George River Solo 2018
The Plan
During the winter of 2017/18 I began thinking about where I would head off to for my summer trip. I have been doing progressively longer solo trips in recent years, 23 days on the Bloodvein in 2015, 30 days on the Otoskwin – Attawapiskat in 2016 and 46 days on the Savant – Albany in 2017. I always seem to start with north of 60 ideas but the logistical difficulties and cost once had again had me considering something slightly closer to home. Eventually I settled on the George River in spite of or perhaps because I had previously paddled the river in 2008 and 2010.
The George would offer plenty of moving water, something I found a bit lacking on my previous solo trips, my prior experience there gave me the confidence that I might not have for an unknown route with the same quantity and difficulty of rapids. Of course I didn’t want this to be a simple repeat trip and in order to extend the length I decided to start from the Trans-Labrador Highway instead of the more “traditional” start in Schefferville using the DePas River to access the George or fly-in to the headwaters as I did on 2010. This route would involve crossing the massive Smallwood Reservoir and then over the height of land portage to reach the George. With a total distance of just over 800km I estimated about 36 paddling days, adding layovers would probably bring it up to 42 days or so. With that in mind I would carry about 50 days of supplies to cover any contingency.
Initially I had planned to start around July 1st; research indicated that the Smallwood was usually free of ice shortly after the middle of June. 2018 proved to have one of the latest break-up dates ever, satellite images from Jun 17th showed the Smallwood completely snow covered, any chance of it being clear by July 1st was unlikely. The next good image came 10 days later, on June 27th the snow was gone but the ice remained covering at least 90% of the reservoir, by July 1st the ice was clearly disappearing and on July 4th the Smallwood was about 90% open water. I set a departure date of July 9th and hoped to reach the put-in on the 12th or 13th.
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