Tuesday, June 25, 2019
We left the Kanoe People canoe rental store at 10:30 after hauling our stuffed food canister and our gigantic dry bag from our motel room to the canoe. Both of these items were rented from the shop. They didn’t open until 9:00 am of course time is irrelevant when it’s light all day and night. Our orientation included Jennifer a thirty something women who is paddling solo.
The paddling seemed easy. Our Kanoe person warned us about Lake Laberge, five finger rapid followed by another rapid. The lake would come up today. Kanoe man said the 30 mile lake could go from dead calm to a six foot wave is 45 seconds. I mean why even tell us this? What could you possibly change in 45 seconds?
Kanoe man is from France and the whole scene reminded me of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther movies speaking in an exaggerated accent and the inspector echoing Sellers words and accent, but ending the sentence with a question mark. You exit the dock at a ninety degree angle. A ninety degree angle? Yes, like this he holds up his paddle. We all look confused. You head up river. Up river? Yes, yes up river. And so on.
His briefing on our 16 day trip basically explained leaving their dock and arriving at their dock in Dawson at the end of the trip. All three of us were confused about how we were even supposed to push off in our canoes. He walked away and let us move on. We were happy he wasn’t watching. Jenifer shoved off first going straight downriver with no ninety degree angle, and we did the same.
The river in Whitehorse is swift about 6 to 10 mph. It didn’t take long to get out of Whitehorse, a town of 30,000. We had a map book of the river which was printed in the early 80s. Things have changed. Ten minutes into the paddle my forearms ached. I decided to study the map book but couldn’t find any of the landmarks. Ten minutes later my right deltoid was killing me. I took off my jacket. Then my fingers ached and I took some pictures. And so it went. I felt like a child trying to delay doing her chores.
The river was easy, the weather was warm and sunny and the views were gorgeous, despite aches and pains all was right.
About 3:30 we were approaching Lake Laberge. Yes, this is the Lake Laberge made famous by the Robert Service poem The Cremation of Sam McGee. Black clouds were building ahead. There was one camp spot before we hit the lake. The next suitable camp was reported, in the map book to be three miles ahead. We saw a canoe, a tent and a couple already on shore. We decided to chance the lake. We paddled about half an hour when the weather got more iffy. We paddled into a sandy beach with a grassy spot before a wooded area. We made lunch and Jennifer, our partner from orientation pulled up. We chatted until it started to spit rain. She decided to head for Indian Village and we threw up the tent.
We napped until the rain stopped and we packed up for the lake. It was fairly calm, but dark clouds were building and thunder was in the distance. We paddled for almost two more hours when we saw a red house peeking out from behind trees. We paddled closer and thought we saw a red canoe on the beach. It was Jennifer’s. This was Indian village. It appear to have nothing to do with Native people. It was s series of boarded up cabins. Jennifer had strung her hammock tent on the porch of a cabin, so we set up our tent on the porch of another one. There we signs of bears prints and scat, but it turned out that the only thing aggressive were the mosquitoes.
Chilkoot hike and Yukon paddle 