Author: Justine

I’ve spent many weeks seakayaking around the edge of islands, countries or continents ( not the whole continent!). I love the perspective that you get from a kayak exploring beautiful coastlines, and accessing remote beaches which are hard to reach in any other way.

Over the last 2 weeks I’ve discovered another watery way to explore wild and beautiful places, but this time I’m going right through the middle. The river highway winds around or cuts straight through obstacles in it’s path; mountains are eroded and swamps & undergrowth are brushed aside by the powerful flow. The river travels right through the heart of the wilderness, providing a wonderful means of access and an exciting mode of travel through wild lands. 

My 12 days on the Mountain River with Blackfeather were a fantastic experience. The scale of the mountains blew me away, we travelled 370km through them, never seeing, smelling or hearing a sign of man ( except for ourselves & 1 other canoe group which we passed on our 3rd day). Breathing in the pure air wild air was a simple pleasure that I never tired of. I sometimes hear people describe wilderness as merely an untapped resource, and many people don’t value it, saying things like ‘there’s nothing there’. I’ve always considered wilderness to be pockets of the earth in it’s purest form and this trip really reinforced that feeling. Just being there energizes me.

It was fun to follow a river from it’s source to where it flows into another river. We started on a lake, portaged about a kilometre to a tiny stream, dragged and heaved the canoes for another 5-8km on the aptly named ‘push me, pull me creek’, then breathed a sigh of relief when we reached Black Feather Creek where we could finally float. Blackfeather Creek provided some grade 2 and 3 rapids and we had 2 capsizes and a pin on our first day of actual paddling. Everyone was fine and the canoes were rescued quickly. 

Overnight rain raised the river by a foot or so and turned it chocolatey brown. There were a few trees to dodge on a bitterly cold day as we continued down to the confluence with the Mountain River. The Mountain river is mostly braided and quite wide with a flow of around 8-10km/ hour. There are lots of rifles and wave trains and a few more challenging rapids. Most of the challenging rapids form in or around the 5 canyons. These were all very beautiful and dramatic with high vertical cliffs. The bow paddlers certainly got very wet in the wave trains and the spraydecks we had on the canoes were essential on a few occasions, or we’d have been swamped with water. 

We paddled for about 4 or 5 hours a day mostly, and spent the rest of the time preparing and eating fantastic food, chilling out and going on walks. There are enough trees to look pretty, but the vegetation is sparse enough that it’s quite easy to climb up pretty high and get amazing views back to the campsite and the surrounding mountains. Well, it’s easy if you don’t mind negotiating steep scree! From our high points, the tents always looked so tiny and it reinforced the huge scale of the wilderness up there. Amazing landscapes varied from multi-coloured cliffs to an eerie moonscape, to a huge mound that is building up from a natural sulfurous spring. We even visited a ‘warm spring’, described unkindly by Peter Wilson as ‘underwhelming’! However, Wendy and I enjoyed a dip in a shallow pool there. The rocks on the trip were amazing, with intricate fossils of corals & shells and stripy sandstone rocks. Heather’s carry on luggage on her way home was 75% rocks!! I’d have brought more home if I didn’t have a limited baggage allowance ( and hand luggage full of cameras!).

We saw many different groups of caribou; one herd of about 10 crossed the river right in front of our camp, and we saw others from the canoe. Wendy and Rob saw a grizzly bear on the edge of our campsite, but he stood up on his hind legs and then ran away when he saw us. Jim and I saw a black bear on the last day and I as rushed for my camera, Jim spotted 2 cubs alongside their mum. Unfortunately they all ran away before I got back but the glimpse of mum standing up looking at us still remains etched in my mind. We also spotted a moose and Ian got a glimpse of what may have been a wolverine. But perhaps the best wildlife news was the lack of a species! Contrary to what everyone warned me about – there were almost NO BUGS! I got 2 mossie bites on the whole trip and there wasn’t a bug net in sight!

I’ve been home in Wales a few days – I went seakayaking on Sunday and managed to forget my spraydeck!! well, I haven’t been wearing one for over a month!! Paddling my seakayak on a 10 metre tide in the Menai Straits felt weird to start with – the fast current was fun but my kayak felt so light, maneuverable and low to the water! It wasn’t quite so forgiving as a heavily laden tandem canoe with a good paddler in the stern with me! Once I got used to the new (old) feeling, I found I had a slightly different approach to breaking in and out of the eddies besides the bridges and I felt like I had a slightly more subtle understanding of the water. Maybe I’m just romanticizing my trip away!? Even if I am, I definitely think that my paddling skills in general are really benefiting from trying different disciplines, and it helps to keep my passion for paddling alive and new!

Thanks a lot to Blackfeather, Canadian North airlines and Northwright Airways for sponsoring my trip down the Mountain River. I’ve started loading the video onto my computer to edit it!

I’m in Wausau ( pronounced like Warsaw in Poland) but this one is in Wisconsin, America! There is a good artificial whitewater course here and it’s hosting the ACA open canoe national championships. I’ve been here for 2 days of practice and the 3 day event kicks off tomorrow. It’s a totally new thing for me but I find it fascinating. Some of these guys are really precise, and it’s different for them in an open boat from a kayak as they have to take drier lines to prevent their canoes filling up with water.

I have mainly been filming John Kaz, who has won over 90 national titles ( mostly in Slalom but also in marathon and downriver canoeing). He’s really good to watch as he makes it look effortless and easy – not surprising really with that track record. i’ve been able to try out my new camera mounts and they work pretty well on the canoes and i’ve got some good shots. 

I’ve also been filming Ely Helbert, two times world play boating champion for OC1 ( open canoe). I was very nervous when my camera was on the front of his kayak as he pirouetted and rolled in a shallow hole, but both Ely and camera came up unscathed!

I also filmed Carolyn Peterson, many times US National Champion in various canoe disciplines.

I got to have a go at the lower half of the course with John Kaz in a tandem canoe which was great fun. We only hit rocks twice and we made most of the gates which I thought was quite good considering I am almost a complete beginner at this!! I really enjoyed it and would have liked to have a few more gos but he was saving himself for tomorrow ( or perhaps he was concerned for the canoe!!)

I’ll try and post some photos soon!

over and out from wisconsin!

In August 2009, I have the chance to canoe down the remote and beautiful Mountain River in northern Canada. I will film this amazing journey for a forthcoming canoeing DVD. I hope to make a 30minute documentary about the trip.

The trip is a 2-week adventure organised by Blackfeather – the wilderness adventure company. For over 30 years, Black Feather adventurers have paddled untamed rivers, hiked amidst glacier-capped mountains and sea kayaked through sparkling ice fjords. The director of Blackfeather, Wendy Grater is one of the guides on Justine’s trip. Wendy has been canoeing and guiding for decades. Easygoing, yet committed to excellence, her energy and enthusiasm for sharing her love of the wild is contagious. 

THE RIVER
The Mountain River is visited by less than 150 canoeists every year. It’s considered Canada’s best wilderness river by the Blackfeather guides. To get there is an adventure in itself – from Edmonton we fly with Canadian North Airlinesto Yellowknife, which I always thought was very remote, but that is just the start! From there, Canadian North takes us even further north to Norman Wells, a small town with no road access. In Norman Wells, we meet the group, and take another plane – a Northwright Air float plane this time – to Willow Handle Lake at the start of the Mountain River. Northwright will land the float plane on this beautiful lake – surrounded by mountain peaks.

For the next 12 days, we’ll canoe 370km down the fast flowing Mountain River to where it empties into the Mackenzie river about 80km north of Norman Wells. The river drops over 1200metres in elevation, with large volume rapids, fast currents and five beautiful canyons. We start in the MacKenzie mountains, a northern extension of the Rocky Mountains which reach heights of 2700metres. They dominate the background with rock colours of bluff, grey, cinnamon, green and maroon. They are home to many types of big game, including caribou, moose, Dall’s sheep, wolves, wolverine and grizzly bears. The river flows in constant meanders with grade 2 and 3 rapids that can change drastically due to often rising or falling water levels. With spraydecks on our canoes, we should be able to run them all. We’ll take some time out to explore and hike. It’s possible to ascend rocky slopes and ridges to get great vistas of the surrounding wilderness.

Lower down, the Mountain river runs quickly through sandstone and limestone mountains, with interesting tufa formations and even a natural spring. The canyons offer some challenging paddling – third canyon requires some tricky manoeuvering as there’s a ledge in some water levels and big standing waves. By now we have dropped 1000 metres in height and the vegetation is lusher with thick stands of black spruce and aspen crowding the banks. In a couple more days we burst into the wide Mackenzie Valley lowlands and continue to the confluence with the Mackenzie river. A chartered boat takes up upstream up the wide river, back to Norman Wells.

I should just mention the food!! I have a copy of Blackfeathers camp cook book http://www.amazon.com/Camp-Cooking-Black-Feather-Eating/dp/1896980317
Even looking at the pages made my mouth water and I know I’m not going to be losing any weight on this trip!!

SPONSORS

Thank you very much to the sponsors who have made this trip possible. Blackfeather have given me a reduced price trip & Wendy has helped greatly with logistics. Canadian North has donated my airfare from Edmonton to Norman wells and Northwright Air have sponsored my float plane journey to the start of the river. Sanoodi have provided a high tech rechargable battery and solar panel so I can recharge my camera batteries and record a GPS route of our journey, which I’ll upload to the internet once I get back.

I’m really excited about this trip…. now I just have to pack!

Technology is moving so quickly these days with high quality video cameras becoming smaller and cheaper. I’ve been spending quite a lot of time lately trying to adapt my filming techniques to make the most of these advances and to create a camera mount which will sit on a canoe, as opposed to a seakayak. My canoeing DVD, and future DVDs will all be shot entirely in widescreen High Definition which means that the minicam system I was using with a pencil-cam on a pole is OUT! That system is 4×3 and standard definition. Plus I can’t use the suction mount that has been fantastic for me on my seakayak because there isn’t a suitable flat surface on most canoes.

So I’ve bought a couple of new cameras and I’ve been working with Barry and a local whizz, Clive Hartfall to make a mount. The results can be seen in the pictures. We have 1 mount which can hold 3 different camcorders, depending on which is the most suitable for what I’m trying to film. The largest is the Sony HC3 which sits in the big clear waterproof housing. With a wide angle lens, this is the best quality footage, but it’s also heavy and bulky! The yellow camera is a waterproof and High Definition camera from Sanyo. Its not full HD but the picture quality is very impressive. I can check what I’m filming by looking in the screen and delete clips that I don’t want, but the downside is that the camera is not very wideangle. The tiny black camera is designed as a helmet-mounted camera, the Contour HD camera – this is full high definition and very widescreen but the camera isn’t waterproof which could be a bit of an issue!! And you can’t check the image before you start recording or play back your footage to check you haven’t just filmed 10 minutes of the sky! So all 3 cameras have plus points, but none are perfect!! The challenge now is to get good at playing to their strengths & getting some fantastic canoeing shots!! I fly to America and then Canada next Tuesday for 3 weeks of filming and canoeing.

CONTOUR HD CAMERA