Paddling the Shelburne River – Part 1

Ten men. Five canoes. One Canadian Heritage river in five days. Determination and a sense of humour about the aching muscles, sunburn, blisters, blackflies, bad water and kilometre after kilometre of hardhack-choked portage routes strewn with glacial boulders. That’s the recipe for an unforgettable wilderness canoe trip. The following are excerpts from the diary I kept in a notebook that got nicknamed “the black box.” The notebook became my refuge from the constant company of nine guys gone feral in the Tobeatic Wilderness Area, the most remote part of Nova Scotia.

Day 1: Thursday, May 4, 2006
1:00 pm – Ohio Road carpool parking lot
Didn’t sleep well. Reading last night from Michael Smith’s book, Paddling the Tobeatic, I worked myself into a lather at his strong recommendation to allow eight days for the trip we plan to complete in four and a half. I awoke repeatedly to the lashing rain on my bedroom windows, the trees over the house shaking in the first light. It’s been raining for a week. It’s cold. Before leaving home, I dressed in my long underwear, packed my raincoat and pants within easy reach. John, a doctor and our leader, is worried because Lester’s canoe has no carrying thwart, but Lester says he’s been practicing in his yard with a cushion taped to the cross member. I’m in his canoe. Not too late to back out of this folly.

5:00 pm – Rush Lake
Put in at Sporting Lake Stream under — shock — blue skies. Stuffed my long johns deep in my pack — nobody saw them. Some lake jumping before we reach the Shelburne. The first portage was short, just a few dozen steps to Rush Lake, a mucky puddle. Good practice for carrying the canoes. Already obvious who’s brought too much and who’s packed poorly. Steve, the dentist, carries a big cooler of beer, food, ice. (Who portages ice?) He won’t last… there’s no turning back. Clouds of blackflies bump my face, but aren’t yet biting. Beaver paths trail off everywhere through the hardhack or thick shrubbery along the banks. A “V” of waterfowl circle three times overhead, waiting for their runway to clear. We round a corner in the stream and catch by surprise a hulking black beaver trailing his paddle tail into the water and away. The first campsite is just ahead under tall pine. Glorious!

Day 2: Friday, May 5
9 am – Sporting Lake Nature Reserve
What could be the highlight of the trip, the three islands in the 25-hectare Sporting Lake Nature Reserve. Never logged, the hemlocks are grand, grand. A place to feel small, remember childhood. We ooh and ahh, clamouring among giant trees, many with roots gripping granite boulders topped with bonsai fern gardens.

10:15 am – Oakland Lake portage
1300 metres of hardhack and granite. Glum faces. Grumbling. Cursing. Three of the five pairs already drag their canoes through the woods. With long squeaks, the canoes grate like cheese over jagged granite rocks along the barely discernible trails marked with fluorescent orange ribbons, leaving shreds of blue and green plastic among the coyote scat.

A pattern is developing. Chris and John, the most experienced canoeists and the best equipped, carry their canoe properly, finish their portages first and speed ahead to the next portage. Lester and I finish second. Jim and Jack, the older teenage pair, come next, dragging their canoe and their bags, some of them no more than plastic grocery bags. Cael and Kyle, the youngest teens, struggle in fourth, everything packed in plastic buckets to protect their gear against rain and capsizing. Steve the dentist and Allan the drummer come in last, administering beers to their hefty thirsts. Everyone wants their food shared and eaten on the first night so they don’t have to carry it.

1:30 pm – East Cranberry Lake portage
A full kilometre-long portage. The sun is out and baking hot. Oh, for the rain or even the fog to return. Out of the pines and onto flat, scrubby land that offers little shade, bushes scratch faces, muscles ache. Carrying-buckets bump legs.

6 pm – Buckshot Lake campsite
For the first time all day — resting at our campsite beside the headwaters of the Shelburne — smiles light faces. John says, “This is the Holy Grail of heritage rivers because it’s so hard to get to.” But the real reason for the smiles is because we’re no longer lake jumping… or rather puddle jumping. We’ll be canoeing a river. Lester and I plank the fourteen pounds of salmon we’ve portaged in our buckets. We feast until only bits of crispy fish flesh remain on the wood. Later, we try to pump water through a purifier — John fears giardia or beaver fever, an amoeba that fixes to the intestine walls and feeds off its host. After half an hour, we have less than a litre of potable water for the next day. John doesn’t want to use another purifying tablet because he only brought a few. I strip off at the river and wash in the shallow, icy water. Someone takes a picture and invents a caption: “the author, buck naked at Buckshot.”

Day 3: Saturday, May 6
7 am – Buckshot Lake campsite
Kyle kept me up half the night, cursing in his sleep. We’ve nicknamed him Mumbles. Another damp morning… to everyone’s relief. Blisters on my heels, bucket bruises on Cael’s and Kyle’s legs. Cael has a stiff neck from carrying the canoe. Lester and Allan complain of numbness in the hands. Both pop painkillers. I borrow duct tape to patch holes torn in my pants by the hardhack. One of the few without complaints is 20-year-old Jack, who’s turning out to be a workhorse. He’s strong, fast and works hard to drag his canoe through the woods. He sets the pace. All this with one prosthetic leg. Train accident when he was a boy. I don’t understand how he’s not sore under there.

9 am – On the Shelburne
After a short set of rapids, the Shelburne River starts as a shallow, mucky pond. It’s like canoeing in pea soup. Big rain drops blop around us for half an hour, but leave us dry and disappointed. What have we gotten ourselves into? Is there really any way to paddle this… river?

To be continued soon in part 2 … 

Photo Credits

Photos by Steve Barron

Recent Darcy Rhyno Articles:

• Kindness Goes Viral
• The Children Are Dying
• Mother Canada Could Die
• A Mother of a Monument
• The Detox Myth: How Celebrity Culture Sells Us What We Don’t Need