Tuesday 12th August 2008

It's been a cruel finish to what has been an amazing trip! After paddling nearly 4,000kms (2,000kms for Alaine and Leonie), the weather dealt the final blow. Being only 70kms from the ocean, a one and a half days paddle, we checked the weather forecast for the days that we would be crossing the ocean. The report wasn't good, it was going to be extremely windy for the days of the crossing. When we left Inuvik two days earlier, the weather report was for near perfect conditions for the ocean crossing part of the trip, despite the weather over the previous few days being extremely cold and wet.

With this new weather information I had to make the toughest decision that I've had to make in years, to keep paddling into weather that we knew we couldn't paddle in or retreat back to Inuvik against the current with the knowledge that we hadn't got to our preferred finishing point of Tuktoyaktuk. With the past week's weather of being very cold and wet and two days of continuous rain and maximum temperatures of 5C, we were in a quandary as to what to do. Since crossing the Arctic Circle, the weather has been very cool except a couple of brief encounters with the sun.

With the wind coming from the North, it meant that we were always ploughing into it. So with the continuous rain, the intense cold weather and the wind waves that splashed over the bow of the canoe making it an extra cold/wet trip for Alaine. Despite her wearing several layers of clothing she was chilled more than Leonie and I. With Tony leaving us a Inuvik, it meant that Leonie was paddling her canoe by herself and in moderate wind conditions, we needed to tow her to keep the nose of the canoe in line. So this made it more imperative that we had calm conditions on the ocean to ensure that our crossing was safe. Leonie did an amazing job in paddling the canoe herself and should feel very proud of her determination and abilities.

As we stood in the rain on a beach 70kms from the ocean, the decision to turn back would affect us for a long time to come. I have completed four other very long rivers to the end and Alaine and Leonie were looking forward to completing the entire MacKenzie River, although we had paddled thousands of kms, we had a hollow feeling inside it wasn't about what we had achieved up until then. Our minds and hearts were focused on that last little bit and when we decided for safety sake to retreat, sadly we had forgotten what we had actually achieved.