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

June 10, 1997
Steve left early - pushing off into the current and firing up his outboard. I expected him back by late afternoon... if everything went as planned.

Imagine my surprise when he returned to camp just a couple of hours later. Steve had encountered a road maintenance crew back on the washboarded gravel road and somehow convinced them to lend him a "come along". He grinned and lifted a truly industrial strength device complete with stainless cable and heavy duty hardware out of the canoe.

This was going to be a show. We talked the boys once again into retracing our route up to and around the falls and down river to the submerged canoe. We portaged thru the woods on the path we'd created over the last several days and launched the remaining canoes in the pool below the sunken canoe.

We went to work, slipping heavy duty webbing around the forward thwart, attaching it to the come along and looping the other end around a suitable piece of Canadian shield rock. I moved the boys and fathers back out of harm's way as Steve began to incrementally increase the pull on the canoe by clicking thru the ratchet teeth. My primary concern was that the tons of pressure we were exerting on the thwart would either pop the canoe out or pull off the thwart, snapping the webbing back toward us.

Still Steve cranked, sweat breaking out on his brow. Click, click went the lever as the cable popped and twisted in the hot sun.

I had no idea of how much force we were exerting, but had resigned myself to the fact that even an aluminum Grumman couldn't have survived this beating for 72 hours and it was probably permanently damaged already.

My Grandfather had once told me that there are no hard jobs, just jobs done with the wrong tools. This adage proved to be true as the canoe suddenly shifted, and washed out of its trap.

We quickly floated the craft over to the landing area. The damage was - well - extensive.

The side was stove in and the aluminum had split. Some rivets had popped, perhaps from the various rescue techniques we had employed.

Worked quickly, we ascertained that even though it leaked and couldn't track, with the flotation chambers intact it would actually float. Sort of.

Two of the older boys gleefully volunteered to paddle this sinking wreck back to camp. They slowly floated and paddled this old warhorse on it's last trip. The boys rested on a mid stream island where someone had decades ago hung a swinging rope off of a tree. While a few of us went upstream to retrieve the stashed motors, they occupied themselves with swinging and leaping off into the river while avoiding the island's bees nest.

The rest of the group gave them a head start and passed them a few hundred yards downstream. They didn't seem to mind, having a blast sitting almost waist deep in water in the canoe.