George River Solo 2018
Day 14
Start Time: 7/28/2018 1:47 PM
Duration: 5:46
Distance / Total (km): 24.0 / 188.1
I woke at 11:00, it was like a sauna in the tent, my legs are sore from yesterdays “hiking”, I have to find a decent camp tonight. It was after 12:00 before I got into action, the sounds of ‘skeeters and flies outside were not encouraging me to get sealed up for venturing outside but at least it’s not raining! The sky was cloud covered with a faint breeze from the east while not exactly hot the humidity was extreme.
It was a long kilometre to the first rapid a “shallow R2” leading to Lac Elson, there are three channels here, I took the left and was able to get through with just a bit of light scraping. This rapid marked the beginning of the George River, it was also the meeting point of my 2010 route from the headwaters a couple of days upstream to the east, from now on it would all be vaguely familiar. 3.5km across Lac Elson to the R2-3 at the channel to Lac Cabot, my 2010 notes indicated this was easier than expected and on this trip going it was more like an R1, I was able to coast through with just a couple of minor “touches”.
Lac Cabot is about 10km in length, at the two-hour point I could see the esker at the northeast corner where Steve and I had camped in 2010. Although I remembered it as a nice spot I wasn’t thrilled about the hike up to the top plus it was too early to stop. I turned northwest, back on the river now with some marked rapids ahead. The first R1 was merely swift water running through large underwater boulders; at the widening, a 180-degree turn is required, another shallow R1 forced me to hop out to get off a rock. 2km further along were the two rock gardens, real classics, no way to paddle through either of them cleanly, little option other than to scrape my way through and at the end get out to pull the boat over the stacked up rocks.
All the time going through the second rock garden there was the beautiful sight of a beach up ahead on the left. From 500m, it is always a bit hard to tell how wide or dry or flat it might be, I paddled over, pulled the canoe the last 10m over pure sand. In lower water this beach might be 25m deep, at this point it was more like 10m, more than enough space. Behind the beach, there is a grassy area that which would work in very high water. I set up the Pod on the sand and moved in, time to make tea, relax in my chair and start making up for lost calories. For breakfast, I had only an apple and just a handful of nuts while paddling. I made a bag of Kung Pao Chicken with Rice (Backpackers Pantry), always a good choice. A bit of light rain fell periodically with the distant sound of thunder. I felt much better after eating although still a bit worn out. I am thinking that a short day might be in order for tomorrow; it is about 9km to the next known camp. On the other hand, if the weather is crappy I would be happy to stay where I am.
I continued to munch on cookies & chocolate, organize my maps and plan the next 3 or 4 days that would be needed to reach the Three Gorges where there would be a mandatory portage. I got a bit carried away and ended up spending a long period looking at all my maps right to the end. All of a sudden, it was 2:30am, had a last smoke, plugged in some tunes and drifted off. I was woken at 5:00am by a couple of annoying mosquitos that would not leave me alone, I lit a coil and went back to sleep.
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