MOUNTAIN LIFE - Blue Mountains | Summer 2019

62 CLOCKWISE FROM TOP Julian Baker and Jess Basta stomp some white. MITCH MIHAN. Pictographs on Missinaibi Lake. Sailing Dog Lake. JULIAN BAKER up the sail, and attaching the bows of the two canoes) split on impact. The sail began to fall, and in a flurry of action we all began to address the issue at hand. We were nearly stopped at this point and quickly I jumped out and briefly held the boats in place. We managed the ropes and positioned the sail as best we could, then continued downstream to a calmer location. Our emotions had done a quick 180. We disassembled the sail, and agreed to forgo our push towards a rest day. A wiser group may have chosen not to sail that day, but it sure was a good time. Julian Baker: Endless days of whitewater became our normal cadence. Some days we’d be navigating class 1 to class 3 rapids from the minute we set out on the water until the minute we pulled off the river at night. Most spectacularly, nearing the end of the Missinaibi before it flows into the Moose River are several dramatic falls. Nothing can prepare you for the frenzied rush the water makes on its run off the Canadian Shield to the lower elevation Hudson Bay lowlands and eventually to the Arctic Ocean. The final significant drops take you past aptly named Thunderhouse Falls, and finally Hell’s Gate Canyon. Since 2004 the Missinaibi has been designated a Canadian Heritage River, affording it protections for the significant cultural, historical, geological and natural values. One aspect of the designation I feel most important to protect and that certainly left the most lasting impact on me was the Aboriginal legacy. It would be impossible to write a trip report without mentioning the pictographs of Fairy Point on Missinaibi Lake. To the uninitiated, pictographs are perhaps Canada’s oldest artworks. Human figures and spirit creatures scrawled onto the cliffs with red ochre long before nylon tents and plastic canoes came along reminds me that others have paddled here before and will paddle here after.