Tony and myself have received a great deal of support from my good friends Ed and Sue. These guys live in Utah where they enjoy an active life. Ed and Sue drove their RV towing a trailer from Utah to pick Tony and myself up from Vancouver. They drove us around to the various shops where we picked up our almost new but 2nd hand canoe, our Spot Messenger, our food shopping and all the other various bits and pieces we needed. They then drove us to our put in point in Jasper, Alberta. Without this truly wonderful support, our 4,000km paddle would not have started with such ease and, so Ed and Sue, my very sincere and heartfelt thanks.
Our drive to Jasper went well until we had just passed through a toll gate. I was looking out of the rear window as we passed through the gate we hit a big bump and then I saw the trailer unhitch. I said to Ed "We've lost the trailer" but in my mind I was thinking it's OK, the chains will keep the trailer attached. No sooner had I thought that when the draw bar which was sleeved came adrift and the remaining part of the trailer with the canoe shot past the RV, heading straight towards a ravine. Fortunately there was no on coming trafffic and the canoe stopped several metres beside us. We now had one slightly less than perfect canoe, it's bow and front hull have some damage. Sadly there were no plastic welders on the way to Jasper, looks like we'll be using bitumen tape (also known as plumbers tape in Australia) for our 4,000km paddle.
We arrived in Jasper on Wednesday 4th June. It's a very scenic place and definitely an abudance of wild life. We've seen moose, deer, elk, a variety of birds and several big bears!!
Thursday 5th June
Tony and I decided to do a trial run from Athabasca Falls to Jasper, approximately 28kms. We went to the Falls but it was 8kms of gorges so erring on the side of caution (because we hadn't paddled our C2 in whitewater together before), we put in past the gorges about 8kms downstream. So with Tony at the front and me at the back off we set for the next 20kms.What a paddle we had! I'd suggest that the rapids were around Grade III, with standing waves and lots if bounce. We did pretty well and even though we had our spraydeck on, the canoe got swamped. Fortunately our repair job on the bow of the canoe with the bitumen tape held well.
No reason not to start our trip and so, our Three Rivers Expedition will start tomorrow, Friday 6th June 2008.
Posted by Terry Bolland at 5:41 PM 0 comments
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