Day 1, Launch

3 June 1994.

The wind picked up. It moaned across the world’s deepest lake — Great Slave Lake — gouged out by glaciers 10,000 years ago — a huge pool of water that feeds the Mackenzie River. Even in early June, although much of the lake was free, ice still crowded the shore. Break-up had come late this year, leaving ice floes the size of football fields that groaned as the wind pushed and heaved at the ice. One floe jammed the shore and blocked water moving into the Mackenzie. Eddies formed around the solid ice structure. Floating ice approached the jam, and then swirled around it. Even mammoth bergs hit, bounced and flowed around, like leaves eddying in a stream.

The Mackenzie clogged with tennis-court size ice floes. Looking north across the river to Fort Providence.

From their motel window in Fort Providence a few miles downstream, Dick Holladay watched the conveyor belt of ice flowing down the river, frustrated but determined. At home in Albuquerque, planning the expedition, he had carefully researched when the lake and river ice would break up and had checked with the Mounties here in Ft. Providence that break up had indeed come. All was ready. Now this — wind pushing floes, and clogging a river that was essentially ice free downstream.

His wife, April, rose from bed to join him. At 1:30 in the morning and three hours after the sun had set, it was still light enough to see. He looked at her — light brown hair disheveled, blue eyes questioning.

"It’s still clogged with ice," he said. "But we’ve got to go, or give up the trip. Freeze up will get us in a couple of months, if we don’t move out. We don’t know how long it’s going to take to canoe the river — it might be a couple of months, if things go wrong," he said, as he ran his hand through his coarse, close-cut brown hair.

"True, but even the waitress yesterday said it was too early yet — the floes could crush us." April shivered in the early morning chill.

"We’ve waited for seven days, and it’s the same thing each day. No more waiting. It’s either launch or go home."

"I just don’t know." April looked dubious and maybe a touch frightened, as she watched the huge floes. She tightened her blue fleece bathrobe.

Dick stopped pacing, hit by a thought. "Why wouldn’t we just float along with the ice?" He nodded. "We’ll be okay. Our canoes will move with the same speed as the floes do. They won’t crush us. We’ll float... with the ice... downstream."

April still wasn't sure, but it did seem reasonable, the more she thought about it. "Well, let’s get some sleep first." She checked her watch. "It’s still 2 in the morning."

Later that morning, they drove the 4Runner to the launch site. Dick unloaded the canoe and supplies. He inflated and lashed the white, nylon float bags in place deep in the bow and stern of the green Old Town ‘Camper’ canoe.

LL Bean billed the canoe as "great boats for family paddling trips, with wide hull and flat bottom for reassuring stability." Dick and April had outfitted theirs for comfort, with 2-inch cushioned seats and back supports. The canoe, made of laminated ABS plastic and foam — one of the toughest canoe materials, could take the blows of moderate whitewater. What’s more, Kevlar (the stuff bullet-proof vests are made of) reinforced the gunwales. Measuring 16 feet long and 3 feet wide, the canoe had space, barely, for the necessary gear and two paddlers — one in the stern and one in the bow.

Even so, the canoe could only contain half the food needed for the estimated 45-day trip. The week before, Dick had shipped the remainder of the food aboard the Vic Ingraham, a Northern Transportation Company freighter that plies the river, for pick up later in Norman Wells, an oil town about halfway down the river. The Mackenzie River was still the backbone of water transportation in the western Northwest Territories. Freighters hauled general merchandise, construction materials, steel containers, highway trailers and drilling rigs.

Dick drove the 4Runner to an airplane hanger for storage, while April readied the canoe. He had met Ted Maleski, the bush pilot and owner, about a week earlier; Ted had agreed to store the 4Runner for $20 a month. Then Dick left word with the Mounties they were leaving and gave his estimated next check-in date. With an optimism he hadn't felt all week, he started hiking the mile and a half back to the launch site.

April stowed the final items and covered the canoe. The custom-made brown cover sealed the top of the open canoe around each paddler. Now, the canoe would shed rain and waves, and with the float bags in place, would be almost impossible to swamp — even if tipped over.

Dick strolled down the road, returning. He looked at April busily tying a long cord through each item. "You finished yet?"

"Just tying everything together to lash to the canoe. So, in case of upset, it will stay with the canoe," she explained unnecessarily since they had been planning the trip for the better part of a year.

Dick grunted, unimpressed, said nothing, but had hoped the canoe would be loaded by now. They worked on.

Finally, about 10 that morning, they were ready. Dick waded into cold water and put the green canoe in the water.

"My so-called ‘dry’ socks leak," he said disgustedly.

April climbed into the bow, while Dick held it steady. Dick clambered in, pushed off and they headed out of the little cove.

"We’re off," April cried as they entered the current of the Mackenzie. The canoe was pretty much stationary with respect to the floes. "All we have to do is steer around them!" said April, chuckling with relief.

But it wasn’t as safe as Dick had hoped. Some floes moved in little eddies, against the current, and made a loud grinding noise as they hit each other or into the shore.

"What was that sound?" April looked at Dick.

"Those floes collided." Dick nodded toward two large ones, and then dipped his paddle hard, turning their canoe away.

With a few paddle strokes, they left the village and were soon deep in remote reaches of Canada. Spruce trees crowded islands and lined the banks. Occasional rocky outcrops interrupted the dense line of trees. Flat swamp and muskeg stretched back along inlets. The couple had stepped back centuries in time, it seemed, to before civilization and its hordes of people overran North America — back to the days of the Old West, intrepid explorers… and outlaws.

They paddled across the Mackenzie, picking their way carefully through the floes, to the far south shore, which was ice-free. En route, April snapped pictures of small floes sparkling in the sun like fantastic glass palaces

"That’s better." April said, upon reaching floe-free safety. Back on the north shore, the ice extended for 20 miles, to Mills Lake, the first major waypoint of their voyage.

As the day wore on, the pair navigated around many islands. Occasionally confused, they stopped paddling while Dick consulted the topo map to find their way. As the canoe neared one island, flocks of ducks and Canadian geese rose off the water. One goose squawked loudly, almost like a bawling calf. Small white wading birds looked up from the shore. They looked like killdeer Dick and April had seen along the Rio Grande in New Mexico.

Shortly afterwards, as they nosed their canoes past an island, a beaver slammed his tail, vastly irritated by their intrusion. A black loon paddled by. An otter, swimming beside them, suddenly turned tail, dived and splashed a geyser of water up.


The 20-mile paddle on Day 1: from Fort Providence to Mills Lake.

About midday, a strong wind sprang up, making for hard paddling. It seemed to last forever, but finally died late afternoon, which was good because then they had to leave the south shore, and cross the wide mouth of the Syne River at the start of Mills Lake.

Paddling in perfect calm, they eventually reached Mills Lake, but had to leave shore again, as long rocky fingers jutting out from shore forced them to deeper water. Fortunately, the calm lasted. On and on they paddled into the evening. April was more than ready to quit, but the south shore had become extremely marshy. Mosquitoes rose in clouds. Worse, the river’s current essentially died inside Mills Lake. They had to rely on muscle power alone.

April’s right shoulder and elbow ached with each stroke. The months of exercise preparing for this adventure helped, but right now it didn't seem enough.

About 8:30 in the bright evening, they found a campsite, and stopped for the ‘night’ — not that night ever comes this time of year in the high arctic. The sun barely dips below the horizon and twilight lingers. They made camp on a sandy point.

April picked up a duffle bag, and started to unload the canoe.

Dick hauled a huge pile of driftwood, small logs and branches, to the campsite, and then big rocks to build a windbreak for the fireplace. Every one of his limbs felt stiff and heavy, and the night air seemed too cold for summer. He glanced up at gray clouds building. "Looks like rain."

April, her head aching from the day’s paddle and eyes stinging from mosquito repellent, hurried to setup the tents. She stuffed their gear in the tents, while Dick got the fire going. Each had an assigned task, carefully planned, and pretty much botched. Fatigue took its toll. The blazing sticks almost refused to diminish into cooking coals, but finally the coffee pot’s river water boiled.

Soon their dinner was ready. They ripped open the freeze-dried packages and demolished steaks like wolves.

Their bellies full, April finished cleanup chores for the evening. Dick lit a mosquito coil in their tent. Colin (the bush pilot who had rented space for their 4Runner) had told Dick about mosquito coils. "You can’t live without ‘em in the bush."

So Dick had picked up a huge supply. Now, the smoke drifted up from the coil and slowly wafted through the tent, killing mosquitoes by the droves.

"Listen," April said. The crazy laughter of a loon bubbled across the lake.

Dick hauled out an 5 x 8 inch yellow legal pad, and started to enter the events of the day in his journal. Then he read a snatch he had copied from Alexander Mackenzie’s journal:

In late June of 1789, Mackenzie was lost on Great Slave Lake. He had asked local Indians, but “They know nothing even of the [Mackenzie] River… Our guides [are] quite at a loss. They do not know what course to take.” Finally, his party stumbled upon a passage to the river.

Trader Mackenzie discovered a river, nowhere less than a half mile wide, and, near the Great Slave Lake, often three and four miles wide. He explored its length, a thousand miles to the Arctic Ocean, in flimsy birchbark canoes, taking only 14 days. On 29 June, Mackenzie and his party of four voyagers, a young German, a Chipewyan Indian, sundry wives and hunters made camp, somewhere downstream from where Fort Providence is now.

"Perhaps at the very spot we are now," Dick said.

"I wonder..." April smiled.

The sun started to set about midnight; a pleasant twilight descended, marred by the ever-present mosquitoes.


Miles traveled: 20 (32 km)
Position at day's end: N 61-25-21, W 118-12-11.