The bottoms of the clouds, a fiery red, heralded the coming of the sun. With the melting of the twilight grew a kind of expectancy and the lake, the ice, and the air gave way to sunrise. Without a sound the sun cracked the horizon and turned the water into a sea of molten gold. We chopped and hacked our way through the shore ice and headed down the lake over big rolling swells left from yesterday’s wind storm. Up and down, up and down— before long I was feeling seasick. But the breeze blew from behind and in six hours we covered twenty-two miles.
As we ate lunch the wind blew the waves towards monster size. I decided to fish, but when I found my lure box, I discovered that a bottle of mosquito repellent had spilled all over the lures. What a mess! Mosquito repellent makes excellent paint remover, and it had done a good job on most of the lures. I’ve often wondered what mosquito repellent does to the body. We cheerfully smear it on our skins, and yet it is powerful enough to dissolve plastics and remove paint and varnish. The fish didn’t like the lures; I could see them go for the lure and then swish away. But after I washed the lures in soapy water several times, I caught a fish almost immediately.
Tossing the fish into the canoe, I headed onto the increasingly rough lake. Soon the waves were bigger than we cared to challenge. The first time I approached the shore, I got twisted sideways to the waves and narrowly avoided broaching in a big breaking wave. Spinning the canoe around, I paddled back through the breaking waves trying again, getting thoroughly wet, but making shore.
When we camped in a grassy nook by a large swamp, two killdeer voiced their displeasure at our intrusion. After a marvelous supper of pike and onion, muffins and gingerbread with several cups of tea, I walked on the shore and found why the killdeer were so unhappy. Our canoes were parked only a few feet from their nest. Their spotted eggs blended well with the surroundings. Mama and Papa Killdeer hopped around happily calling to each other after we settled into our beds to watch a seagull do slow turns around the setting sun.
The lake lost its clear blue color as we passed the mouth of the Hay River. Because this town is the southern terminus of barge traffic on the Mackenzie River, we had to wait for a tugboat to pass through the shipping channel. When the wake from the tugboat and the waves on the lake combined, I took on water for the second time. Earlier I had stepped on shore to stretch my legs but didn’t get my canoe onto the beach quickly enough. The waves crashed over the stern of the canoe, filling it instantly. It happened So fast I didn’t have time to react but jumped into the water, wrestled the packs out of the canoe, pulled it up, and started to bail. “Marvelous,” I thought, “I’ve managed to get everything soaked.” I noticed water draining from the bottom of my camera bag as I grabbed it from the bottom of the canoe. Closer inspection revealed two splits in the vinyl on the bottom corners, but a quick look at the contents was encouraging. The camera was still dry, but the 200 mm lens had some fog.
Although we thought we had seen the last of the ice, it began lining the shores again. Since the lake seemed calm except for a gently rolling swell, we felt confident enough to keep paddling along the outside of the ice. At evening we had to lift and drag our canoes across a 100 foot strip of ice to shore. As soon as we found a camping site, I went through all my gear. Surprisingly, everything in the packs was dry even though they had been under water. Wet loose stuff I laid out in the brilliant sunshine to dry.
I went to sleep dreaming of ice jams across the Mackenzie River. As we slept the wind shifted and moved the ice farther into the lake, but it took one final shot at us and froze the water between the floes to a thickness of almost 3/8 inch. Paddling madly, we plowed through it. Our canoes heaved a sigh of relief after their pounding by the ice of Great Slave Lake.
Four hours of steady paddling brought us to the head of the mighty Mackenzie River — the biggest river in Canada and our path to the Artic Circle and beyond. We ate a celebration lunch; Doug with a big chocolate bar, I by baking a chocolate cake, and Byron by bringing out his trip report on the Mackenzie River for us to peruse. Great Slave Lake had been a thrilling experience, but now we headed down the big river.
But in the evening Doug seemed very unhappy and refused to eat with us, going downstream instead a couple hundred yards to eat alone. Clearly something was seriously wrong.