Nahanni J O U R N A L
A f a m i l y ’ s r a f t i n g r e u n i o n d o w n t h e N . W .T. ’ s l e g e n d a r y
“dangerous river” — on the 80th anniversary of their
 Jennife Paerson
g ra n d fa t h e r ’s 1 927 to 1 929 ex p e d i t i o n
photograph by
Day oNe
Fort Simpson to Virginia Falls
The boreal forest stretches out beneath us,
broken only by the occasional sinkhole lake,
as we leave Fort Simpson and the Mackenzie
River behind. The Twin Otter floatplane lifts
west, into the sun – still high in the northern
sky – and over the Nahanni National Park
Reserve, a 4,766-square-kilometre slice of
N.W.T. wilderness near the Yukon-B.C.
border and the headwaters of the South
Nahanni River. Save for the roar of the
engine and wind, our group travels in
silence. We have waited all day for this flight;
some of us have waited our entire lives
to raft the South Nahanni – a Canadian
Heritage River that moved Pierre Elliot
Trudeau to make it a national park reserve
in 1976. Two years later, the area became
the first natural region in the world to be
designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
We fly over the canyons and karstlands
of the Ram Plateau in the Mackenzie Moun-
tains, where every ripple of rock is lit golden
in the evening sun. Shafts of sunlight burst
through the clouds and we catch our first
BeYond all iMaGininG
“so you’re going up the Big nahanni? Boy,
you’ve bitten off something this time! they
say there’s canyons in there thousands of feet
deep, and the water coming through faster’n
hell.” —r.M. Patterson’s The Dangerous River
Noel Hendrickson
glimpse of the Nahanni, its Fourth Canyon
and – with a collective gasp – Virginia Falls.
In The Dangerous River, my grandfather’s
1954 account of his N.W.T. explorations, he
writes about feeling the vibration of the
“Falls of the Nahanni” from 20 miles away.
One week later, on August 25, 1927, Grand-
pop snapped the earliest photographs of
the then-unnamed falls, accompanied by
Minnesota prospector Albert Faille. Now a
lifetime, two days and four flights later, my
father, brother, sister and I touch down in
the heart of the Nahanni wilderness, as our
plane scuds to a stop on the wide and silty
river near the campsite above Virginia Falls.
My heart skips a beat. This is where my
family’s love affair with Canada began.
I
t was my brother, Jeremy, who planted
the seed of this family expedition – to
mark the 80th anniversary of Grand-
pop’s 1927-to-1929 paddle up the South
Nahanni. Soon I was calling my sister, Sam,
in Victoria, and urging her to join us. Her
only reservation: our easy raft float down-
river wouldn’t compare to Grandpop’s
adventures navigating rapids in a loaded
canoe, surviving sub-zero temperatures and
living off the occasional kill of wild game –
epic stories he recounted in five books,
numerous magazine articles and over Sun-
day dinners at the Victoria home he shared
with our grandmother. Raymond Murray
WestWorld >> S u m m e r 2 0 0 9 47
Patterson was one of Canada’s foremost
adventure writers. A legendary figure in our
family, he also inspired a generation of
Canadian adventurers, many of whom to
this day attempt to replicate his journeys
into the wild. His first book received rave
reviews: The New York Herald Tribune
described The Dangerous River as “an emo-
tion of the north . . . recorded, it is not too
much to say, in a mixture of Thoreau and
I ask my father
Jack London.” The New Yorker called it “truly
enchanting,” while The New York Times said
its modest writing “betrays no indication
that Mr. Patterson realizes what a remarkable
man he is.”
Day TWo
Virginia Falls to Strawberry Island
Nothing beats the Canadian North for bring-
ing diverse groups of people together – my
grandfather and Faille 80 years ago and now
the Patterson clan: me, the writer, my father,
a retired B.C. Supreme Court master, busi-
nessman brother Jeremy and architect sister
Sam. Then there’s the rest of our 15-member
group: Wall Street fund managers Jen and
Laura; Corin, an amateur photographer; real
estate mogul James and his 14-year-old
nephew Jacob; journalist Michael and wife
Vivien; guides Rob, Kaj, Jamie and Bhreagh.
Awoken early the next day by the camp
bustle, we are anxious to pack up the tents
and follow the wooden boardwalk through
Jack pines and black spruce to Virginia Falls.
The black-and-white photographs I’ve seen
in Grandpop’s heavy, leather-bound albums
48 W e s t w o r l d >> Summer 2009 (top left) Noel Hendrickson, (R.M. Patterson) Palmer Lewis
soon come alive in full sound and colour:
the Sluice Box Rapids, now a roar of white-
water, and just ahead, Virginia Falls, plung-
ing 92 metres into the river’s Fourth Canyon.
And at its base, dwarfed by limestone cliffs:
the three sky-blue inflatable rafts that will
transport us 200 km downriver over five
days. From here, they are the size of jelly-
beans. My 71-year-old father and I stand for
a moment, spellbound. Over the din of the
how long he has waited for this moment.
rushing water, I ask how long he has waited
for this moment. His eyes are fixed on the
river ahead. “Forever,” he responds.
We could spend hours here, but the river
waits. We strap bags to backs for the 1.2-km
portage to lower ground through rosemary-
like Labrador tea, northern starflowers and
kinnikinnick. A dirt trail descends in a steep
series of switchbacks, where the waters’
gentle mist falls on us like fresh dew. South-
erners James and Jacob are already lounging
on a log below, dressed in camouflage gear.
They will spend the better part of this trip
waiting for the rest of us.
The Nahanni is the stuff of legends – tales
of gold and adventure, trappers and prospec-
tors, of the indigenous Nahanni and those
European adventurers, my English grandfa-
ther included, drawn here in the quest for
freedom and fortune. After the Klondike
Gold Rush, placer gold was rumoured to
have been found up the Flat River, a tribu-
tary of the South Nahanni. But men stayed
away, fearful of the unforgiving terrain and
the numbers of dead or missing that led to
tales of “head-hunting Nahanni.” In reality,
the string of murders and deaths by starva-
tion, accident or misfortune along the river
were more likely the result of gold, greed or
poor planning – in the wake of the frenzied
and lawless gold rush. Even when Grandpop
and Faille set off from Fort Simpson in 1925,
their dream of paddling north up the
Nahanni was considered pure suicide.
From a rocky launching point on the
beach, we don wet-weather gear: sou’westers,
Patagonia rain pants, rubber boots and life
jackets. Packs loaded and secured in the
18-foot Moravia rafts, we then settle in, five
to a craft, a guide at the helm. The dramatic
rust-coloured Fourth Canyon is the first of
four to come. At their greatest height, these
sheer rock faces – which escaped the last ice
age – rise steeply to 1,200 metres, then curve
into natural amphitheatres of dolomite,
limestone and layers of sedimentary rock
that rival the Grand Canyon.
In one of the other rafts, Jeremy and Sam
swap old jokes, leaving me, the baby of the
family, alone with Dad. I feel privileged, keen
to experience the river through his eyes as he
trades anecdotes about Grandpop and the
river with the guides. His face lights up as he
sees for the first time the landscape he has
until now only heard about. “The cliffs and
this marvellous, calm water flowing through
here – it’s just extraordinary.” He points to the
shore: “That’s the sort of spot where Grand-
pop would have camped, on that grassy bank,
with a place to beach a canoe.” Further down-
stream is Marengo Creek, which Grandpop
named after Napolean’s favourite horse.
 But it isn’t long before the clouds roll in.
And just a few hours later, at a rocky camp on
Strawberry Island, I lie in my tent and listen
to the rolling thunder echoing off the can-
yons and mountains like bursts of gunfire.
Day Three
Strawberry Island to The Gate
A light mist rises off the river as we launch the
inflatables and head downstream toward the
His eyes fix on the river. “Forever,” he responds.
South Nahanni
Watershed
Nahanni National
Park Reserve
Figure 8 Rapids, a stretch of whirlpools, boils
and eddies that Grandpop and Faille, remark-
ably, navigated without portaging. High water
has since changed these rapids – now catego-
rized as class III-plus in difficulty. But by
canoe, says Rob, the Nahanni has always been
an incredibly challenging river to run, so “you
can imagine what it was like for your grandfa-
ther and Faille to canoe upstream. That’s why
The Dangerous River is so talked about now,
(top) Jennifer Patterson, (bottom) Noel Hendrickson Westworld
because it would have been tough to paddle
up. It’s too deep to pole, and in these canyons
there are no beaches for tracking a canoe.”
Travelling downriver at about 10 klicks,
we soon pass the Flat River and the site of
Faille’s cabin, where in 1927 Grandpop
stopped on his way to the falls. Faille spent
decades on the river, prospecting for gold
and trapping furs. But large quantities of
gold were never found.
Virginia Falls
Figure 8 Rapids
The Gate
The Big Bend
Deadmen Valley
The Splits
Nahanni Butte
W
e fall into a rhythm: awaken early,
breakfast and break camp. The
guides buzz about, prepping the
rafts for another day on the river and, in a
place where time is meaningless and cannot
be gauged by the sun’s position in the sky,
preparing meals that provide the day’s struc-
ture. Pancakes and sausages one morning,
eggs Benedict the next. Lunches are eaten
en route – pita stuffed with tabbouleh
or caribou smokies roasted over the fire.
Dinners feature smoked arctic char and
asparagus soup starters, main courses of pork
tenderloin, chicken curry or lamb kebabs on
a bed of couscous. Later, we perch on camp
stools, sip tea and talk well into the evening
as Michael shares stories of life in Africa
and the guides tease Jen and Laura about
Sex and the City. But always, the focus comes
back to the river and Grandpop’s books.
Vivien encourages my father to read from
The Dangerous River while Michael takes
notes. Jamie, the son of bush pilots, who
now studies at Oxford, observes, “What’s
most compelling about these stories is
the legend that was R.M. Patterson himself.
He’s a great writer, but he was also out there
living life in a really big, amazing way.”
Day Four
The Gate to Headless Creek
The rafting life is making some of us restless.
Kraus Keen to climb mountains in search of Dall’s
Hotsprings
secrets of the nahanni
(left to right) Rob navigates Deadmen Valley;
R.M. Patterson wrote five books based on his
adventures (in 2000, a Rocky Mountain in
the Kananaskis Range was named after him —
Patterson’s Peak); the author and her father;
Sunblood Mountain towers over Virginia Falls.
sheep, eight of us scramble to the top of The
Gate, a narrow limestone passage with
460-metre-high walls, for a view of Pulpit
Rock and downriver toward Big Bend, a
90-degree hairpin turn in the river. At the
summit, Corin snaps photos and a shirtless
Jamie salutes the sun in a yoga pose. I study
the almost-bonsai twists of stunted trees and
tundra plants, brittle reindeer lichen and
Continued on page 59
>> S u m m e r 2 0 0 9 49
 Nahanni
Continued from page 49
low-lying shrubs laden with crimson berries,
thinking of Grandpop and the “dreamy
afternoons” he spent hiking here, where
“the river was a distant murmur through the
warm scent of pines.”
We soon pass through the foreboding
Funeral Range to the Headless Range and
Headless Creek, so named for two brothers
whose decapitated skeletons were discovered
tied to trees here in 1908, or so the legend
goes. In 1927, strangers again warned Grand-
pop against setting out on another expedi-
tion: “Men vanish in that country,” one
cautioned. “Down the river, they say it’s a
damned good country to keep clear of . . . a
country lorded over by Wild Mountain Men
. . . the river fast and bad.” The MacLeod
brothers’ murder was but one of hundreds of
dark stories about the Nahanni. From 1908
to 1945, many more men disappeared,
starved to death or died here mysteriously.
Fittingly, that evening on a river-rock
beach under blue and pink brush strokes of
cloud, Dad reads a passage about Willie and
Frank MacLeod from The Dangerous River –
ghost stories in a haunted valley.
Day Five
Headless Creek to Lafferty Creek
We paddle past Headless Creek and through
Deadmen Valley, stopping at Sheaf Creek.
We’re looking for the site of the cabin where
Grandpop and the English trapper Gordon
Matthews, his companion on his second
Nahanni trek, overwintered in 1928-1929.
We pull the rafts onto the beach, and while
Vivien and Jamie investigate wolf, bear and
raptor tracks in the sand, Sam stumbles
upon a rusted stovepipe and a conspicuous
clearing in the trees. Further upstream is
the likely site of the men’s food cache,
where foodstuffs and fur pelts were stored
on high wooden platforms to deter ani-
mals. We examine sunken cabin beams and
the remnants of a makeshift stove, fash-
ioned from an old oil drum, with the enthu-
siasm of amateur archaeologists. Kaj is
certain we have found the site, exactly as
Grandpop described it, in a clearing in the
trees. Dad’s chest puffs with pride as photos
are snapped for posterity. Even Rob and the
guides make a note of the find for future
trips downriver.
We lunch at Dry Canyon Creek, ride the
high-standing waves of the Cache Rapids
where Matthews almost drowned after fall-
ing overboard in 1928 and enter the dra-
matic First Canyon, its towering limestone
walls the highest yet. Later, at our Lafferty
Creek camp, Dad reads from Grandpop’s
journals, written in the form of a letter home
to his mother in England and published
posthumously as the Nahanni Journals.
Day Six
Lafferty Creek to The Splits, a.k.a.
“Bug Hell Island”
It is the last full day on the river and we slip
into swimsuits in preparation for the hot
springs ahead. From here on, we’re at the
mercy of the infamous mosquitoes of the
North; Rob warns us to keep bug shirts at the
ready. Soon enough we reach Kraus Hot
Springs, greeted by the sulphur stench of
rotten eggs. The rocks in the pool overlook-
ing the river are covered in a brown sludge,
the water warm and brackish. Kaj slathers his
face with mud, a Nahanni tradition, as a light
river breeze keeps the bugs at bay.
We camp on what Bhreagh dubs “Bug
Hell Island” in The Splits, where the
Nahanni widens as it braids and weaves in
Continued on page 92
Westworld >> S u m m e r 2 0 0 9 59
 british columbia
nahanni
Continued from page 59

myriad directions. Bug shirts are the preferred

TO ADVERTISE IN MARKETPLACE,
dinner attire, as dragonflies dive-bomb our
PLEASE CONTACT GILLIAN TRAINOR AT
heads, hunting for insects. We bat the bugs
604.299.7311
away from one another. But when the hordes
alberta reach class-IV-plus we escape to the sanctu-
ary of the tents, diving in and quickly zip-
ping up the fly. But I still count – and kill
– more than 60 mosquitoes that have some-
how followed us inside.

Day SeveN
To Nahanni Butte and Fort Simpson
It is with mixed feelings that we leave the
river behind. Jeremy, in particular, is heart-
broken that the trip is almost over. And all of
us feel humbled by the epic journey made so
many years ago by Grandpop, without the
lower mainland security of experienced guides or their
gourmet meals. Soon we are returning by
hawaii plane from Nahanni Butte to Fort Simpson,
where roads replace rivers and hot showers,
flush toilets and bed linens await. The group
scatters, to B&Bs and frontier hotels, with
promises to meet up for a last supper at the
only restaurant in town. But like Grandpop,
after months of sleeping in the open air,
I cannot bring myself to stay indoors. Instead
I lie in a hammock in the B&B’s garden,
reading and rereading passages from
his books in an attempt to prolong the
euphoria of being on the river. Later, unable
north america to sleep, I lie staring at the ceiling fan, plot-
ting my return – this time for two weeks,
in a canoe.

 eco footPrint Low impact.

 GUided BY natUre Nahanni River
Adventures/Canadian River Expeditions
(1-800-297-6927; nahanni.com). Cost: $5,022.20
per person for seven-day expedition.
 Gear Quick-dry clothes, hiking boots, rain
gear, insect repellent. Checklist at nahanni.com.
 additional intel The Canadian
Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) works to
protect the 40,000-square-kilometre Nahanni
watershed from mining and to expand the park’s
boundaries. cpaws.org/programs/nahanni
 critical readinG The Dangerous
River: Adventure on the Nahanni by R.M. Patterson
(TouchWood Editions, 2009; $19.95); Nahanni Jour-
nals: R.M. Patterson’s 1927-1929 Journals/ed. Richard
C. Davis (University of Alberta Press, 2008; $29.95).
 on-screen Nahanni (1962), a short
National Film Board classic, following Albert Faille
upriver to Virginia Falls. nfb.ca/film/Nahanni 

92 W e s t W o r l d >> Summer 2009