A few Icebergs came into St. John’s to commemorate the sinking of the Titanic…

Since I began guiding rivers five years ago I yearned to paddle the Broadback because of its reputation as a big, technical river, and because of its past. This year running the Wilderness Leadership Program for Paddlefoot, I was given the opportunity.

The combination of amazing people, high water, an intense yet amazing river, reasonably cooperative weather and billions of blueberries made this by far the best canoe trip I have ever done.

The Broadback or “Chistamiskau Sipi” (the deep river) to the Cree First Nation, flows through the Eastern Canadian Shield region of the subarctic taiga across northern Québec. Our route ran 532km east to west across from Lac Frotet, about 150km north of Chibougamau, to Waskaganish in Rupert Bay.

Waskaganish, is the location of the first James Bay trading post built by the Hudson’s Bay company. Known for centuries as Fort Rupert but first built as Fort Charles in 1668, Waskaganish today is a Cree community of approximately 2500 people at the mouth of the recently dammed Rupert River.

The damming of the Rupert River was completed in 2009. The dam has brought financial benefit to many across Quebec, local and export hydro power and financial compensation for Cree peoples whose trap lines were disrupted by the dam.

Hydro Quebec stated in a 2010 pamphlet that the river was navigable after the completion of the project. Yet George, a Waskaganish Cree man, born below Tupatuakshish falls on the Broadback during the winter of 1949, told us the damming of the Rupert River has impeded mobility and effectively cut off vast swathes of territory home to James Bay Cree. He explained they “had to cancel the annual youth expedition” that ascends the Rupert, and that “the Bay (Rupert Bay) is much harder to navigate, because there is so much less water flowing from the river.”

The initial plans for Hydroelectric damming in the James Bay area were drafted under the James Bay Project in the early 1970s, a plan that would have dammed more or less the entire watershed. Many of the proposed rivers were dammed, but the Broadback in the end was not. Though there was significant political pressure to halt the project, from Aboriginal peoples and environmental groups, the Broadback was liberated because its muskeg shores are very difficult to build on.

For paddlers, the Rupert Dam has destroyed one great river but made another even bigger; with constricted flow to the Rupert much more of the watershed empties into the Broadback.

Look here for action shots I couldn’t take myself.

Last Friday I did a drop on Hibachi with Taylor Pfaff, Brian Baker, Ian Brown, Alex Shanny, and Pete. Our first run down Hibachi was 3500 feet of bluebird pow. We then had to climb about 3000 of those feet back up the other side of the valley to attain Currie. This ended up being more crawl because it was steep and crusty with soft wet snow beneath. We skied the central couloir on Currie, and  descended 8000 feet into the valley. We made it to the bottom of an avalanche path off the face where the snow ended and we had to bushwhack on boots through rocks and mud back to the cars. Fun. The other group who beat us down had met a lovely couple of gentlemen who let them shoot their shotguns and gave them beer. Awesome day.

Today some of the more thugged out skiers in the game came to whistler to spin their meat.

On Saturday we got a drop on top of Rainbow Mountain. We had blower pow and some good pockets of visibility. Though amazing skiing often comes with questionable stability (we popped some healthy slabs), everyone had a good time and we skied some radical lines.  The morning started with a 2,000 foot line from the peak followed by two other lines around 1,000 feet and a 3,600 foot ski out to the road with bomb tree skiing and pillows.

On Saturday we had three hopeful objectives on Mt. Joffre and Mt. Matier, but the weather said no. “I can’t fly der”, our charming but unhelpful French-Canadian pilot told us, “so I drop you ‘ere instead.” Where ” ‘ere” was took us some time to figure out.  It turned out we were on a ridge off Mt. Taylor, across from Mt. Slalok.

First run we skied a funky chute followed by some rather crusty trees into the valley bottom. Drastically overheating, I got fully naked to take off my long underwear. This was a long process.

Our next line was even better than the first and ran out onto Upper Joffre Lake. We ate, made countless immature references to my bag of nuts, and I struck a deal with Ian that for $5 he would wear his Mom’s balaclava for the remainder of the day.

We then followed a nice middle aged couple up the Harp Strings. They were beasts. We were humbled. We saw a large piece of the Matier glacier  collapse and trigger a sizeable slide where two ski touring enthousiasts (VOC?) towing gear toboggans had just passed. We skied down to Lower Joffre Lake, Hereward and Ian killed it, and Julian and Guillaume got temporarily lost; but victory was had by all.

We made it to the parking lot and hitched down to the cars. Sam was happy to get his jeep, Terry, back as she was left all day by the side of the road with the keys in the ignition and the doors unlocked. We were all happy to get Ian and Peter back as they got picked up by a man with no shoes and a surf board who was higher than Charlie Sheen off mushrooms, driving a 4runner with a tree branch bumper, with two grand in twenties on the dash seat, and didn’t know the way to Pemberton (the only town within 100km).

Back in town at the Pemberton Hotel, beers were had, the Poor Judgement Ski Club gained invaluable new members and the Unnecessary Rappelling Club was born.