Jim Baird documents the "true wilderness" experience of a 14-day, 300-km canoe expedition through the Canadian sub-Arctic in this four-part series. Episode 3 follows the crew through a series of scenic and challenging canyons, featuring the trip's toughest rapids and highlighted by massive rock formations, weather surprises, and wildlife encounters with beavers and porcupines along the Northwest Territories' rugged Mountain River. Meanwhile, Baird explains the finer points on holding wood safely for chopping into kindling.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Day seven and we're camped here at Cache Creek and today we're heading into this
00:09canyon. It didn't look like there's anything too crazy but a river note say
00:13there's some whirlpools in there and some big standing waves.
00:30White water is just hard enough, you know?
00:50So Heather and I have researched this trip for like ten years but one of the things
00:55that we're super excited about was this battleship rock and Heather was all
00:58excited and we get here and there's a freaking double rainbow over it. Couldn't
01:03be more beautiful at the entrance to this unbelievable canyon. It just keeps
01:07getting better out here and you can't have a double rainbow without a little rain.
01:11Let's turn that frown upside down everybody. We have our own beavers here.
01:19They built a dam in one of the side slaws of the river and they're just kind
01:23of hanging out in there so we see beavers every once in a while. We are
01:26about to run a canyon. This one is more difficult than the last one. It's
01:31probably a class 3 rapid if not higher. So we're in the canyon now. Looks pretty
01:38tame so far but the walls are sheer. We're gonna get over on a gravel bar and
01:43see if we can have a look downriver. So we are standing in what's known as
01:48Canyon 3 right now. Canyon 2 for us because we paddle Black Feather Creek
01:52and we're about to embark on the rapid in this canyon so we're a little bit
01:57nervous of what lies ahead. I'd say we just hit this and then you know we try
02:02to get a look at that like maybe pull over at the end of the gravel bar over
02:05there or something. We're ready to go.
02:22Oh
02:41Well we're at the confluence of Stone Knife and Mountain Rivers here and the
02:47Stone Knife is just absolutely crystal clear. There's a lot of clear water
02:52pushing into here and it's amazing to see the two different kind of waters mix.
02:56They don't mix right away and there's just like a line right between the two
03:00rivers. It's pretty cool. I just came up on a porcupine hanging out right here.
03:05There he goes. I want to split this up into small pieces for the stove but
03:10obviously holding it like this isn't a good idea. The best thing to use is just
03:14another stick like that to hold it in place. There you go.
03:29We camped on sand last night. Everything's covered in sand today. This
03:35morning was pretty cold hence the toque. It barely fits over my freaking hair. I'm
03:40just gonna continue doing an interview while Jim loads the entire boat so that
03:43I don't have to help. Just kidding, I'm going to help.
04:05Today is a challenging day. The river's volume is much bigger. We have another
04:11intense canyon to go through. This one is supposed to have the toughest rapid
04:15of the whole trip in it. A lot of tight turns and a lot of big water wave trains
04:19to hit today. Out of the boat Buck. Buck's gonna meet us at the end of the
04:25rapid. We're not gonna run with Buck in the boat.
04:41In the boat. Good boy. Just great runs. We bombed a lot of great stuff and of course the
04:59canyon was just like epically beautiful scenery wise. That was f***ing awesome.
05:06Amazingly fun. We probably would have pushed on but it's such a nice campsite
05:13here we decided that we don't want to miss out on this so took it a bit of an
05:16earlier day and we're gonna stay here and enjoy ourselves. Freaking awesome trip.