We gazed apprehensively at our proposed landing strip. “Can we land on that? It’s covered with rocks and willows.” But after no more than two or three bounces, our seasoned pilot brought the Twin Otter bush plane to a sudden stop. Soon we would be canoeing through some of the wildest country left in Canada’s far north, following the Horton1 downriver to the unique Smoking Hills on the Arctic coast.

We unloaded an unbelievable amount of gear and established camp. Then we assembled the seven sections of our canoe, which became a 9.5 metre voyageur we quickly dubbed the “Queen Mary.” We had big plans for that big canoe, but because of its size, we questioned whether it could be paddled, manoeuvered, or even floated with all our gear aboard.

Rather than let the guests worry about the “Queen Mary,” I decided, as the trip naturalist, to lead a hike through the narrow ribbon of spruce along the valley bottom to the nearby treeless hills. We were all eager to look at the scenery and scan for wildlife.

We climbed to the top of a small knoll, from which we could view the horizon for many kilometres. There we revelled in the immensity of the landscape and the drama of this seldom-visited terrain. I pointed out the dazzling profusion of wildflowers and the delicate crusts of lichens and mosses padding the ground. Lichens spatter-painted the rocks in bright greens, sombre grays, blacks, browns and vivid chartreuse, all intensified when wet. In a copse of spruce we spotted a snowy owl. What a wonderful introduction to this remote and beautiful area!

As we returned to camp, the sky turned grayer and angrier. Low clouds rolled in from the west. Soon the gentle sprinkle from the leaden skies changed to a vigorous peppering, trickling down the nylon flys of the tents and dripping off the edges.

Rain and snow squalls blurred the opposite riverbank. In the security of our tents we huddled in our sleeping bags to get away from the wind and cold. A chorus from the next tent reverberated above the tempest:

 

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,

We’ve got no place to go.                                                                                                              Let it blow, let it blow, let it blow,

We’ve got no place to go.

 

And snow it did. Mother Nature blessed us with all four arctic seasons in one day, a reminder that we were north of the Arctic Circle.

During a short break in the weather the next afternoon, the remaining members of the group arrived, along with more gear. We were now a party of fifteen, nine in the “Queen Mary” and the rest in three tandem canoes.

There were ten clients, four guides, and myself, representing a broad range of experience and backgrounds. The clients included Elwyn, a farmer from Camrose, Alberta; Debra and Roeland, photographers from Ottawa; Lieselot, who works with the Netherlands Consul, and her retired husband Tom from Ottawa; Robert, a medical specialist from Ottawa; Bob, an expert canoeist from Napanee, Ontario; Roger and Tom, businessmen from Calgary, Alberta; and Patrick, a visitor from Switzerland. Our guides were Morten from Camrose, Alberta; Art from Jasper, Alberta; James, an Inuit guide from Tuktoyaktuk, Northwest Territories, and Neil, from Whitehorse, Yukon, the owner of Nahanni River Adventures. I had spent much of my professional life in the Arctic as a research scientist with the Canadian Wildlife Service.

We awoke on our first travel day to hand-numbing cold, but the sky finally leaked patches of blue and the reluctant sun seeped between the clouds. After an ample breakfast we lashed our mounds of gear to the canoes and to our royal yacht. To our delight, the “Queen Mary” floated. Paddling it was easier than we thought possible. After some instruction on handling her, and some good-natured ribbing from the more expert canoeists in the tandems, we were off.

Before our muscles were even warm, a peregrine falcon bulleted down the river. Although numerous nests of hawks and eagles clung to the cliff walls, this was the only raptor we saw that day. Sandpipers were plentiful, though, and they chirped as we paddled past a large gray wolf eyeing us suspiciously from shore. We stopped for photographs and searched for the wolf’s den, but we could not find it.

The Horton River and scores of smaller rivers and creeks have carved gentle valleys through the ancient sediments that underlie this region. The largest river we passed that first day was the Whalemen. Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a famous arctic explorer, author and anthropologist, named it for the whalers wintering in Langton Bay, who sent Inuit to this area to hunt.

Near the Whalemen River we got our first test in whitewater. We ran metre-high waves with lots of enthusiasm and nothing more serious than a few wet faces.

So ended our exciting first day on the river. We established camp on a gravel bar, devoured dinner and rested weary muscles. Temperatures had soared from edge-of-winter to sweaty summer. We had gone from parkas and extra layers of clothing to shirtsleeves within a day.

Camp was near the upper entrance to the main canyon of the Horton River where it narrowed and deepened, with eight sets of rapids over the next 40 kilometres to challenge us on the morrow. At the first rapids the Horton turned into a maelstrom that churned across a ledge into a huge hole of icy, emerald-green water. Downstream waited a tumble of bad-tempered, churning, racing rapids. Could the Queen Mary survive?

Yes, and in good style. We scouted and studied every rapid, in turn. Our guides issued the necessary instructions. At one point the eight experienced paddlers took over the big boat. We watched it bound, buck and plunge in the foaming chaos. Our experts enjoyed the physical challenge of “beating” the river, alarming us by barely avoiding the massive boulders at a sharp turn near the end of one rapid. Prudence, however, dictated lining the “Queen Mary” down another section of rapids.

Lining a canoe is accomplished by walking on shore and manipulating ropes from the bow and stem of the canoe while the current carries it down the river. It is a special skill not easily mastered. Luckily, there were no mishaps that day, although we had our moments. Neil, designer of the voyageur, wiped the sweat and spray from his brow and said, “This is the last trip for the “Queen Mary” on this section of the Horton!” The tandem canoes were much more manoeuverable in the narrow canyon.

The low-walled gorge through which we had just passed teemed with arctic colour and bird life. Serpentining back and fourth, swallows hawked insects along the river. A pair of peregrine falcons gave us a demonstration of aerobatics, diving and swooping in pursuit of prey. A soaring golden eagle seemed to be surfing the blue sky, as gulls with black-tipped wings, geese and mergansers zipped past our canoes.

Debra was impatient to take pictures of her first muskoxen. We scanned the landscape, but unfortunately all the muskoxen we saw on the slopes turned out to be no more than “muskrocks.”

“You’ll know when you see the real thing,” I declared. “Muskoxen look like large, walking shag carpets.”

Late that evening, while examining the river, I saw several large fish in the crystal-clear pool. I alerted Elwyn and Tom, the fishermen in our party. What a joy to awake the next morning to the aroma of freshly baked arctic grayling.

Except for the canyon area, the Horton is not a whitewater river. In the days that followed we experienced nothing more than an occasional spray bath from the breaking curl of a whitecap.

We enjoyed the resonate stillness of early morning in our warm sleeping bags before the clash of pots and pans signaled the start of each new day. As we pulled away on one of these mornings, a pompous raven, with bill open and chest out, strutted the sand to see if we’d left any goodies behind. It would be disappointed. Our guides prided themselves on leaving nothing but footprints to be washed away with the next high water. Future visitors would find no sign of our occupation. Even the rocks used to stake our tents were carefully returned.

On another morning we spotted an enormous honey-coloured grizzly foraging on a sparsely treed hillside. Silver-tipped with reddish brown legs, the bear looked like a sumo wrestler. After a good viewing of the bear through binoculars, we continued downriver to some small caves, resembling large geodes that had been opened. They were lined with crystals about five centimetres across.

Back on the river, we saw more “muskrocks,” but this time they turned out to be the real thing. Five of these classic arctic animals were silhouetted along the skyline.

We surprised two shaggy old bulls right beside the river. As they swaggered slowly away, we could see that both animals had saddles of white across their backs and light brown stockings on their lower legs. Their massive horns swept downward close to the skull, with the tips turned outward and upward. With their long brown hair swaying skirt-like below their bodies, they moved on legs that looked too slender to support the weight of such massive-looking mammals. Their long, thick coats, however, disguised the fact that muskox bulls typically weigh only about 350 kilograms. They stand about 140 centimetres tall at the shoulder and are 250 centimeters long. Females are smaller.

By rubbing the scent glands, which are near their eye sockets, on the inside of their forelegs, bull muskoxen emit a strong odour. Hence the name. James said that his people called these animals “umingmak,” meaning, “bearded ones.”

The river widened the current slowed, and the water turned muddy. Gentle rolling countryside surrounded us. Clusters of scraggly spruce dotted the landscape. Clumps of white cotton grass decorated the marshes, while the magenta flowers of river beauty and the cheerful, brassy yellow oxytrope brightened the drier, sandier sites. Massive stands of purple-flowered Arctic sweetvetch, now in full bloom, covered the hillsides. Roots of these plants are favourite forage for bears.

With three days of hot dry weather behind us after our opening experience of winter-in-the-summer, the Horton River was now a potpourri of blooming and hatching. Mosquitoes and black flies started looking for blood meals whenever the breeze weakened, ready to pillage our warm bodies without mercy as we prepared camp for the evening.

July 1^st, Canada Day, started with porridge, muffins and good campfire coffee. As we did our stretching exercises, a stately bald eagle floated across the azure sky, catching the thermals. A good omen for the day! We felt grateful for this expanse of untouched, majestic wilderness.  Too few Canadians realize what we have in our own backyard.

We wanted to reserve a day at the end of the trip for hiking overland to the Smoking Hills and the polar sea. This meant long days of paddling. By now the sinuous curves of the Horton sometimes required that we paddle ten kilometres on the river to gain one kilometre by land. Headwinds became a real enemy. After a strenuous paddle up one windward oxbow, buffeted by a stiff, full-in-our-face breeze, Roeland decided to fight back. Using his South African ingenuity, he jury-rigged a mast from extra paddles and attached a plastic tarp for a makeshift sail. It worked; every metre sailed was a metre not paddled and a welcome relief for our tired muscles. The pattern was set: paddle against the headwinds, sail with the tailwinds.

At times we would drift the river in total silence, drinking in the wilderness experience each in our own way, each with our own thoughts.

Silhouetted on the brow of a hill, ten more muskoxen came into view. Wind blowing across the hilltops prevented mosquitoes from accumulating, making it more comfortable for the animals to graze up there. Their suits of dense, woolly under-fur and overcoats of long brown hair, protect muskoxen from insects and the extreme temperatures of winter, but their lips, eyes and ears are exposed to these tormentors. To a muskox, any breeze is a good breeze.

Our camp for the night was a beautiful, sandy bar. We were charmed by a profusion of wildflowers, especially those of a tiny milk-vetch whose few lavender blossoms nestled close to the earth.  A fret of willows bordered a bog. Other signs on the sand included prodigious piles of bear dung and huge footprints. Caribou, an animal we had yet to see, had also left their calling cards.

At the base of a willow clump we found a nest of Harris’ sparrows. Whenever the adults arrived with insects, the fledglings quivered and stretched up with open mouths, begging, “Me first! Me first!”

Nearer camp we came upon a nesting semipalmated plover. With great cries of alarm the bird led us away from its three eggs, lying in nothing more than a scrape in the sand.

Next morning we headed for Coal Creek, where we hoped to search out the remains of Vilhjalmur Stefansson’s cabin. Stefansson had used the cabin in 1911 for exploring and hunting. His book, Living with the Eskimo, provides a lively, detailed and sympathetic discussion of the lives, customs and beliefs of the Inuit, as well as some details on his cabin location.

We spread out and found black-spruce stumps that had been cut well above the ground. Soon we located the remnants of a small cabin. Apparently double-walled, only its base remained.

This old dwelling site, a water-gauging station, and a tread from a snowmobile were the only evidence of human activity that we found on our two-week journey. We saw no footprints, no campfire rings, nothing. The Horton was unimpaired, unmarred. It was as created, altered only by its own processes.

The day we found the cabin was a howling success in more ways than one. We spotted another wolf. I uttered my very best howl. The wolf stared, uncertain whether to flee or stay. Then suddenly it tipped back its head and replied in kind. Our duet of howl and reply, howl and reply continued over several minutes, until my voice wavered from the effort. At one time the wolf was so close that I thought it was coming aboard the “Queen Mary.” It was certainly the least wary wilderness wolf that I had ever seen, and we were likely the first humans it had encountered.

When we started downriver the fearless wolf walked down the bank, keeping abreast of us for a short distance. Lieselot was certain that I had carried on a real conversation with it and insisted on the intimate details!

Meals are important on a self-propelled adventure such as this one. Our meals were excellent, carefully planned, packaged in advance and well prepared by the guides. The guides worked from early morning to late evening, cooking, lugging gear, loading and lashing it, unloading, setting up and tearing down camp and answering an endless stream of questions.

As the naturalist on the trip, each day I took interested guests on hikes as soon as camp was established. The hikes provided the guests with a greater appreciation of the essence of this remote and still largely unvisited wilderness. This day we had dinner first, then we launched an ambitious hike through the treeless tundra along muskoxen and caribou trails. The Arctic ground squirrels, or “sik-siks,” looked huge compared to the diminutive plants surrounding them. Filigrees of their tracks ran along a sandy ridge where the soil was deep enough to allow them to dig burrows and thus gain some protection from predators. In other places the permafrost was so near the surface that digging burrows was impossible.

Grizzly bears search for sik-siks, one of their favourite foods. Digging with their front legs, flailing earth behind them, grizzly bears excavate large holes in pursuit of such small rewards.

The scenery along our hike included some barren, carmine-red hills, still washed with sunlight at midnight. As we returned to camp, tired after a long day, a warm wind hustled down from the hills and along the river, forecasting more of that welcome summer’s heat the next day.

And so it was. As we paddled in pleasant temperatures, we passed by a spot where the river had undercut a wall of permafrost. Ice, water and debris had collapsed into the current. In this northern land, summer is too short to allow much more than a few centimetres of soil to thaw. Underneath, the ground is permanently frozen. This exposed wall of permafrost was about 10 metres high and 100 metres long. The recent warm days were undoubtedly speeding up the melting process. We could clearly see that only the thinnest layer of living soil supported the plants, with icy permafrost lurking immediately below.

Around the next bend was our first caribou, an antlered bull trotting along with its handsome head held high. Was he a forerunner or a straggler of the massive herd we had hoped to see blanketing the landscape? Unfortunately, we never saw a big herd.

Instead, birds attacked us that afternoon. We found well-camouflaged eggs on the pebbled beach, vigorously protected by a pair of Arctic terns. They castigated us from above, and when Tom moved off too slowly he was dive-bombed, nearly losing hat and head.

Later in the afternoon we watched fearless peregrine parents circle and dive, screaming “kie, kie, kie, kie, kie” to warn us away from their nest on a ledge under an overhanging rock. We identified the peregrine falcons easily by their swept-back, pointed wings and their distinctive black wedges below the eyes.

Lemming protein is a staple of Arctic life, and everything that eats the little mouse-like rodents appears to boom or bust with them. During an earlier trip when lemming numbers were high, golden eagles, bald eagles, rough-legged hawks and gyrfalcons had been abundant. On this trip we did not see a single lemming, not even a track or dropping. Neither did we see many lemming predators, and although we saw dozens of raptor nests along the river, none was occupied. Most likely the lemming crash curtailed the breeding success of those raptors.

Yet the peregrines’ numbers were high, and judging from their aggressive behaviour at several locations, they were nesting. How could that be? Peregrines are efficient hunters of small birds, so they would not be influenced by a lemming population crash.

We reached our island campground and gobbled a delicious Chinese dinner. After sharing the day’s experiences with our companions, we drifted off to bed under the midnight sun, bone-weary.

The last day on the river was a short paddle of about twenty kilometres. We chose a huge gravel bar for the last camp. It was large enough for the Twin Otter to use as a runway, and it was within walking distance of the Smoking Hills and the Arctic Ocean.

Our guides took the “Queen Mary” apart. Some of the clients rested. I took the others for a hike. A flourish of wildflowers brightened our path—lavender asters, yellow wallflowers, sky-blue Jacob’s ladder—and I was amazed to discover a mass of albino-flowered river beauty, the first I had seen in more than thirty years of working in northern and western Canada. The flowers and bracts of river beauty are usually a showy magenta. Here they were completely white.

Across the river we discovered a red-fox den. While the vixen hunted for dinner, the three young kits engaged in an ongoing free-for-all. Even a visit to their den site did not delay their play for long.

For days we had looked forward to reaching our ultimate destination: the Smoking Hills. Little did we know that getting there across the boggy coastal lowlands would cost us each about a pint of blood lost to the resident mosquitoes.

Cresting a ridge, we caught our first glimpse of the Arctic Ocean. A few minutes later we reached the cliffs above Franklin Bay. We stopped to rest and to soak up the spectacular ocean view, with its aqua-blue icebergs and white pack ice. We scanned the bay for beluga whales and seals amidst the ice floes but saw none.

Some of the party wanted a closer look and slid down the hundred-metre-high sea cliffs to the ocean below. One of the braver members even went wading in the berg-strewn bay.

The others proceeded along the cliff tops toward dense columns of smoke from the fabled Smoking Hills. Black, carbon-rich shale underlay the surface here. The rock also had a high concentration of microscopic pyrite rich in sulphur, and the carbon/sulphur combination had ignited spontaneously. Hellish-smelling, sulphurous smoke issued from fissures and vents in a  landscape on fire below the surface. Burnt-out spots were coloured vividly pink, bright red, sulphur-yellow, gray and white. Burning areas on the slumping cliffs were warm, even hot, to the touch. The whole scene, extending some 40 kilometres along the coast, was worthy of Dante’s Inferno.

Richardson discovered the Smoking Hills in 1826. He went ashore to investigate the strange sight and reported what he found with amazing accuracy.

Today, as in Richardson’s time, plumes of gas and ash blow inland across the tundra. This airborne witch’s brew is a mixture of sulphur dioxide and toxic metals. Where it comes to rest, the ground and water bodies it contaminates are among the most severely polluted in the world. The burning goes on year-round, and has likely persisted for hundreds of years. The natural acidity has killed all but the most specialized life, which somehow manages to survive both on land and in the water. The polluting effects can be measured 50 kilometres from the Smoking Hills. It is ironic that such extreme pollution is the result of a natural event.

The beach-combing group, gagging and gasping from the toxic air issuing from the vents, rendezvoused with us on the cliff tops for a gourmet picnic of champagne pâté, pastrami, cheeses, antipasto and crackers. We sat enjoying our picnic while watching the enigma of an inferno overlooking icebergs.

On the way back to camp the tundra looked as if bouquets of brightly coloured flowers had been flung among the rocks. We added several new bird species to our trip list, including a ptarmigan. Surrounded by 15 camera-carrying humans, the bird gave up any attempt to escape and posed for us.

Our last night on the Horton was magical. Muted light painted the evening sky in subtle hues. Idling air scarcely moved the white-topped bolls of cotton grass or rippled the water. Across the river the vixen still hunted, and the kits continued to frolic with each other. A grizzly bear fed on the slope east of camp while her cubs watched and played beside her. A lone bull caribou swam the river below camp. Two swans shared our beach, ignoring our tents and our stack of gear. We surrendered totally to the enchantment of this untamed northern land.

Next morning the roar of the Twin Otter thundering into camp splintered our solitude. The gilded days were behind us. The trip was over.

Years from now we’ll still think about the time we shared on the Horton; the friendships we made and the all-consuming peace, serenity and beauty that so few people will ever experience. In our minds, we’ll see the Arctic Ocean and the Smoking Hills; we’ll smell the sulphur, hear the gray wolf calling and feel the bites of black flies and mosquitoes. We’ll see birds soaring over fields of wildflowers, and we’ll relive each magical day, strengthened physically, emotionally and spiritually by two weeks in this unique northern wilderness.

 

***

George W. Scotter is a writer and a retired research scientist with many years of experience in the North. His latest books are Mammals of the Canadian Rockies, Birds of the Canadian Rockies, and Wildflowers of the Canadian Rockies. He now lives in Kelowna, British Columbia.  Mary and I first travelled with George and Etta while touring THAILAND. They also joined us for two weeks on the AMALFI COAST AND TUSCANY trip. You will have a chance to meet George and Etta on our trip to  EGYPT AND THE ANCIENT NILE..

 

TRAVEL WITH FRIENDS: YOU WILL ENJOY IT MORE