They are a little more tanned, a little lighter and certainly more fit, but that is what one might expect after paddling more than 2,200 kilometres.
On Wednesday, May 13, Barrhead native, Dylan Bajer, along with his friends, Justine Wilmot, Liam Law and Sarah Johnston left Barrhea, via the Paddle River en route to Fort Simpson, N.W.T.
“The trip was supposed to take us 68 days, but we did it in 63,” Bajer and Wilmot said, during a visit to the Barrhead Leader office.
The pair visited the Leader a week after the group finished their trek.
“We have had so many people, because of the story in the Leader, asking for an update on our trip,” Wilmot said, adding that because of the limited Internet and phone coverage along the route, it was difficult for the group to provide regular updates along their travels.
Although the group’s journey officially started in May, it really began more than a year earlier when Bajer, who is a guide with Nahanni River Adventures, asked himself if it was possible to commute to work. The company, which is based in Fort Simpson, N.W.T., offers a number of adventure excursions, including canoe and whitewater rafting on rivers such as the Mackenzie and Nahanni.
Bajer knew that making the journey would be difficult, if not impossible on his own, so he enlisted the help of his friends who he met through his other job at Enviros Base Camp, near Canmore, Alta, and the Ghost Wilderness area bordering Banff National Park.
The camp, which is also known as Enviros Wilderness School, provides addiction treatment for youth aged 12 to 18 and their families through a three-month intensive adventure based wilderness program.
In order to make it in the 68-day time frame the group had allotted themselves, they had to average 80 kilometre a day, but it quickly became evident that they would have to reevaluate their goals.
Within two hours of embarking on the expedition, the group ran into their first obstacle, a log jam that spanned the entire length of the Paddle River.
“There were two of them (trees) and we had to get our boats underneath them,” Wilmot said, adding that they were finally able to maneuver their two canoes under the log jam. “If the area hadn’t been so large we would have had to unpack the canoes and carry them on land past the jam and pack everything back up again.”
Also contributing to a slower pace, of about 60 kilometres a day, was the water level. Initially the group was expecting the water level, especially on the Paddle River to be higher.
“We just had enough water level to get off the Paddle River,” Bajer said. “Once we got on the Pembina River it actually started to flow quite a bit.”
To help make up for lost time, the group decided to forego their regular scheduled rest days. As part of the group’s schedule, Wilmot planned that every seventh day would be a rest day.
It wasn’t until the group had paddled for 21 straight days, that they decided they had made up enough time to take a day off.
On a typical day they would wake up at 8 a.m. and enjoy a leisurely breakfast before breaking up camp and beginning their day on the water. The group would stay on the water, paddling for the next 10 to 12 hours before calling it a day at about 8 p.m.
However, just because the group was off the water didn’t mean that they had finished work for the day.
“Every day we had to decide where to make camp for the night,” Bajer said, adding that despite having access to a vast untouched wilderness finding an appropriate camping spot often was a challenge. “You needed something that was flat and dry enough to set up tents, but was close enough to the water so that we didn’t have to pack everything a long ways.”
Wilmot added that often didn’t leave a lot of spots to choose from. Because trees and other large vegetation grow near river banks, it would leave the group a narrow strip of land to set up camp on.
Bajer added that the same reasons that made a particular piece of land a good camping site made it a popular spot for wildlife.
“Many times we ended up camping along a wildlife corridor so we often were able to see a lot of animals up close, including bears. I think seven is the largest number of bears we ended up seeing in a single day,” he said, adding that the group never had any trouble. “We did have to use our bear bangers a couple of times, but for the most part they left us alone.”
However, all that work doesn’t mean the group did not find time to have fun.
“At the end of the day is when we had a chance to let our hair down and relax a little bit,” Wilmot said.
One of the favourite things to do after a long day of paddling, was to sit back in their specially designed chairs, and play music.
“We called ourselves the Prospectors,” Bajer said, adding that they played music of their own composition.
“It was really something to see,” Wilmot added. Both Bajer and Law brought guitars and the rest of the four-piece ensemble were made from the groups equipment. “They had shakers on their feet and used they used the canoes themselves and pots and pans for drums.”
For the most part, the pair said the trip was trouble free and eventually the group started to hit their 80 kilometre a day target.
“We were really lucky, we really had good weather almost our entire trip,” Wilmot said, adding that the only day the group faced any bad weather was the last day of the trip as they were approaching Fort Simpson.
Having good weather also posed a challenge for the group. Many days, the group faced temperatures approaching 30 degrees Celcius.
“It was just too hot to paddle,” Wilmot said, adding that is when the group decided to change their routine.
“It’s the land of the midnight sun. So for the really hot days we decided to sleep during the day and paddle during the night starting out about 2 a.m.,” Bajer said.
The group also managed to stay healthy, except for two days.
At about the middle part of the journey, Johnston and Bajer became ill.
“Dylan was pretty dehydrated after we portaged our canoes at a spot on the Athabasca River called the Grand Rapids, and he ended up vomiting for an entire day,” Wilmot said.
Shortly after Bajer recovered, Johnston took ill, from what the group believes was food poisoning. The pair being sick delayed the expedition for three days, a delay Wilmot believes the group wouldn’t have been able to endure if not for a combination of good planning and a fortuitous decision.
The group divided their trip into four sections. The original plan was that the group would only take enough food with them to complete one section. The rest they would ship to their nearest restocking location. However, after loading everything onto the canoes they decided there was enough room to take food for two sections.
“Initially we decided to take more food with us to save on the shipping costs, but if we hadn’t had the next leg of food with us, we might have not felt comfortable in staying at one spot for three days,” she said.
Another challenge the group had was smoke from the forest fires.
“It really didn’t affect us too much until we hit the Northwest Territories. There were some days we couldn’t see more than two feet in front of us and we could barely see the shore,” Bajer said, adding that on occasion the group ended up setting up camp in an area where fire had recently been through.
As for what the most memorable part of the trip was, both Bajer and Wilmot agreed that besides growing even closer as friends, it was the relationships the group was able to form with the people they met along the river.
“Every corner on the river, has its own unique and beautiful characteristics and I will treasure every moment we had on the river, but it will be the people that I really remember. The people of the river are the most friendly, generous, kindhearted you will ever meet,” Bajer said.
