Bloodvein River, Canada
Day 4 – Stonehouse Rapids – Goose Rapids (27km)
by “Martin Aldridge”
Well what a rollercoaster of a day. Three great successes, and then a near disaster.
So, I’m going to start this report with restating one of the golden rules of expedition (especially wilderness expeditions), and that is, you MUST always take care of your boat. It is the one piece of equipment that is hard to replace, that you don’t have a spare of in the group, and the one that will get you out of there.
Sadly, on this day, we got a stark reminder of this.
We awoke to another beautiful morning, this time overlooking Stonehouse Rapids. I sat to enjoy the peace and tranquillity with a cup of coffee, and by the time I had finished my coffee, Nikki had the tent down and packed away (hmmm, Nikki added that bit!).
Nikki and I had decided the night before that we might run the grade 3 rapid our campsite overlooked so we had left our canoe at the top of the rapid. We took the rest of our kit to the bottom where the other two canoes were already waiting.
We made sure we both knew the intended line and then we launched. As we brought the canoe around to get our first view of the rapid from on the water, we saw just how big it was. As we approached the top, a rock just beneath the surface forced our line but it worked out perfectly. We bounced our way through big waves and across the river to avoid the rocks and were pretty pleased we nailed the line, and had great fun doing it. Now just to empty all the water from the boat!
Morning wash out the way, we loaded our canoes and set off altogether.
We all negotiated the next complicated Grade 3 successfully.
We were then pootling along on the lookout for a Grade 4. We could hear something but see nothing. We could see the river narrowed but no sign of a rapid. Then, all of a sudden, we saw the almost invisible horizon line that hid what was below it. We landed at the head of the portage trail. The portage trail was a long one and went high above the rapid. Part way along, we got a view of the rapid down below and we could see a paddle-able line.