Cross Canada Canoe Expedition
The Portage From Hell
Submitted by Chris Koch on behalf of Joe O’Blenis / 21.06.2004
Ah, the dreaded portage from Kemano to Tahtsa Lake! I figure there will be roughly 125 portages during my expedition. The first one just happens to be 51 kilometers, starting at sea level and peaking out at nearly 3300 at a mountain pass along the Coast Mountains. This is what will enable me to put together a route that will take me from the British Columbia coast and up and over the mountains of BC.After paddling into Kemano from Europa Hot-Springs, 37.5 km, I arrived in a pouring rain, late in the afternoon, promptly changed into a dry base layer and my Moonstone Gore-Tex pants and jacket, assembled the portage cart, loaded on the canoe and my huge pile of gear, food and equipment and began walking. I figured the 51 kilometers is along an old logging road, I\'ll just pull the canoe along behind me on the cart, it can\'t be that bad, right? Wrong!
Bears
The first 14 km is along a good paved road with only a mild incline, should not be a problem ... I thought. After only about 6 km, what do I see just off the road in the trees? Ahhh ... 2 Grizzlies! Well, I make a bunch of noise and they look at me and tear off into the forest ... whew! Okay, no worries ... until 15 minutes later I see one of the bears again, about 200 meters back on the road, standing on its hind legs, watching me...hmmm...not good! Finally the bear heads back into the forest and I resume walking, nervously looking back every 30 seconds or so now...paranoid about the bears!
A few minutes later a white van comes along and stops, full of construction workers working for Alcan, the aluminum company that runs a huge operation in Kitimat and draws power from Kemano and the Nechako Reservoir system. We talk for a few minutes and they give me a beer for later, figuring I\'ll have earned it. About 20 minutes later, they stop again on their way back and they tell me they just saw 6 more bears.
They then offer to help me haul my gear up the last 3 or 4 kilometers to where I turn off on the old logging road to Tahtsa Lake, the turnoff is also the site of a recently abandoned logging camp ... abandoned because of the problems with the bears. Kemano is well known for its extremely high concentration of Grizzlies as well as black bears.See All Event Posts
