Trip Journal - Voyageurs 1 - 2001

Day 1- Our group comes together for the first time at our base camp on the Ottawa River. After lunch and some introductions, we hit the water right away. A few of us literally hit the water with the first official flip of the trip by Stacey, Steve, and Gen with a "g". This makes for a good intro to T-rescues. We make journals and dig into ginger rice for dinner, sans utensils. Conversation is dominated by the realization that we're all named "Ann". With the sun setting on the bay, our fishbowl session on the pebbly beach provides an excellent setting to talk about our goals and expectations for the coming journey. Stacey suggests: "off with the watches" and we all follow. Steve proclaims: "enjoy the moment" and everyone agrees. Chris makes fire with no matches or lighter, impressive.

Day 2- We drive to beautiful La Verendrye park, push off onto Lake Camatose and after a short paddle, arrive at our site. It is one of those perfect Canadian Shield campsites on a point surrounded by the calm lake. Towering pines shelter our fire bowl and tenting ground. Spoons are started and Jen with a "j" finishes one. The sunset is semi-exposed. By dark everyone is asleep.

Day 3- Scenic "tour" of the lakes and swamps of LaVerendrye. We learn that some Nalgene don't always float. After a sunny morning we get rain, hail, and lightning position. Arriving at our campsite on Lake Longville, we manage to set up camp during a pause in the rain and everybody gets warm and comfortable in the tent.

Day 4- We have a few small portages which take a lot of effort with the still-heavy packs. Lisa, Andrew, and Brendan all solo-portage canoes. Lake Canamina is a windy mass of waves. Paddling into it feels surreal. We manage to make it across and enjoy a snack on the other side as the sky clears. We portage again and then have our first Gorp lunch. After crossing several small ponds and Lake Nichcotea we make it to our site on Lake Desty. The sesame-honey-garlic and many vegetable stir-fry is delicious. Danny reads from "The Earth Speaks" by the lake.

Day 5- We make our way across more lakes to Pork rapids. We are fast on the water and the group does a great job with our first lift over. Twenty questions, and a conversation about the French word for "shallow" occupy most of the paddle. Spirits are high at the site we go for a swim at the base of the rapids. A creative A-frame baker set-up, Mancala, and lazy perogies are highlights of the afternoon. Some of us spread out along the trail by the river to write in our journals. The first game of spot is played, knowing that tomorrow we can sleep in. The weather has cleared for good (for the most part).

Day 6- First duff day. We all enjoy pancakes for breakfast and a lazy morning. Much of the day is spent playing in the rapids doing paddling instruction, our safety and hydrology talk, and a swim through. Stevie & Jen flip. Once dry, we sit around the site and relax. Stevie is "snoopified", the story of "Jumping Mouse" is read, and the dinner of chili and fresh baked biscuits is hugely popular. As his father warned us at the start: don't sleep next to Brendan on chili night.

Day 7- An early departure. The morning sun has barely started to draw the mist off the river while we paddle along at a leisurely pace. The current does most of the work here and we can gaze off onto the nearby banks. Wildlife is abundant. Birds sing and can be seen all around. Families of ducks appear around every corner and Kat spots the behind of a bear disappearing into the forest up ahead. The day grows hot.
We stop for a cooling dip in the middle of Lake Ward. Our first big rapid is run successfully by all. The canoes dance though the kilometer-long set of wave trains and thread-the-needle moves. The river pushes us out onto Lake Pomponne, marking the exit of La Verendrye park. A smiling fisherman and his son wave and hold up a bunch of Walleye. Many riddles are pondered over on the paddle across, keeping the canoes tight together and paddled in unison.
We portage around - by now almost everyone has tried carrying a canoe - and have leftover chili and cheese sandwiches at the base of the falls. The afternoon has a few big rapids and a flip with an easy clean-up for Kat and Gen. After the bridge-rapid we have a short and goofy paddle to our site. After much singing, towing, swimming (Lisa swims the last few hundred meters), and goofing around we arrive at our site early. Andrew gets leached. Limbo is played. Pop corn dessert.

Day 8- Today is packed with whitewater. We paddle, line, and lift over, as we make our way through this constantly descending section of the Coulonge. The river has almost doubled in width since we started on it and its power makes for a breathtaking and challenging descent. Bri and Jen swamp and dump. We have lunch on the bank at a lift over and then make our way to the campsite at Tall Pine. After portaging the gear to the site the group decides to run Tall Pine Rapid with light and maneuverable boats. YEEHAW! It's a big one. Brendan & Steve dump. Danny and Lisa say that they dumped just to make everyone else feel better but really they didn't. I swear. At night we make funky pine and spruce tea and do the "object of the trip" thingy.

Day 9- We spend the morning improving on our whitewater skills and playing in Tall Pine. Brendan solos the bottom half and Kat and Stacey dump. We learn more about swimming in whitewater, traversing back and forth a cross the pretty large wave train at the bottom of the rapid. On our afternoon paddle to the next site those who haven't yet sterned get a shot at it and do excellently. Lots of games and more popcorn.

Day 10- Big day. The morning starts with some excitement as Briana breaks her paddle at a pretty inopportune moment: right above Chutes Batardeaux. She keeps a cool head but admits later that the little voice inside her was uttering "Oh noooo". The descent is tough: we do two leftovers, some creative lining, three portages, and a whole bunch of sweet rapids. It is a gorgeous sunny day and looking upstream or down the view is one of endless whitewater framed in lush old growth forest. The must make ferry provides for some excitement.
We rejoice when all the boats make it through the final class two. As we gather on the bank, snickers bars are distributed for the final stretch. SNICKERS BARS FOLKS! Even better is the final stretch: 14 kilometers of continuous swifts. Finally we can lay back and let the current carry us serenely - and quite quickly - downstream. The banks are a mixture of high sloping sand slides and towering granite cliffs. Out of cracks in these rocks, massive Jack Pines and White Pines somehow manage to take root and grow. On one such tree that was overhanging the river, Andrew and Jen spot a group of owls. The drifting session comes to an end as we eddy-out at our site. The evening features Jen sworn to silence, a tarped toilet, and Andrew eating six bowls of Pasta Alfredo.

Day 11- As we paddle through the meanders everybody is now gaining confidence with sterning. Danny, Kat and Briana spend the day in the bow. We spot two deer, mallards, teeter-tails, an owl, sandpipers, a hawk, and snake. The sandy shoals are covered with moose tracks. Our site is perched at the confluence of the Coulonge and Riviere de la Corneille. It is the first of the "five fives", Danny's term for the five five-star campsites along the lower section of the river that are separated by perfect paddling days. It has a wide open camp fire area, huge trees, and trails going off in every direction: a perfect spot for a rest day. We stuff ourselves with grilled cheese, soup, and brownies.

Day 12- To start off right we indulge in fresh baked chocolate-cinnamon-raisin bread for breakfast. People spend the morning relaxing, reading, and making their gift exchange presents. We do a day sit on a moose trail that leads far into the bush and up a hill. We spend the afternoon around camp and taking a trip up the Corneille for a hole swim. Wooohooo! Quite the experience and a good way to gain confidence in the rapids and to learn what it feels like to be laundry. Andrew discovers the lumberjack within, Stevie gets re-snoopified, and several folks become very interested in some hairy droppings. They yelp: "Hey come check this out. We're tracking a strange beast that eats cats!"

Day 13- We paddle 35 kilometers but luckily the current is quite strong. It is hot and we take several breaks to swim, sometimes drifting beside the canoes for long periods of time. We meet two other groups who stay at different sites at Chutes Diable. Here the whole river is squeezed into a four meter gap and dropped off a massive ledge creating a roaring waterfall. The first game of wink murderer is played at the big rock by the raging falls.

Day 14- We are up early and portaging through the other groups' sites who are just waking. Little Devil's rapid is a choose your own adventure with a wide array of possible lines. "Die Hard" rapid is just plain big with some tricky moves up top and gigantic waves at the bottom. We choose a beach below the rapid for our last nutella feast while watching the group of Americans miraculously make it through the rapid alive and intact. Yikes! The afternoon paddle ends with a portage to the site below Enrages. The rock below the site juts out far into the river. It has many natural steps and cracks that create great seats and comfortable spots to lye down and gaze at the blanket of stars.

Day 15- We portage around Chutes Gallinotes and enjoy the swifts as we are carried down to Chutes A L'Ours. It is a hot clear day and we stop for lunch and some surfing a few kilometers from our site. A huge mud fight ensues with Andrew turning into a sludge-ball batting ninja. After a lot of swimming and surfing we move on. Stevie is our leader for the campsite set-up. He does a great job of getting things organized before cloud cover moves in. The baker is pitched easily without the help of any staff. After a brief downpour that wets some of us while we're out exploring the portage trail, the sky clears again. As darkness sets in we head to bed ready to sleep after another good day. The group members who were stuffed up with colds for a few days are starting to feel much better now and are able to enjoy our last few days on the river all the better. Oh yeah, the clouds are gone for good.

Day 16- Lisa is the morning leader and manages to get the camp taken down and ready for the portage while the cherry-cranberry oatmeal and hot chocolate is still hot. We sit down by the river with our food as Gen reads a passage that she has selected. Following her reading we sit in a comfortable silence contemplating her words as the mist rises off the water. With the portage behind us we set off down Rapides Guinettes scouting and running it section by section. Cat and Stacy have a bit of a swim but after a rest Stacy gets right back to sterning down this technical section. A few of us stop to look at the memorial for Alex Guinette on the peninsula in the middle of the rapid. It reminds us of the river's history. The view from here, as with many other sections that we have traveled through, is much the same as it was for the log drivers like Alex Guinette. It is the same as it was a thousand years ago when no Europeans new anything like it.
Our group's advances in tripping skills are easy to see today: those who learned to stern just a few weeks ago guide the canoes through the rest of the rapids to our site, setting up seems to take little effort as we quickly get to chilling on the beach, surfing, and sauna building for the afternoon. A sand sculpture is made in front of the sauna and the rock-fire is lit. After supper we make the finishing touches and prepare for the sweat lodge. The first ever PaddleFoot night sauna works out very well. The heat opens our pores, cleaning us and relaxing sore muscles. We place cedar balms on the rocks and take some time to appreciate our safe passage thus far. Gen and Stevie read their story. Jumping into the calm river is a like a re-awakening of the senses. Our bodies are revived. The stars cover the sky from tree line to tree line. The memorable evening is made complete with brownies before we retreat to bed.

Day 17- Our last full day on the Coulonge starts with chocolate pancakes and ends with gourmet pizza-pocket-calzone-thingies. We surf, swim, play the ultimate underwater log-rolling game, and work on our gifts at the sight, on the beach, and along the trails. A helicopter fly-by almost forces Danny to lose his pancakes. After dinner we have our gift exchange and then lay down on the beach for one last view of the stars.

Day 18- We mix up the canoes for our last paddle. Brendan soloes, Danny gets driven around by Briana and Kat, and other new combinations take form. After a few rapids and swifts we begin to see signs of civilization such as roads and farms. Robb picks us up and we return to base-camp. Emotions are a mixture of being glad to have certain luxuries again and not wanting the trip to end. We go for dinner at the famous D+T's and stuff ourselves silly. Some of us shower and call home. We meet at our first spot on the rocky pebbly shoal to write blue-notes and then head back to the tents and complete the trip log.

Day 19- Rafting, a final pow-wow, and many goodbye's.

Famous Trip Sayings/and other things

- Shimmy King
- Spot
- Mencala
- Put your shoes on
- "Good Morning To You"
- Broken Toilette
- It'll float
- Anne
- Where's the shovel
- "But the brochure said so"
- Sick
- Honey
- O NO (Bri)
- Red Rum
- Steve Doggy Dog
- Enjoy the moment
- Have you been drinking the lake water?
- Chewing on Cud
- Face the tree
- Pinespresso
- Cuban dances
- Chinese last names
- Sandrew, Peve, Sven squared, Lanny, Liza, Goat, Dog, Bandon, Pacey
- The holy cow
- how-how

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