The Rae River - Chapter 2 ( Pre-trip Planning, Gear & Food )

Pre-trip Planning

As you may know from previous posts, much of the river we paddled was relatively unknown. Much of Dave's interest in this river was about John Rae himself, the Artic explorer [ more about him later ] Whilst not quite bold enough to say we were the first to paddle some of this, we can say that the only account of this area we were able to find was a couple of years ago by the Borealis Team, and they paddled the stretch of the Rae River from Cox lake to the mouth. We paddled approximately 100k ( thats a guess - I have not confirmed this yet...) above this and have not been able to find any reports of this being done previously.

Dave spent a lot of time trying to gain as much information as possible about the unknown area but without much success - other than being able to study the maps ( on which significant falls and some rapids are marked but obviously without grading ) None of the pilots we asked or any of Dave's friends from Yellowknife knew anything about the upper section of the Rae or its south branch ( now named La Plante ). Water levels were unknown and we couldn't be sure even if there would be any ice in this area.
Mark registered our trip with the RCMP in Kugluktuk and Air Tindi were also aware of our trip schedule with emergency contact details for us all.

Dave & Mark were definites on the trip from the start and Dave posted on the MYCCR webpage advertising for other paddlers to join them. Originally he had intended an ideal number of 6 paddlers, in 3 boats, but found that only Gene & I 'applied'.

Gear

Yep, we had a lot of it... two barrels and one (approx 80 litre ) dry bag full of food, a 'wanagan' ( box full of cooking utensils and some food ), a tundra tarp ( communal tent for cooking and getting away from bugs - a life saver ! ), appox 100 litre dry bag each for personal kit and a day bag each + fishing gear, a table, 2 fuel cans & pelican box with emergency gear in.

Canoes

Dave and Mark both own 'Pakboats' ( Canoe in a bag - yep thats an entire canoe in there ! )and were very generous in allowing Gene and I to use these without any 'hire' charge to ourselves. I found that this added to the excitement and after our first night in the 'bog', after a stunning breakfast of eggs Benedict, putting the canoes together was our first job. I believe that a skilled and practiced canoeist should be able to put these together in about 1/2 hour ! We took a little longer, perhaps due to my frequent breaks of running around batting away mosquitoes...

Pak boats loaded and covered with spray skirts, ready to go.

Emergency

In addition to the SPOT device we also had hired a satellite phone and Dave had brought is PLD, along with a plentiful supply of spare batteries for all of them.

SPOT

A spot device is a relatively new device, readily available now for ( when I last looked - $100 plus a yearly registration fee ) It allows you to send GPS co-ordinates along with a standard 'I'm OK' message to pre-determined email addresses or mobile phone numbers. It also has one option for a personal message - ours in this case was ' OK but wind bound ' and finally a SOS message. If you wish it also has a tracking facility which you can activate but this requires the GPS to be on all the time. For more information check out the link i n my 'relevant links' section of the blog.

SAT PHONE

Sat phones are easy to hire and is a standard piece of emergency equipment for such remote northern trips.

PLD ( Personal Locator Device ? )

I'm still not too sure about this and how it differs from SPOT...more research needed.

Bear protection

Here I am, enjoying a 'down day' at the 'Un-named Falls'. Bear protection from left to right - pepper spray, horn ( to alert my camp mates of the presence of a bear ) and loaded bear banger. After the 'curious incident of the sleeping bear on the hike time' - see chapters to follow, I took them everywhere with me. I've got to admit that whilst I enjoyed every minute of the trip, there has been a certain relief in the last 24hours at being able to go to the toilet without first digging a hole, whilst remaining vigilant for bears and being eaten alive by mosquitoes during the whole procedure!

Food

There was a lot of that too !

Now, for any of you who think that camping food is pasta'n'sauce, macaroni cheese and stag chilli - guess again. Thanks to Dave & Marks shopping and preparation this was gourmet at its best ! Dave spent about 3 weeks of his spare time ( and some of his not so spare time ) preparing the meals for our trip.

To give you some idea of the cuisine...muskox steak, seafood chowder, thanksgiving pie ( sheperds pie with turkey ), fresh baked quiche, beef strogonof, eggs Benedict, pancakes and maple syrup, bacon & eggs, strawberry crepes, apple crisp bake, creme caramel, key lime pie and on I could go. Honestly it was all delicious and down to Dave's hard work, so thanks again !

Now, the star of the show has to be freshly caught artic char, cooked on a bed of fresh vegetables ( on day 14 of the trip that was pretty good going ) with a mango sauce on top. It was delicious and I have photos of the three stages of preparation below...

1. Displaying the artic char caught by Mark & Dave ( it's only fair to say that Marks was the bigger one...) [ I did go fishing once and caught a large northern pike - evidence to follow ! ]

2. Having lessons from Mark in how to fillet the fish

3. The master chef at work.

The wonderful quality of the food on this trip added to the whole experience for me and although Gene confessed that he would have preferred the consistency of the key lime pie to be a little thicker ( much to my utter disgruntlement since that was the part I prepared ! ) I think I can speak for Gene, Mark & myself by saying a huge heartfelt thank you to Dave for all of his hard work !