We were approaching a relatively small rapid On Day 9 of our trip on the Firth River, July 23, 2024, and I decided to not put my camera safely away but to simply hold it in my left hand as the rapid did not look too dangerous.
Suddenly the back of the raft where I was sitting struck a rock with a tremendous jolt.  I was headed overboard. My wife Ruth obviously thought I was a goner, as she did a dive to grab my leg. Fortunately, my right hand was clenched around a strong strap that ran across the raft so I was not ejected, but I was quite shocked by the force of the blow. You never know what will happen on the river. As the boy scouts say, be prepared.
The river was rapidly carrying us north, and the snow patches, even though it was the end of July, were becoming ever more frequent and larger. We eventually went ashore and found, however, that we were not entirely beyond the reach of civilization. As we climbed above the river, we passed a square metal structure the size of a small cabin. This was a water survey station. Sensors run from it to the nearby river, and data is streamed via Starlink to park headquarters in Inuvik hundreds of kilometres away. The pulse of the Firth is continually monitored.
From the meadows above the river we could see enigmatic Engigstciak, a hill that protrudes from the tundra far to the north. Humans have used it for more than 10,000 years, but more about that later.
 Closer at hand, a short distance down a cliff towards the river, was a spectacular rough-legged hawk nest with several large chicks. It was a sight to behold, and I took many pictures in the hope that one of them would be a good one.
The chicks were waiting for their parents to bring food. If they survive into adulthood, these chicks might live for as long as 19 years. Rough legged hawks are well adapted to the Arctic and have a dense layer of downy body feathers. Their name drives from their feathered lower legs, another cold climate adaptation. In summer they raise their young in the Arctic and feast on the plentiful rodents there. They have some special abilities to help them survive. One study suggested that rough-legged hawks use the ultraviolet signal of vole urine, which they can see, to identify choice foraging areas. In the winter they head south, although not that far south: just to southern Canada and the northern US. 

​On day 8 of our trip, July 22, 2024, we were ominously issued helmets before we boarded the rafts. It looked like it might be an exciting day! During a stop before reaching the major rapids, some of us walked up to a good place to take pictures on a narrow promontory high above the river.
Then we continued through the Canyon Reach, and the canyon walls became ever more spectacular with contorted rock strata and in some places, bright colours. The rapids came one after another. We made it through the Surprise Rapid (Class III+) and Big Bend Roller Coaster Rapids (Class IV), and then a little further downstream, I saw what I had been watching for: Trudeau’s finger. This vertical column of rock on the rocky shore sits on top of a wider rock formation that might represent the rest of his hand.  
The name given this rock on the shore of a remote Arctic River proves that you can run but you can’t hide. It commemorates a famous incident that happened to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in Salmon Arm, B.C. on Aug. 8, 1982. It was a time when rampant inflation was reducing the value of the Canadian dollar by about one percent per month, and things were tough with high unemployment levels in western resource-based towns. He had also infuriated Albertans by bringing in the National Energy Program. Pierre Trudeau had been calling for restraint on public sector wages to combat inflation, so the optics were not great when he decided to take a trip to the Canadian Rockies with his family including 10-year-old Justin in a luxury railway car borrowed from the governor general.
At the Salmon Arm station, he was met by three protestors, apparently Liberal voters on strike from their government jobs, who had rushed to the train station to protest what they saw as an act of indulgent hypocrisy. They carried signs stating things like, ““Restraint, Practice What You Preach.”
As a protestor later told it, “He looked at my wife, he smiled and gave her the finger. He pushed up the other blind, looked at me and gave me the finger. He pushed the other blind up, looked at David and gave him the finger.”
The thrown vegetables followed soon after, and after that, other small towns followed suit, so much so that railroaders dubbed the produce-splattered train “The Caesar Salad Special.”
Tomatoes thudded into the windows as the car emerged from the Connaught tunnel. Eggs rained down on the prime minister’s car outside Calgary. Whitewater rafters in the Kicking Horse River mooned the official train.
In my view, Pierre Trudeau's now famous “Trudeau Salute” is not a chapter in Canadian History to be proud of. 
Reference: Tristin Hopper, National Post, Aug 22, 2016  • 

​We left Wolf Tors and were soon disembarking to scout the “Big Three” rapids of the trip. It was not long before all the guests were gathered on a rocky promontory with a good view of the first two, Lamb Rapid (Class III) and Sheep Slot Rapid (Class IV). From here we watched the guides bring the four rafts through, one by one. There was some splashing but no serious difficulty, and we embarked to ride through the third rapid, Sheep Horn. It is unclear to me why all the guests were going through this last of the three rapids, as it is classified as a Class III+. However, given the water level, the guides obviously considered it safe for us, and in fact we all came through uneventfully. Perhaps we all ran it because there was no other serious rapid immediately downstream to hamper rescue operations should one raft loaded with guests get into trouble. On the other hand, a further rapid, Ram Rapid (Class III/IV) lay not that far downstream from the Sheep Horn Rapid. Many factors no doubt played a role in the decision. On our trip in 2015, when the water was much higher, the guests had been asked to portage around all three rapids.
After we had come through these major rapids, as the day was warm, the guide in our raft suggested that I take off my waterproof jacket. It was bad advice. It was not long before a wave came over the front of the raft, topped the bib of my waterproof overhauls, and deposited water right down to my bottom. Something very similar had happened to me on the Snake River a few years previously, but some of us are slow learners.

On day five we hiked to an amazing green ridge with an almost endless line of sharp rocky outcroppings. The guides called it stegosaurus ridge, after an armored dinosaur from the Late Jurassic. The Parks Service called the rocky projections the Wolf Tors.
 
As we moved along, two gyrfalcons watched us carefully from a lichen-covered rocky tor on which they had a nest. The gyrfalcon is the largest falcon in the world, and a fierce predator. It lives in the high Arctic and chases down ptarmigans in flight or plummets from the sky to strike prey on the ground.  Gyrfalcons have to be good hunters. In order to raise their family, a pair needs the equivalent of about 200 ptarmigans in a season. The gyrfalcon couple ignored us as long as we did not come too close.  
 
Further down nearer our camp, we walked by a rock ptarmigan, one of the Gyrfalcon’s favorite preys. For the time being, this one seemed alive and well, but we were in the wilderness where tooth and claw rules. I was told that the gyrfalcon does not have the best table manners. It apparently devours its prey very quickly without sufficient discrimination between the edible and nonedible. Then, some time later, it regurgitates the indigestible feathers and bones.
As we moved along, we had fine views of the river and its rapids below us. It had been a perfect day for a long hike. Tomorrow we would be back on the river for more adventure. 

After Joe Creek, on the fourth day of our trip, we were in the Mountain Reach of the Firth. There were many rapids, and it was not long before our group was scouting Sluice Box Rapids. The guides pronounced it runnable, and, as we had in 2015, we ran the rapids with full rafts.
Soon we stopped again to scout the rapids at Wrap Rock, and this time it was a different story. The guests were asked to walk along the riverbank around this obstacle while the guides brought the rafts through. They were being cautious. The rock obtained its unusual name because some years ago a poor guide wrapped his raft around the upstream end of the rock. As far as I know, no tourists were lost, but it was a big job to get the raft moving again. In 2015 when we were on the Firth for the first time, the guides called it House Rock, so the incident probably occurred after 2015. 
Wrap Rock is a huge boulder that fell many years ago from the cliffs on river left and divided the river into two channels. With the low water during our trip, the wider channel to the right of the rock was too shallow for the rafts, and they would need to go through the much narrower channel to the left where the water was deeper but also very fast. Each raft was eventually brought through with two guides on board. Then the tourists were taken on board again, and we went on down the river. 
The rapids became more and more frequent, and there was to be more excitement for our raft. It ran aground on a huge rock in the middle of a big rapid and paddling and jumping up and down was unable to dislodge it. Eventually our guide Jim stepped out of the raft onto the rock and gave our raft a huge push. Fortunately, he was able to jump safely back into the raft as it suddenly moved on.
We had been hearing thunder during the day along the river, and we had just gone ashore at Wolf Tors and put up our tent when the rain started. We relaxed for about an hour in our tent listening to the rain patter on the fly before we went out to enjoy a fine evening.

The Porcupine Caribou herd, which was estimated at 218,000 animals in 2017, migrates every spring to the Arctic coast west of the Firth to calve. Then, after calving is complete, the herd gradually migrates, often in small groups, to the southeast on its way to its wintering grounds in the mountains further south. This means crossing the Firth River.

Some distance downstream from our lunch spot; caribou were crossing the river. It was a moment of great excitement. After the first large group, some smaller groups consisting of mothers and their calves came through. Each calf was sticking closely to its mother, as for the first year of its life, a caribou calf is almost inseparable from its mother while it learns what it must do to survive. When it eats, it often has its nose near the mother’s nose and learns what foods she is eating so that it can follow suit. We watched as several caribou calves closely followed their mothers into the water and crossed the river.

However, this intimacy does not go on forever. At one year, just before the next calf is born, the mother suddenly rejects it and drives it away. The poor calf at first seems confused and upset, and tries to maintain contact, but eventually it gives up, and joins a peer group of similarly rejected one-year olds. It all sounds very heart rendering, but nature does what it needs to do to preserve the species.

On Day 2 we got on the river, and before long stopped as a tributary, Muskeg Creek, where our guides caught 4 large Dolly Varden. They would be dinner that evening!
A short distance below the fishing hole, we stopped on river left, and went for a steep hike up to a high ridge which overlooked the river. Our hike ended at some tors – rocky knobs formed by erosion from wind and rain – that indicate the are was never glaciated. Glaciers would have quickly destroyed the tors as they ground over the mountains and valleys.
We had a great view of the river far below, and it was exhilarating to think we had reached the tors that we had so admired from the river an hour or two previously. Along the way we came across some fossils which the guides told us were from coral. The Firth River Valley was once covered by shallow seas, and as a result has deep layers of sedimentary rock.
On the way down, I had magnificent views of a rough-legged hawk that posed for quite some time at the very top of a tall spruce tree. It was quite a sight to finally see the bird that we had heard shrieking for the better part of the morning.
A little further along the river we were back in winter. An expanse of aufeis, ice that forms as water issues from underground springs all winter, framed the river on one side. It was July 16th, but it had not all melted yet.

​Over the next few months, I will be taking you down the spectacular Firth River which flows through the northern Yukon to the Arctic Ocean. It is a wonderful river that few ever see, so this is your chance to see it through my eyes (and camera) as I saw it this last summer in 2024.  Who knows?  Once you have read about it, you may want to raft it yourself some day. We will start our journey with the Mackenzie delta.
It is hard to imagine 25,000 lakes in one place, but that is said to be the number of lakes in the Mackenzie delta in Canada’s Northwest Territories. We flew over the delta on our way to the Frith River to begin our river rafting trip, and although I did not try to count them, I can personally attest that there are a great many lakes in the Mackenzie delta. Sinuous river channels threaded their way between the lakes and brought the water of the mighty Mackenzie, which drains one fifth of Canada, to the Arctic Ocean.
It was a remarkable sight, but even though it is 210 Km long and 80 Km wide, the Mackenzie delta is small when compared for example to the largest river delta in the world, that of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Rivers in India and Bangladesh. To be fair, though, the Mackenzie has had less than 30,000 years to do its work, since before that the area was covered by several kilometres of ice. The age of the Ganges River is measured in the tens of millions of years.
At its western edge, the Mackenzie delta ended abruptly as the land rose to form the Richardson Mountains. Then we flew on for some time over the Yukon highlands until our plane finally landed beside the Frith River. We set up camp and looked forward to the next day when we would be heading down the river. 

This will be the last excerpt from Rafting the Snake: A Journey Through the Yukon's Snake River Wilderness that I will place on my blog. If you find the comments below interesting, you may want to buy the book!  It is available from Amazon and Friesen Press, and any bookstore can order it for you.

​It was hard to believe how milky Milk Creek was. This fast-flowing tributary of the Snake entered its parent river with great force, but the two waters were reluctant to mix. For at least one hundred metres there was a sharp demarcation between the white waters of the Milk and the brilliant blue of the Snake. I was given to understand that it was the temperature difference between the two rivers that was the main reason for this phenomenon, and not the heavy white glacial limestone sediment of the Milk.
It was a magical place, and we spent some time on the beach where the two rivers met. Up the Milk Creek valley stood the stony massifs of the Bonnet Plume range. A little downstream, a spectacular flowerpot-like rock crowned by half a dozen black spruce trees rose up from the river. The Milk Creek valley was another potential hiking route to Mount Macdonald from the shores of the Snake. According to Wild Rivers of the Yukon’s Peel Watershed, a hike up Milk Creek leads to the base of a stunning glacier. The glacier is no doubt the source of some of the glacial sediment that gives Milk Creek its remarkable white colour.  

Around noon, we went ashore on a small grey beach to have lunch. Nearby, a large creek boiled with energy as it met the Snake. Huge black boulders were strewn about as though to emphasize the primeval force of this exuberant stream. We listened to the roaring water as we sat on black rocks and enjoyed our food. The plan was that when lunch was done, we would hike up the valley of our tumultuous creek to a splendid waterfall.
A rudimentary trail, fringed by reindeer lichen and low willows, led upward. . . In less than a kilometre we reached a yawning canyon, and torrents of water thundered over a magnificent waterfall below us. It was an impressive sight, and as best I could tell, one without a name.
 As we descended. . . It began to rain heavily. . .We crossed the stream and returned to the small beach from which we had started. Where there had been so much activity only an hour or two before, there was now only a small pile of gear and two empty canoes. We had been spotted from across the river, however, and soon another canoe was coming to meet us. Amyah and Ruth were whisked away to our new camp, while I was left behind to fend for myself in the Yukon wilderness. I clutched a can of bear spray and waited for a canoe to return.