---

Canoe Jam at the Dam

Susan McKenzie / 19.09.2003

It was like rush hour on the portage trail. At times, as many as half a dozen canoe-carrying racers were lined up in succession, ready for their chance to slip and slide their way down a steep, wet rocky outcropping that led them back into Cross Lake.

Teams must use this portage to pass over Cross Lake Dam, an artificial dam that was built in the fifties to control the levels of Cross Lake into and out of Temagami Lake. It’s a short portage of three hundred metres or so, but the last five metres to this particular put-in are a doozy. The narrow rocky descent is lined with conifers and brush, the put in is into fast flowing water off the dam, and there are plenty of teams piling up as progress is slow.

Running Free runs up the trail and is gone in minutes, paddling out of sight as more teams arrive hot on its red-bibbed heels. Within thirty minutes, some twenty teams go through this portage: Running Free and Phoenix and Jimmy’s Night Out and BRAT and Persistence and Star Choice and Screaming Carrots and Fusion and Hail to the Chief and others all help each other manoeuvre boats along the rocks and into the water. Canoes are being slid down the rocks, lifted over the rocks, dragged down the rocks. It’s almost a canoe luge at times.

Voices ring out as teammates search for lost teammates.

“Dave? You there?� calls out Elsa Dahlie of Spirit.

“Michelle? Is Michelle down there?�

“Has anyone seen Karen?�

“She’s down here!�

“Are we going the right way? Is this the right place?�

Star Choice’s Sylvie D’Aoust’s teeth chatter as she and Tobin DeCou manoeuvre their boat into the water. DeCou doesn’t look that warm, either. “It got cold when the rain came,� he says. And there’s water in the boat, too.�

Team Hug, is one of the last five teams to reach the portage trail. “But we’re not last!� says Gary Cambridge, who sports the brightest, gaudiest, most memorable tights of this race (perhaps ever.) “I decided that this last race of the season, I had to do something different. No more dressing conservatively.�

Finally, the last teams move through this portage and into Cross Lake.

Elsa never found Dave down that portage, by the way. That’s because Spirit used the other more accessible put in, a scant hundred metres more along the trail. But then again, Raid the North is all about route choice and navigation, right?

See All Stories On This Race