Day 18 - September 4: Lindberg Landing

Today, we woke up, and it was the following things:
1. Cold;
2. Wet;
3. Miserable;
4. Windy.

We had our fastest tear-down of the trip, and were on the water, determined to get to Nahanni Butte and out of the wet as soon as we could.  We were getting picked up in a boat at Nahanni Butte that would be taking us 40 km down the Liard River to Lindberg Landing, the bed and breakfast (with walls! and beds!) we would be staying at that night.  It was so wet and miserable, that I stayed buried deep in my backpack home and still ended up wet.  Heather's camera kept me company, but it stayed dry.

Our arrival in Nahanni Butte went pretty much unnoticed, since there was a wedding going on, and everyone except the water taxi guy was going.  Or so it seemed.  This sucked, since Eric and Jaroslav were both very close to being hypothermic.  Eventually, Gord found the guy with keys to the gym, and let us in.  The gym was awesome because it had heat, and they let us have warm beverages.  The bride of the wedding was hanging around the gym trying to get ready, and eventually she had to go out in the rain and mud to her truck, so Jim kindly helped her put plastic bags on her feet.  The guy who let us into the gym was named George.  Everyone say thank you to George.

Eventually, we found the water taxi guy, and he drove us to the bed and breakfast.  Our cabin for the night had a nice fire going in the wood stove.

After a (mostly) warm shower, Mrs. Lindberg made us tasty, tasty moose/beef meatloaf and delicious salad.  There were also delicious vegetables, all of which came from her garden.

The log cabins didn't have running water or electricity, but there were showers hooked up to a generator up by the big house.  That was a very welcome treat for everyone.  Except me, since showers don't do me much good.  I am, after all, a penguin.  There was also the opportunity to put on clean clothes, which had so kindly been stored at the outfitter's base camp for the last two weeks.  It was a very nice place to stay.

Day 17 - September 3: Last Camp

We woke up to no fog, semi-clear skies, and tasty cinnamon buns for breakfast.

First thing once we got onto the water, we shot Lafferty's Riffle, essentially the last rapid of the trip.  It also proved to be Heather's favourite.  Lafferty's Riffle also meant the end of First Canyon.  But First Canyon is so tall you could still see it pretty far down the river.

We made a very brief stop at Old Boat Owned by Kraus.  Kraus and his wife lived on the river for quite a long time before it was made into a national park, and when they left, they left their boat behind.  It was quite entertaining because one of the river guidebooks actually had "Old Boat Owned by Kraus" labelled on the map.

After Old Boat Owned by Kraus, we headed to the Kraus Hot Springs for a sulphury, warm, hot spring experience.  (The hot springs were where Kraus and his wife used to live before they got kicked out of the park).

There was also a nice little lake behind the hot springs.

Once we were done at the hot springs, we continued our long journey through the Splits.  Before our site, we passed the park boundary.  This was somewhat arbitrarily placed because the park guys just put the sign where they could get it, and not where the park boundary actually is.

Just past the park boundary, it started raining and refused to stop.  Jaroslav was displeased, because he was really hoping he could put his tent away dry.  Have I mentioned how much Jaroslav hated his tent?  This, the last night on the river, he declared as a celebration, he would burn it at breakfast for revenge. (In the end, he didn't, but I suspect that was mostly because it was still raining).  

Day 16 - September 2: Lafferty Creek

Today, we paddled very hard.

We slowly but surely drifted through First Canyon.

There were a couple of waves at one point that we needed to paddle through.

These weren't them.

We made a brief stop at White Spray Spring to fill our water bottles with delicious, cold, clear spring water.

Dan said it best:  "Well, we might have paddled a few dozen strokes today."

Once we got to our site, set up, had lunch, and did everything that needed to be done that day, we went on a hike up Lafferty Creek, which has some pretty cool water pools.  According to the Nahanni River Guide, they are good for bathing.  According to our trip guides, the guy who wrote the Nahanni River Guide was on crack (he also suggested we race down Prairie Creek, which probably wouldn't have been particularly fun since you would have first needed to portage up Prairie Creek).

Dan tried to extend the duration of our hike by using his bouldering skills across a pond.  However, no one else really wanted to try that, so the hike reached its end and we returned to camp.

And Gord tried to get up onto this rock.  Unfortunately, the distance between the top of that rock and the bottom of the one he actually got to was slightly greater than the distance the average human being is capable of jumping, which he was a bit disappointed about.

This would be the end of our short and lazy days.  Which was good, since the end of the relaxation portion of our trip roughly coincided with the end of the sunshine (and Heather was starting to get bored of Sudoku and had finished her book).  There were two full days left of our trip, and the river was about to slow down considerably.

Day 15 - September 1: The Coliseum

An exciting thing that (mostly) everyone who paddles the Nahanni does is stick a paddle in the paddle cabin:

Apparently Trevor and Graeme have been there before.  Who knew? (Certainly not Trevor and Graeme.)

So we spent some time there.  There's also a warden cabin there (an unmanned one), and while we were there, Eric was informed by Luke that he would be running George's Riffle in this extremely effective mode of transportation:

George's Riffle was the only rapid we actually scouted before running it, since it had rocks in it and we needed to not hit them.  It was also a fairly large rapid, and I hid deep in the bowels of Heather's backpack for its duration.

But then we were in First Canyon.

After a solid 15 or 20 minutes of paddling, we stopped for lunch.  While we were eating lunch, Luke and Dan decided that we didn't need to paddle anymore (it was clearly a very long day), so we stayed put.  Luke and Dan celebrated this wise decision by taking a nap.

We then had most of the afternoon to laze about and not do anything.  Which was not the world's most fun, but I went exploring and decided it would be fun to get eaten by a rock.

At some point, the sky turned orange.  We didn't paddle particularly far, but First Canyon was definitely a pretty swell view.

Day 13 - August 30: Prairie Creek

For the third day in a row, it was sunny!  Which was awesome, because we had a lot of paddling to do, and it was much more pleasant without the threat of raining hanging about.  

This stack of rocks is known as the Library.  Gord declared that Jim should go into the cave for a picture.  

Also!  We saw a bear!  It was a very stupid bear, mind you.  It decided it wanted to climb a cliff.  Needless to say, bears are really lousy climbers (penguins aren't much better, but we're also slightly smarter, so we wouldn't have tried to climb the cliff in the first place).  This particular bear spent the entire time it was in sight trying to climb the cliff.  It even fell into the river a couple of times, it was ridiculous.

We paddled through Second Canyon, which wasn't as dramatic as Third Canyon, but still pretty impressive.  It had some pretty interesting shapes going on at the tops of the cliffs.

Not to mention some pretty fantastic alluvial fans.  

Apparently Prairie Creek didn't have any firewood, so we stopped on the side of the river before we got there and we all picked up canoes full of wood.  It looked VERY ridiculous watching all the canoes on the river with super long sticks sticking out on both sides.

When we got to our site that night, we were informed that we would be having a surprise layover day.  Also, that night we asked Luke and Dan what the rest of our trip would look like, and it turned out that they forgot that there are 31 days in August.  Meaning that we were actually in way less of a hurry than we thought.

Day 12 - August 29: The Gate

We woke up in the morning, and it was foggy.  But by the time we got on the water, the fog had lifted, and it was STILL SUNNY.

The river was now faster and more exciting, so opportunities to take pictures were fewer.  However, we still managed, and on our trek through Third Canyon, we continued to not see any wildlife bigger than a goose (and there were definitely no sheep).

Third Canyon is pretty awesome, by the way.

Our site at The Gate that night was Heather's favourite site on the trip.  She found a cool rock full of fossils right behind her tent!

And... Pulpit Rock gets the awesome opportunity to spend its life hanging out in the middle of the Nahanni River.

Gord, Jim, Luke, and Heather's mom ventured up to the top of The Gate to see Pulpit Rock from the top.  But, since I didn't go, I can't possibly be in a picture, and I have already exceeded today's quota of pictures not featuring me.  But Gord threw a rock off the top, and it took a good couple seconds to hit the river, which was pretty incredible.

The day ended with a sunset (have I mentioned that it was sunny for the second day in a row?) that we couldn't really see since there were some mountains and a canyon in the way.