As I look back on it now, the fifteen minutes Andy and I, mid-waist deep in the icy water, spent trying to work that hulking red boat loose so that Blackmore could haul her back into quiet water for a fresh start takes pride of place as the most miserable interval of the whole trip. After Andy’s experience in Surprise Rapids, neither of us was inclined to throw his whole weight into a lift that might leave him overbalanced when the boat was swept out of his reach. And so we pulled and hauled and cursed (I should hate to have to record all we said about the ancestry of the river, the boat, and the two rocks that held the boat), while the tentacles of the cold clutched deeper with every passing minute. Roos, sitting on a pine stump and whittling, furnished no help but some slight diversion. When he started singing “Old Green River” just after I had slipped and soused my head in the current, I stopped tugging at the boat for long enough to wade out and shy a stone at him. “Green River”[1] was all right in its place, but its place was swirling against the inside of the ribs, not the outside. Roos had the cheek to pick the rock up out of his lap and heave it back at me—but with an aim less certain than my own. A few minutes later he called out to Blackmore to ask if this new rapid had a name, adding that if it had not, he would like to do his employer, Mr. Chester, the honour of naming it after him. Blackmore relaxed his strain on the line for a moment to roar back that no rapid was ever named after a man unless he had been “drownded” in it. “We’ll name this one after you if you’ll do the needful,” he growled as an afterthought, throwing his weight again onto his line. That tickled Andy and me so mightily that we gave a prodigious heave in all recklessness of consequences, and off she came. Gaining the bank with little trouble, we joined Blackmore and helped him haul her up by line into slower water.
[1] For the benefit of those who have forgotten, or may never have known, I will state that “Green River” was the name of a brand of whisky consumed by ancient Americans with considerable gusto. L. R. F.
“No good lining,” the “Skipper” announced decidedly, as we sat down to rest for a spell; “I’m going to drive her straight through.” Chilled, weary and dead-beat generally, I was in a state of mind that would have welcomed jumping into the rapid with a stone tied to my neck rather than go back to the half-submerged wading and lifting. Roos said he hated to risk his camera, and so would try to crawl with it over the cliff and rejoin us below the rapid. Andy said he was quite game to pull his oar for a run if we had to, but that he would first like to try lining down the opposite bank. He thought we could make it there, and he had just a bit of a doubt about what might happen in mid-river. That was reasonable enough, and Blackmore readily consented to try the other side.
OUR WETTEST CAMP AT KINBASKET LAKE (above)
THE OLD FERRY TOWER ABOVE CANOE RIVER (below)
WHERE WE TIED UP AT KINBASKET LAKE (above)
THE BRIDGE WHICH THE COLUMBIA CARRIED A HUNDRED MILES AND PLACED ACROSS ANOTHER STREAM (center)
LINING DOWN TO THE HEAD OF DEATH RAPIDS (below)