Walk the Whole River

No pumps for the big Canadian whitewater

Holly didn’t boat on the Batiscan . Service announcement — dehydration is a serious matter. Brown claw is no longer funny when your hands lock into that position from low sodium and potassium.

Sabrina also didn’t boat as she had to make her way over to Esquif to meet Jacques and discuss a boat design. So the crew was down to Marie-eve and me, Gigi joining us and two of Mari-eve’s friends.

In true Canadian form, Marie-eve’s friends told us the Batiscan would be “easy.” We get there and at least to me it was anything but. Fortunately, I had Gigi who confided that it was also not her definition of easy, either. That didn’t stop her or Marie-eve from firing up the rapids. Me, however, not so much.

I don’t know if exhaustion was finally wearing a hole through my excitement or what. The late-night/early-morning hours of driving plus paddling plus planning plus not knowing what was going on hit me mentally and physically and by the time we got to the Batiscan I couldn’t seem to appreciate its size or its beauty as a river. All I saw were nasty holes into rocks.

As I debated whether or not to go, Marie-eve said to me, “It’s better to walk beside the entire river than not go. At least you’ll get to see it.” After lots of walks with the octane on my head, some paddling, and just overall exhaustion, I decided she was right. There would be days we got to rest and of course days after the trip where we’d all rest some more. Because I chose to go and walked, I got to see a river I might otherwise never see in my lifetime.

I also got to watch Marie-eve and Gigi crush it. Rated Class IV/V the rapids had big volume pushing into munchy holes surrounded by shallow boulders. Marie-eve fired up the first rapid at the put-in as I botched a recording job. Angry, she had me record as she ran the rapid again. Sliding through the right channel on the river, Marie-eve built enough speed to push her through the swirly water pushing into a nasty hole. She finished with a clean line down the tongue and into the eddy where I was recording. We would later laugh about the incident, and I think it worked out as the recorded line was super clean and graceful.

The rest of the river run was like that. Marie-eve’s aggressive lines countered Gigi’s calculated paddle strokes through the same rapids, and finally I felt good enough to get back on the river. We paddled through a long flat section to the takeout and Holly’s dead forerunner. Marie-eve and her two friends ran around and found a guy who was able to charge the car back up. We finished loading the cars, and found Holly was sweating profusely and shivering uncontrollably. Her hands had cramped badly and she struggled to move. Thank god she had bought some Mio liquid with electrolytes. We had her drink that and eat something with sodium and potassium with some more water. She soon revived, but remained weak until the next day. We were able to drive and meet up with Sabrina at a McDonald’s. She was decked head to toe in Esquif. We still love her, though.

We got back in the cars for a couple more hours of driving and another day of paddling, tired and sore but always looking forward to a day on the river.