Petite Mecatina - 5 day self support - Part 1

Posted by bobby johnson on 2 October 2007 | 0 Comments

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The mission was simple, get to the bottom of the river in time to catch our ferry and avoid being stranded for an extra 7 days... The rest were just details and thoughts of the unrun gorge and the need to stay at river level if we were to make our ride were attempted to be pushed to the background..... The all-star team consisted of Tommy Hilleke, Erik Boomer, Willie Kern, John Grace, Fred Corriell, Joe Barkley, Billy Murphy, and Tribe pro team members Anthony Yap and Pat Camblin. The video will be appearing on the next LVM... subscibe at www.lvmvideo.com

The trip started in different far reaches of North America with the team rallying from all over to make it up to the end of highway 138 at the far end of north eastern Quebec. 20 hours east of Montreal lays the small maritime town of Nathasquan where we left the cars and flew by floatplane across the vast northern watersheds to our put-in for the Petite Mecatina. Grace and all those southern boys estimated the flow at around 5000cfs... I'd put it more in the 350cms range (~12500) but it was tricky in most parts to judge depth so who knows...

Day one started out with heavily loaded boats and some great big water rapids, lots of moves to be made and some great big water read and run. As the day wore on we approached the imposing domes we had flown over earlier - the unrun gorge and the crux of our trip. We scouted for a long time trying to get a look at what was downstream. The line on the lengthy entrance rapid was a stout right to left ferry to avoid what appeared to be a heinous hole that stretched across most of the river... Tommy and Willie went over to river left and climbed high to get a better view of what we were in for downstream. John and Patrick managed to get high enough up on the river right side to see that the big hole had a soft spot in the middle that was pulsating sufficiently to make an acceptable Plan B. Below appeared to be a portage that ended up being immediately followed by a death rapid. The call was made, this rapid had to be run to avoid portaging around the whole gorge and missing the ferry at the end.

Boomer, Patrick and Anthony were the first down. The line started far right, running down through a chute with a couple tricky little holes and then busting up and onto the back of a big hole in the middle and using the backwash from the hole to get far left. The problem was that the backwash of the hole had a big boil which was the wild card as to how people would fare. Boomer made it up and over and trucked across the river, just behind him Pat got caught on the backside of the boil and battled to get across before turning and squaring up to charge the Plan B center line. A seam opened up and took his bow as he hit a diagonal feeding off a large boulder on the right. He rolled up just in time to be dropping into the wrong side of the heinous hole, backwards, and with no speed. Anthony had been caught on the backside of the boil as well but hit the center of the hole and came through unscathed. Pat got a violent trashing ragdolling left and right and hanging on for his life. With what was known to be downstream this was a really bad spot and swimming would have been curtains. He held on and after a very scary 25-30 seconds he flushed deep and without much energy left made it to the side above the portage. Close call for sure. The rest of the crew busted down with varying degrees of success on the ferry. It was pretty much luck of the draw as to how the boil was acting but everyone made it down in one piece. The rest of the gorge was successfully navigated with a tough river right portage or an easier left portage that required those willing to cross right above the rapid of death. Day one ended late with the sun already having set and everyone happy to get a fire going and get some food down.

Day two brought some amazing rapids and the team made good time navigating this beautiful stretch of wilderness whitewater. There were some more big beatdowns with everyone hanging tough and staying in their boats... Of note were Boomer and Joe who both took solid hole rides in a long rapid with another big right to left ferry. The day ended on a nice gravel bar with bear, moose, and wolf prints everywhere... Kept the fire going that night for sure.

 


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