High Falls on the Namekagon
- a destroyed canoe and lessons learned
by Bryan Whitehead

Fuel now became more of a concern as I glanced down at the gauge. If I turned around now I'd probably still have enough gas to get back to the hard road assuming I could turn around. Which I couldn't.

Suddenly we came to a slightly elevated clearing with an ancient tarpaper hunting shack visible through the trees. There sat Steve's van, muddy, and scratched - with the empty canoe trailer behind it. We'd come to the right place. Since we had no canoes, and the base camp was well up the river, we'd previously agreed that Steve would meet us at the river's edge at 8:00AM.

We had, incredibly, arrived early. It was about 7:00AM when we climbed out of our muddy and heavily loaded van. We were greeted by billions of starving mosquitoes which swarmed up from the river we could hear rushing below.

Bug dope was distributed and applied with minimal effect as we began to unload the astonishing amount of gear. Heavy Duluth packs bulging with heaven knows what inside were carried down the rise and piled by the river's edge. A complete cast iron five burner propane stove with detachable legs and a full 5 gallon propane pack came down from the roof rack. Coolers were unloaded and rods carriers laid on the ground. The mountain of gear grew and threatened to topple into the rushing river.

By now it was a bit past 8:00AM, and my friend was still nowhere to be seen. The bugs became worse as they had evidently called their first and second cousins and still more of them joined the feast. Standing around to be eaten alive seemed to be a poor option. Suddenly 'ol Bob called out. Astonishingly, the Canadian Provincial authorities had stashed an overturned aluminum canoe in the weeds along the shore. Why it was there is a mystery that we couldn't solve. Had they stashed canoes every mile along the river? Why was this obviously official craft - with all the proper badges and markings - here? Should we, could we, "borrow" it for a few minutes?

Another wave of bugs gave us the answer. With a grunt we extracted the government canoe from the brush and floated it next to the gear. We loaded the three boys, Bob and me and began to paddle slowly - very slowly - up river to the promised campsite. I say slowly, because our Canadian friends didn't deign to leave us paddles and we didn't have any since Steve brought the canoes up. The excess energy the boys had was soon worn off as they paddled by leaning over the side and working our way up one hand at a time. A mile or so passed slowly as we "swam" the canoe upstream.

Mercifully, the sound of a small outboard was heard and Steve careened into sight. Parachute cords were attached to our canoe and within 30 minutes we were towed up to the High Falls fishing camp site. This island campsite had been a base for fishing trips for probably dozens (if not hundreds?) of years. Rusty nails were in place and someone long ago had built a rudimentary kitchen area with split and planed logs nailed into place. The tarp was unrolled and within ten minutes the crew - which now with the addition of our crew numbered five adults and six boys - had engineered the flapping tarp into a reasonable eating shelter.

My friend's canoe was sent back to get the gear with two canoes in tow behind the five horse outboard. 'Ol Bob showed us how to rig a yoke under the canoe to eliminate the darting and weaving so often associated with towed canoes. His woodcraft and experience of decades of Canadian camping proved to be useful on many occasions.