The Tough Birchers Paddle 445 Miles in The Yukon River Quest
August 13, 2015 3:36 AM Subscribe
"Jenny Who’s Been Around the Block had six seats, hard fiberglass benches that we’d padded with yoga-type mats, and there were eight of us to fill them. Carmen was in the bow, with a narrow bench to herself, and a second Carmen alone behind her. Then came Anna and Syd, on a wide middle bench, and Jacqueline and me behind them. Cristi, alone in the second-to-last seat, and Vanessa, in the stern, rounded out the lineup... Jacqueline, by coincidence, was my closest friend in the boat, and we had joked that sharing a canoe bench for 50 or 60 hours was likely to make or break the relationship." By Eva Holland for SB Nation
Oh hey I used to highland dance with the Jackie in this piece! It does indeed sound super-fun, I'm jealous.
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:06 AM on August 13, 2015
posted by Lemurrhea at 5:06 AM on August 13, 2015
A few friends have done the Yukon Race in open canoes and looking at the amount of training they put in it seems a pretty hardcore paddle.
But I boat whitewater, so anything over 5 miles seems weirdly long to me...
posted by fatfrank at 5:32 AM on August 13, 2015
But I boat whitewater, so anything over 5 miles seems weirdly long to me...
posted by fatfrank at 5:32 AM on August 13, 2015
Fault SBNation how you will -- and as a primarily fan run site, it can have many faults -- the longform articles have provided some absolutely amazing reads, and deserve Best of The Web acclaim.
posted by eriko at 6:30 AM on August 13, 2015
posted by eriko at 6:30 AM on August 13, 2015
Thanks for posting this; I really enjoyed it.
I grew up in the water, first canoeing and then kayaking (but still loving both equally). A couple years back, my cousin and I embarked on what was intended to be a two day ~35 mile paddle on a slow moving river with a fairly leisurely pace. Unfortunately, through bizarre circumstances, our way station for the first night looked nothing like the description we were given and we missed it. Ended up paddling the whole distance and sleeping in a parking lot. Still an amazing time.
posted by staccato signals of constant information at 6:47 AM on August 13, 2015
I grew up in the water, first canoeing and then kayaking (but still loving both equally). A couple years back, my cousin and I embarked on what was intended to be a two day ~35 mile paddle on a slow moving river with a fairly leisurely pace. Unfortunately, through bizarre circumstances, our way station for the first night looked nothing like the description we were given and we missed it. Ended up paddling the whole distance and sleeping in a parking lot. Still an amazing time.
posted by staccato signals of constant information at 6:47 AM on August 13, 2015
My oldest brother got the canoeing bug when he was in Boy Scouts. They went down the Allagash in Maine in scouts an undeterred, in college went down the Mistassini, a trip which ended up nigh destroying a Rent-A-Wreck station wagon.
After college in 1983, he and two high school chums and a college friend bought a 1966 Ford Country Squire in faded turquoise for a trip across the Al-Can to the Yukon. Like all Fords of that vintage, it was rusting out all over. They pop riveted sheet tin over the gaping holes in the rear storage wells, pop riveted chicken wire over the headlights, bought extra spare tires, and replaced the muffler getting a Meineke lifetime warrantee - a fantastic deal because the exhaust system dropped several mufflers on the trip from New Jersey. They lost the water pump but found one at a service station off the highway. They had to rebuild the exhaust manifold with tin foil (improving the mileage substantially). They used up all their spare tires.
On the canoe trip, they hired a local to drop them at the start and drive their car to the end. They camped along the river. One of the men was cutting a sapling out of the way at their camp site and his pocket knife blade broke and the remains went into his wrist. They staunched the bleeding and slept in shifts to keep an eye on him. He lost a lot of blood. They canoed in shifts since he couldn't paddle until it had healed over. They made it back and a couple weeks later after the slides were processed, did a slide show of the trip.
Quite an adventure.
I ended up driving that car for a bit during my senior year. Typical ford. It needed a warm up in the winter or it stalled. The power steering drifted and you had to do constant nudging to straighten out and the power steering never worked when you were standing still so parallel parking was a strength exercise. It dropped another muffler in the spring and when the motorheads in my high school were talking and revving engines after school, I started up the Ford and when that V8 cranked to life it turned a few heads. Piece of junk, but the car easily seated 9 if you resorted to the rear-facing seats in the backety-back.
posted by plinth at 7:12 AM on August 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
After college in 1983, he and two high school chums and a college friend bought a 1966 Ford Country Squire in faded turquoise for a trip across the Al-Can to the Yukon. Like all Fords of that vintage, it was rusting out all over. They pop riveted sheet tin over the gaping holes in the rear storage wells, pop riveted chicken wire over the headlights, bought extra spare tires, and replaced the muffler getting a Meineke lifetime warrantee - a fantastic deal because the exhaust system dropped several mufflers on the trip from New Jersey. They lost the water pump but found one at a service station off the highway. They had to rebuild the exhaust manifold with tin foil (improving the mileage substantially). They used up all their spare tires.
On the canoe trip, they hired a local to drop them at the start and drive their car to the end. They camped along the river. One of the men was cutting a sapling out of the way at their camp site and his pocket knife blade broke and the remains went into his wrist. They staunched the bleeding and slept in shifts to keep an eye on him. He lost a lot of blood. They canoed in shifts since he couldn't paddle until it had healed over. They made it back and a couple weeks later after the slides were processed, did a slide show of the trip.
Quite an adventure.
I ended up driving that car for a bit during my senior year. Typical ford. It needed a warm up in the winter or it stalled. The power steering drifted and you had to do constant nudging to straighten out and the power steering never worked when you were standing still so parallel parking was a strength exercise. It dropped another muffler in the spring and when the motorheads in my high school were talking and revving engines after school, I started up the Ford and when that V8 cranked to life it turned a few heads. Piece of junk, but the car easily seated 9 if you resorted to the rear-facing seats in the backety-back.
posted by plinth at 7:12 AM on August 13, 2015 [2 favorites]
I'm so happy to see everyone posting canoe & kayak stories here!
Paddling a river is a special way to travel. The two longer trips I've done, where we camped out of our kayaks for several days, were unbeatable experiences.
posted by other barry at 7:23 AM on August 13, 2015
Paddling a river is a special way to travel. The two longer trips I've done, where we camped out of our kayaks for several days, were unbeatable experiences.
posted by other barry at 7:23 AM on August 13, 2015
I went on my first multiday paddling trip, a three day guided kayaking trip in the San Juan Islands, a couple weeks ago. I've kayaked a bit in my life, but never overnight and never for more than five or six miles at a stretch. The first two days were wonderful and amazing for all the reasons you'd expect. I was as sore as I have ever been in my life the first night, but that's because I'm not in great shape; all around, an incredible experience.
The third day, the current forced us we had to pass very close to the shore, where there were seals with pups, because it's that time of year. After a brief warning that the seals might be a little aggressive (we'd seen plenty of seals without incident so far) and that there was a freak thing a few weeks back when a guide was bitten by a seal, we started working our way along the shore. We hear the seals barking and see some in the water, but again it was our third day of that, so nothing seemed crazy. So we're paddling along when a seal jumps out of the water and lands on the hatch between the two cockpits on our kayak. I'm in the back, which means at least I got a look at the thing before the combination of its weight and my freaking out means we capsized, the poor woman in the front had no idea why she was suddenly swimming in 50 degree water. Someone who saw said that I went to fend it off with my paddle, but I have no real memory of this. The guides got us back in the boat (with the seal watching us the whole time) and we got to a small beach nearby to change clothes and warm up. Eventually we paddled somewhere where a barge could pick us up rather than trying to go past the seals again.
Ever since my wife has been threatening to buy a bunch of stuffed seals to toss at me in what she claims is "exposure therapy" for my traumatic "seal attack," but I'm fine. I had a good time and I'd do it again (minus the seal thing, preferably), but I did get a good sense of where my personal threshold for acceptable risk of disaster is, though.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:42 AM on August 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
The third day, the current forced us we had to pass very close to the shore, where there were seals with pups, because it's that time of year. After a brief warning that the seals might be a little aggressive (we'd seen plenty of seals without incident so far) and that there was a freak thing a few weeks back when a guide was bitten by a seal, we started working our way along the shore. We hear the seals barking and see some in the water, but again it was our third day of that, so nothing seemed crazy. So we're paddling along when a seal jumps out of the water and lands on the hatch between the two cockpits on our kayak. I'm in the back, which means at least I got a look at the thing before the combination of its weight and my freaking out means we capsized, the poor woman in the front had no idea why she was suddenly swimming in 50 degree water. Someone who saw said that I went to fend it off with my paddle, but I have no real memory of this. The guides got us back in the boat (with the seal watching us the whole time) and we got to a small beach nearby to change clothes and warm up. Eventually we paddled somewhere where a barge could pick us up rather than trying to go past the seals again.
Ever since my wife has been threatening to buy a bunch of stuffed seals to toss at me in what she claims is "exposure therapy" for my traumatic "seal attack," but I'm fine. I had a good time and I'd do it again (minus the seal thing, preferably), but I did get a good sense of where my personal threshold for acceptable risk of disaster is, though.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 7:42 AM on August 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
Note from my brother:
The Yukon River from Whitehorse to Dawson is much more tame than the Peel River. It connects with route 2 at a number of points, so access and support are easy, and is generally broad and slow. Plus this is an annual race for sweat hogs. The Peel river trip was, I think, about 400 miles of paddling (and more than 500 miles of hitchhiking and driving). It begins from Dawson (well, fairly far north of Dawson) and leaves the Dempster Highway (a gravel road, cut from the shale of the Tombstone mountains, that slices more than 500 miles through complete wilderness with one gas station in the middle, crossing into the Northwest Territories). We had four flat tires on that road, and the exhaust system fell off. The Peel is like the two legs of a right triangle, and it doesn't reconnect with the road again until you get to Fort McPherson. Along the way, it plunges through the second-deepest canyon in Canada, which is an 8-mile brutal portage over cliffs and through muskeg (swamp) with rough rapids before and after. We capsized, badly, once, and the river was rushing so rapidly that we were propelled more than 75 miles on one day. The only souls we saw, other than fresh grizzly tracks, were Inuit indian families on the last few days of paddling.posted by plinth at 8:42 AM on August 13, 2015 [3 favorites]
Ah. But you were alluding to the infamous Mistassini River ("Stone In Water"...) trip. Well. That was more hair-raising than this silly Yukon quest. It started easily enough, with lashing canoes onto a float plane in the middle of nowhere, and being dropped off on a remote lake. We got about 50 yards down the creek that drained from that lake before we capsized and pinned the aluminum canoe to a rock. Then the temperature dropped, and it began pouring rain. Things got quite a bit more challenging after that...
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posted by smoke at 4:28 AM on August 13, 2015