Raid the North Canadian Championships
To Portage or not to Portage
Susan McKenzie / 19.09.2003
“That portage is old and all overgrown, too rough to get through. Well, they’ll find out soon enough. There are lots of spots along here where you can make mistakes like that.�
“Yeah, we thought there was a portage spot there,� Max Payne’s David Haavaldsrud later says. “But that bush was too rough to get through, so we had to come back.�
Further ahead, passed the paddlers who have yet to discover their error, a flotilla of canoes loaded with white-bibbed racers appears on the horizon like an armada. Only this armada was largely Canadian, wearing manmade fibres, and its only weapons paddles and compasses.
The teams competing in the Raid the North Canadian Championships began this first paddle section through Temagami together, but a route choice soon split the mass in half. Some teams chose the shorter portage with the longer paddle; others chose a route that included two moderate portages and less paddling.
The route choices made, the field then split along skill lines, as the top teams swiftly built up a gap between themselves and the back of the field. By the time the first downpour hit at around ten-thirty in the morning, the racers had clumped into groups of four or five or six teams.
The California team Stinging Nettles, racing solidly in the back of the pack, was among those that chose the portage route. “We figured if there were portage routes out there, they must be there for a reason, and a lot faster,� says Tom Proulx. “Truth is, we’re not great paddlers,� admits Chris Hinshaw.
“I hate to tell you this, but those portages are actually snowmobile routes for the winter,� Nelson informs him with a laugh. “So we can get across the water.�
“Really?� Proulx laughs. “Well, the trails were well-maintained, the portages were great, so we’re still really happy with that choice.�
Team Spirit is one of only two teams who have earned the right to wear Raid the North’s yellow racing bibs. (The other is Taiga.) You have to win a Raid the North race to wear yellow at the championships. Red means second place, white is for all the rest.
What this means is that these top teams (six in total) are easy to spot on the water. Racing in the top ten, Team Spirit has hooked up a towing system. A rope attached to Chris Koch and Dave Hitchon’s boat helps move both their boat and Elsa Dahlie and Darren Nevin’s boat through the water faster. “These boats aren’t very fast,� says Koch.
“The boat is pretty tippy, and we’re pretty heavy, so that makes it slow to paddle,� adds Hitchon, whose boat is in fact sitting about two inches lower in the water than his teammates.
By late morning, the wind has picked up, the sky has grown very heavy and Isabel is starting to flex her hurricane muscles.
“Wind, rain, bring it all on,� says Hail to the Chimp’s Meaghan Regts as she and Brad Toms paddle into the wind. “Nothing can hurt us now,� she says with great optimism, blissfully unaware that the rain will only get heavier, and the winds stronger, before the team will reach not-so-dry land.
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