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Surviving Mosquitoes & Black Flies

Leaf River, Northern Quebec 2001

By Willem Lange

If you are a logistician, you’ll be interested to know that eight guys and all their gear, a driver, and four PakBoats will fit into a 15-passenger van – just barely! Our driver dropped us off at Dorval before dawn on Day 1, and we were at the desk waiting when Air Inuit woke up. The airline charged us several hundred dollars for our overweight luggage – eight dry bags, three food bags, a wanigan, four canoes in duffel bags, paddles, and fishing rods. Then it was off to Radisson, Quebec, where we discovered that the pilot who was supposed to meet us and fly us to our river that day was a missing person. After an anxious night in a motel and a tour of the HydroQuebec generating station, we finally located him (he was on Cree time, not ours) and flew in two groups in a Cessna Caravan to Lake Minto. Group One set up tents and assembled the canoes while they waited, and began swatting flies, which wold become a very popular activity during the next three weeks.

Minto Lake takes forever if the wind is against you, which in our case it was. Long after it narrows down at its eastern end, and the map says "Leaf River", There’s still no current. The river officially begins with a roaring rapid and a great fishing hole.

We had plenty of water in the Leaf, though sticks shoved into the sand at water’s edge each evening showed the river level dropping. Fishing was quite good – lots of brook and lake trout, and even a couple of Atlantic salmon – but there were fishing and caribou camps all along the river, which detracted a bit from the usual wilderness experience.

We made not a single portage in the whole river, and lined parts of perhaps three or four rocky pitches. At one point we rolled downstream through about ten solid miles of class II and III rapids. The waves got bigger as we descended – big standing haystacks like a roller coaster. I think the flexible PakBoats did better in these than hard boats wold have; at one point I swear I could have reached forward with my paddle - if I hadn’t been so busy! - and touched my bowman on the back of his head.

The black flies were, on two occasions, about the most voracious we have ever seen. I don’t know how they get in, but bloody underclothes attest they do.

In the last day on the river we reached tidewater and began to see bearded seals hunting salmon. At the mouth there is a really big, steep rapid that we judged unrunnable and unlineable, with virtually unportageable rocky banks. Luckily, as the tide came in (they range up to 48 feet here, higher even than in the Bay of Fundy), the rapid suddenly disappeared, and we got out of there.

The next day, scheduled for our 18-mile saltwater crossing, we were pinned down by high winds and rain. The tide rising and falling kept us hopping, too; so after a few hours of huddling in a crack in a seaside cliff, I activated the satellite phone and called the village of Tasiujaq for a boat ride the next day. Then we paddled upstream against the wind and tide to a char fishing camp – probably one of the hardest miles I’ve ever paddled – where the managers welcomed us, fed us, and let us stay in the bunkhouse that had been reserved for some sports unable to fly in because of the storm. It was hot showers all around, and dry clothes; and the next morning they wouldn’t take a penny for their hospitality! But a couple of weeks later they received Vermont maple syrup, Cabot cheese, and new long johns in the mail.

The pickup boat came on time, and we ended the trip with a pleasant night on the floor of the Tasiujaq school gym. Waiting for our plane next day, Eric found a char river right next to the air port. We flew out on a seriously overloaded Twin Otter, made our flight out of Kuujjuaq all right (a good thing, too, as dozens of sport fishermen were on standby there), and were back in our beds at home before midnight.

The boats are safe in their duffels again, hanging from the rafters in the barn, wondering, no doubt, what’s next. We’re wondering the same, and can hardly wait.

Related articles:

• Canoeing the Leaf River, northern Quebec
• Flying by floatplane with folding canoes