Raid Ukatak 2002

Canadian Canoeing - on ice!

Pete James / 12.03.2002

Ice canoeing. An innocent pairing of words but seeing them alongside a list including: snow-shoeing, cross-country skiing, abseiling and winter mountain biking I was intrigued.

The Raid Ukatak (pronounced “Yukatak�) is a winter expedition race that starts in Quebec and takes teams quickly out into the surrounding wilderness for 5 days of non-stop travel through a landscape of mountains and frozen lakes and rivers.

The ice canoeing came near the start, after a bike ride out of the city centre and an 80 metre abseil down to sea level. Here on the shores of the St Lawrence river there is a broad expanse of jumbled ice sheets. (Inland, the lakes and rivers freeze hard enough to walk across in safety.) Even in depths of winter though the powerful movements of the tides ensure that there are always gaps in the river ice, and in the days before the bridge, and before that the use of aircraft, the ice canoe was the only way on or off Vashon Island. Mail, priests and visitors all had to be taken out in open vessels powered by 4 rowers and a paddle-wielding helmsman.

We arrived at the waters edge after several miles of walking, and had a 10 minute briefing with our new found friend and captain to familiarise ourselves with the task in hand. The locals do this every weekend. No fatalities so far …

At first the going was easy. We pushed the heavy fibre-glass vessel along the shore-line on smooth snow and ice. Soon however, we were crashing through and over uneven lumps of ice, as we headed out from the safety of the bank. While the ice was thick and safe to walk on, we dragged the boat along, the helmsman heaving the back of the boat around to steer it between the largest obstacles. As we approached the faster flowing sections of the river the ice began to break up and it was time to “scooter�. With one leg resting inside the boat, we pushed in time with the other. The top local teams can reach something like 38km/h in this way. We didn’t seem to do too badly, but weren’t in danger of breaking any records.