August 11, 2009

Day Two

I awoke before five o’clock with a pounding, sick to my stomach sinus headache.  Fumbling around in the dark of the tent, I found my glasses and headlamp.  I quickly located the medical kit and downed two Tylenol and two pseudoephed tablets. Badly nauseated from the screaming headache, I pulled on some clothes and headed for the latrine, thinking I might vomit.  It was still dark and the latrine was like a coffin.  I sat there with the door closed in front of me, holding my head as I was racked by cold sweats. The loudest sound was the pounding in my head.  The only thing I could see was the blurry circle of light thrown by my headlamp on the inside of the latrine door.  It was like a scene from Edgar Allen Poe’s “Buried Alive”.  I was really hurting.   

        Slowly, the nausea began to pass, the pounding lessened and the cold sweats ceased.  I ventured out of my prison to see the beginning of morning.  Back in my tent, I pulled on a watch cap; warmth sometimes helps relieve the sinus pain - and tried to sleep.  It was 5:45.  I rested, not really sleeping until Bruce came by to wake everyone up.  We had agreed to be up by 6:30. 

I stayed in my tent, slowly packing everything inside before venturing out again.  I could hear the sounds of breakfast being prepared out near the fire ring.  We each were responsible for our own breakfasts and lunches, while dinner was a shared meal.  The thought of food did not sit well with me, so I stayed where I was until I had finished packing all my gear.  I carried it down to the boat and began loading. 

Despite feeling sick and moving at what I considered to be a snail’s pace, I was ready along with everyone else.  We were on the water at about 8:30, an hour that would become our standard departure time throughout the trip.  High tide had been at about 7:00.  We had less than ten miles to travel to Gros Rousseau, so we would have a favorable tide for the whole trip.  The only reason to get on the water early was to avoid having to carry the loaded boats too far down the rock-strewn beach to get into the water.  With a tidal range of fifteen to twenty vertical feet, moving with the tides became critical.  And, once we were in a new camp, we were more or less prisoners there until the next high tide, as it was too dangerous to carry the boats across a hundred yards or more of large, exposed and slippery rocks. 

Once on the water, I was able to notice what a beautiful morning it was.  It wasn’t summer beautiful with bright sunlight making diamonds on the water or white puffy clouds floating overhead.  This morning was stark and dramatic.  The sky was a smoke gray overcast, stretching across the whole horizon.  The walls of the fjord were dark, sometimes black, sometimes deep, deep blue.  The clouds were low, hanging just above the walls, with a thin vale of fog draped here and there like gauze across a window; and not a house or boat or a cell tower anywhere in sight.  I was filled with a sense of just how remote this place was.

Calm water and a short distance to paddle meant we had time to explore.  The walls of the fjord are steep and magnificent.  We passed a mammoth piece of rock, hundreds of feet high and even wider at it’s base.  Our boats looked like

toys as we passed close by.  We later learned that the shear rock face had been created when a huge slab of rock cleaved from the wall in one piece and fell into the fjord. 

The steep walls and abundant water created dozens of waterfalls too.  Even when they could not be seen, they could be heard out on the water as we passed by.

But the ones we could see were often magnificent.  We explored two that were very near Gros Rousseau.  They don’t look like much until you see a kayak gliding by, looking like an ant next to the scale of the waterfall. 

We arrived at Gros Rousseau at about 11:30.  I was glad to get there.  Even though I had paddled less than ten miles, it

was about all I wanted to do on this day!  The beach was steep with big rocks and boulders.  This would be one of our most difficult landings.  We exited our boats and one by one, lifted them to a safe spot in the rocks where they could be unloaded.  With landings like this, it becomes important to have enough carry bags to get

your gear from boat to camp in two, or at most three trips.   This was day two of the trip, so I didn’t have this down to a routine just yet.  After several trips, my gear was

on shore.

The first thing I noticed about this camp was the picnic table. It sat on blocks in a puddle of water with the remnants of a stream running under it.  There was very little beach on which to put our boats, and the climb into camp was up a steep, slick, muddy trail.  The sites were numbered 1-6.  The sites climbed up the hill, each one higher than the last.  We had sites 1-4.  Somehow, I got a wonderful site; a platform perched on the edge of a cliff overlooking the fjord.  The platform, one of the large twelve by sixteen foot platforms found in the newer camps, was half in sun and half in shade.  This was perfect for escaping the unusual heat while at the same time drying out my tent and gear. 

After setting up my tent and placing gear to dry, I decided to find the latrine in case I had any further problems like those of the morning.  I found it at the top of a goat trail, high above site 6.  I was sure I would only be going there if I absolutely needed to, and then only in daylight!

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Back at my site, I rested a while, then ambled down to the “beach”.  By this time we had carried the boats up through the boulder field to the tiny grassy

The boats were afloat at high tide.

area we called a beach.  Bruce and Alan were fussing with the table.  The thing was anchored with heavy cinderblocks cabled and bolted to it.  It was impossible to move, but nearly useless where it was in the middle of a stream. 

Bruce found a multi-tool and began to unbolt one cable.  I worked on the other with a second tool.  It took a while, but we got the blocks off.  We carried the table some distance to a grassy area we thought would be dry at high tide, reconnected the cables to the cinderblocks and bolted them in place once more. 

Gaetan created a stone age hibachi with some flat stones and the smallest grill I have ever seen.  He placed a few briquettes underneath to be ready for supper, which was to be pork tenderloin.  Then he grabbed a towel and his dopp kit and headed for a stream flowing into the bay on one side of camp.    Soon he was back clean and refreshed.  I grabbed my stuff and asked Gaetan to show me where he had washed up.  He led me to a flat rock, perfect for sitting on, in the center of the rushing water flowing down the narrow stream bed.  The water was very cold; too cold to put my body in.  But sitting there, I could use a washcloth on my body and wash my hair, and shave (Yes, shave.  I can’t stand more than two or three days growth of beard, especially in hot weather).  It felt great. 

I had brought a ceramic filter to filter water from streams like this one.  So, I got it out and proceeded to fill two water bottles.  I drank one down on the spot.  The water was cold and sweet tasting.  Whatever the mineral content was, the water was delicious.  I refilled the

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bottle and headed back to camp, praising the quality of the water.  As it turned out, no one else would “risk” filtering water to drink, even though I did it in camp after camp with no ill effects. 

With the sun dropping toward the horizon directly across the fjord from our camp, we got some relief from the sun and heat. I must have been dehydrated, as I continued to drink a lot of water.  Gaetan began dinner by preparing his fire.  It’s amazing that he could cook such a great meal on a tiny grill using only eight or ten charcoal briquettes.  While Gaetan kept his eye on the fire and the sizzling tenderloin, I prepared couscous as a side dish.  Soon everything was ready.  Gaetan’s teriyaki marinated tenderloin melted in our mouths.  He cooked a better tenderloin on that little stone age hibachi than I could cook at home on my big gas grill! 

Then it was the dinner cleanup and a campfire and conversation into the evening as we watched the sunset casting red and gold all over the horizon.  Most of us headed to our tents when the mosquitoes came out, with lights out around ten o’clock.  As I drifted off to sleep, I could hear the sounds of that nearby stream that had refreshed my body inside and out, singing me to sleep.

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