became a single channel and waited. Some very level thinking. If we hadn’t shown up soon, he was going to just keep paddling north for the two days he figured it would take to reach Fort McPherson, where he could get help. Luckily, that never had to happen.

Father and son reunited and relieved!

After our reunion, at around 8pm, having been seperated for five hours, we paddled for about another hour and camped just north of the Caribou River and just 6 km south of the Arctic Circle.

Fittingly, the weather is about to turn Arctic on us. Temps plunging from 30C yesterday down to 7C later today. Plus, there's a north wind and rain so we’re paddling long and hard for Fort McPherson over the next 2 days.

As we enter the Arctic lowlands, the river speed has dropped right down to almost nothing.

Juvenile eagle on the banks of the Peel River.

There are lots more nesting birds here. We saw two bald eagles at the mouth of the Caribou River. Sandhill cranes flew over this morning and we’ve seen many families of ducks and geese.

LOTS of mosquitoes now too. Really missing the bug dispensing wind of the Wind River. We expect to see a lot more human life soon as well. This is Gwich’in summer hunting and fishing territory. We haven’t seen another person since the first day on the Wind. Camsell’s 1905 field notes: “Four miles above Satah River are the first recent signs of human occupation that we have seen since leaving Beaver River...There are low huts built of bark, logs and clay, looking very much like dog kennels.”

That’s where we’re heading next, about 65 km downstream.