VOC Expedition 2024 Colin Rodger

Preamble

The morning fog lifted and our Cesna 185 skittered up off Nimpko Lake and nosed northwards. A little white bird in a big blue sky. Looking down at the flatness of the Cariboo Plateau, the relentless scars of logging and mining, fires, ranches and farms all threaded together by resource roads. Our flightpath traced the pattern of abuse delineating the eastern boundary of Tweedsmuir Park South before emerging with relief over righteous wilderness, flying parallel to the Rainbow Range towards Eutsuk Lake in Tweedsmuir Park North. Proper deep bush by any metric. Sun in the eyes and smoke in the nostrils. Sun and smoke in the forecast too–it was a real wildcard factor for this expedition. Another unknown was our canoe. The original vision of strapping my own canoe to the plane’s float and solo paddling had been quashed by Transport Canada’s regulations along with the prohibitive cost of any flight this distance. Instead, through a series of concerning emails I’d located a canoe of dubious condition stashed at some old cabins fronting as a fishing lodge. I’d also recruited an old comrade; Justin Polgar, the kind of friend who will agree on short notice to paddle some big water in a beater canoe to access uncertain alpine objectives while relying on fishing for food. The pilot found our drop point in Pondosy Bay and as he taxied away we found our canoe. She was a little jaundiced, and didn’t have any tumblehome or bow flare to speak of, but she was watertight. The first paddle strokes brought that funny feeling to my chest. We rounded a corner and I had to wet a line. It’s hard to know if the lure hit the water or the trout first. The ferocity of the tug on the line wrenched me into the majestic present. We were there and the urge to experience it all was intense. Immersed in the beauty of the land and water, time stretches out and moments lengthen. Impressions of those weeks of paddling, angling and alpen-slithering around the Western reach of Eutsuk do not compress neatly into a few lines. These photos and captions are fragments only, hints of the realness of the place.

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We paddled west from Pondosy Bay. Hungry for mountains, still-soft muscles propelling ole’ Jaundice along the southern shore, each bend bringing new vistas.

We drank in the scale and volume of it all, watching the interplay of wind and water. The palpable depth and dynamic essence of the lake, the open spaces too and the winds that came unchecked between the mountain peaks and down across Eutsuk’s surface. Making a crossing would be a serious endeavour.

We found our paddle rythym the second day, bending forward and drawing the blades deep, flick and slice the recovery and repeat. Gliding past dense greens the bleaching of an old caribou kill stood out on the rocky waterline.

Looking back east from our second camp we watched spores of smoke fruiting into mushrooms. Five separate heads that shifted, compressed and grew.

The next day the Westerly met us. We pushed into the headwind, stimulated by the adversity, counting the strokes and taking on water while crossing from one rocky point to the next windbreak. Just before shelter was where the waves stood up most, slapping off rock shelves and colliding against rebounding swells. I used a bailer while Polgy scouted the next effort. When the rollers got too big I called the timing and we turned in a trough and ran with the crests, surfing in towards a cobble beach pounded out of the bedrock. The wind built and pinned us down for a day and a night.

A sickness passed through me, adding delirium to the uncertainty of waiting and turning me inwards. I wondered if it was beaver fever. I wallowed in my discomfort before recognizing it’s source, the pervasive anxiety I so often allow to proliferate. I felt the weakness cultivated by indulgent city living leaving me. The next morning a mirror calm surface allowed us entry into the west end.

The water had more glacial influence here, glowing turquoise when the sunlight entered. We paddled alongside a residual glacier-iceberg and carved off some ice for our rye. We set up camp beside a river mouth and feasted on fish.

We used paddles to whack our way along an obsolete trail into Musclow Lake and pried our way into a boarded up cabin. Inside was an immortal aluminum frontiersman with a square transom. I used a handsaw and axe to clear windthrown trees and launch the relic. Circumnavigating the lake, we paused halfway to eat three trout apiece . On the return leg while eye-balling Mt. Musclow, a screaming Marmot jolted us. Several hundred meters of scree upslope of the marmot, a black hole into a melting glacier beckoned.

Inside we found a psychedelic green domed tunnel, possibly a wormhole, and we scampered up compulsively. We emerged partway up the mountain, through an elliptical hole melted through the glacier to a view of Mt Haven and beyond.

The next objective was the focal point of Mt. Stranack, a granite face with a braiding waterfall we’d seen through binoculars at the far end of Surel Lake. We’d already hiked in once to test the silty water for Char or Bull Trout. Jaundice was hefty and had no yoke, so I alternated resting her middle metal bar on my C7 and T1 vertebrae. It became a hardman portage, as most do. We paddled the length of the lake, parked Jaundice in a thicket of mosquitoes and blackflies, and started gaining elevation. It was bushwhacking and bug slapping alternating with bog-hopping. Eventually we reached a watershed and followed it up the mountain. Barefeet gripped surprisingly well on the wet granite and the progress became pleasurable. Polgy misstepped, went neck deep into a pool and popped back out all inside of two seconds. When the gulley diverted north we exited into the subalpine and stair-mastered up to the beckoning granite slab. The scrambling was good, easy moves with the odd moment of exposure. Topping out we looked down into a huge alpine bowl bejeweled with a tarn large enough for Nessie. The contents poured out over a smooth lip and cascaded down into a branch of the watershed we’d followed up.

Polgy picked a route and we downclimbed beside the waterfall. Stepping down a wet slabby stretch I slipped and the bear gun slung on my back swung loose. I caught it and recovered but bent my knee in a creative direction. There was a tense minute, waiting and gauging the damage, knowing succor would not be forthcoming here. The knee was mobile and the play was to keep rolling with the adrenaline. We regained a watershed and swung and bounced down the overhanging saplings. It was the birch surfing boogie for kilometers. Emerging into the lake like a couple mountain goat turds flushed downstream, we waded the shoreline to locate ourselves then cut through brush to regain Jaundice. After paddling back across Surel to our trailhead it was Polgy’s turn to put the big yellow lady on his shoulders and heave her home. I offered rest breaks every couple minutes to test his resolve. He took a new strategy and bent double, letting his lower back take the strain. The sight and sound of an angry canoe floating choppily downhill a meter off the ground will stay with me. Credit to Polgy, he never put it down. After a swim we put some ice in the last of the whiskey and toasted Neil, a kindred spirit I never met but who surely also knew the sweetness of big days and slim margins.

With a handful of days left we headed back east. Pushing off from shore we entered the steep Westerly swells and rode them, coasting along crests and taking on water in the troughs. From a camp in St. Thomas Bay we trekked up a ridge of Mount Chikamin. We ate a bear’s share of red and orange salmon berries on the ascent and picked our way through towering devil’s club. The meadows above the treeline opened into sprawling arrays of alpine flowers. I collected a Chikamin bouquet by taking pictures of every kind. We pushed upwards into cooler temperatures until my knee turned us around. The descent put a hurt on me.

Our final push was from St Thomas to Pondosy lake. We fished obsessively, taking turns trolling heavy setups which created massive drag to paddle through. In the narrows between Eutsuk and Pondosy we cast into the rapids and hooked into some kingly hogs.

In the stomach of a perfect eater caught by Polgy I found a bat, the cause of much contemplation during our three course fish dinner. Here is a math problem: if Colin and Polgy ate roughly two pounds of trout each per day for twelve days, how many bats did they eat?

Time regained its usual pace and the final day of the trip was spent alternately anticipating comforts and reluctanctly wondering if returning was necessary.