I’VE JUST RETURNED from scouting what I believe to be the fifth first descent
of a tributary to the Bonnechere River.
Fifteen years ago, I dragged along a local “old guy” when I first scouted the
creek. He didn’t tell me he’d run it a generation earlier. Like him, I haven’t the
heart to tell this new crop of keeners that I’ve run it before.
A quiet Ottawa Valley canoe tripping river for most of the year, the Bon-
nechere booms in spring high water, fed by several feet of snow melt. This
unnamed tributary enters above Basin Depot and drains the southeast corner
of Algonquin Park. An eight-minute run with a window of just a couple of days
a year, the creek packs continuous class III rapids and a couple 20-foot falls.
Before people paddled for recreation and adventure, a first descent was
merely a means to an end. Fur, gold, logs and mapping the borders of a grow-
ing colony brought industry-minded paddlers to nearly all of the continent’s
rivers one or two hundred years ago.
Early explorers such as Alexander Mackenzie, David Thompson and Si-
mon Fraser left their names on newly “discovered” rivers, but it’s unlikely they
bagged first descents on these waters. Native guides whose ancestors had
used the river corridors for thousands of years led these European explorers.
Even our first descent tributary to the Bonnechere has been thoroughly modi-
fied for log drives that ended 70 years ago.
Unlike Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong, our river running forefathers
tended not to plant a flag on the summit of their accomplishments. Assuming
natives, fur traders, gold miners, log drivers or surveyors didn’t travel it earlier,
there is little way of knowing who was first down a river.
The difficulty of proving a first descent doesn’t mean there’s no such thing.
Three examples of indisputable first descents stand out in our collective
56651_Salus_Ads:Layout 1 12/19/07 8:10 AM Page 1
whitewater history.
The granddaddy of them all, and the one that arguably started this whole
first descent fascination, was Major John Wesley Powell’s 1869 exploration
of the Colorado River including the Grand Canyon. The one-armed civil war
veteran walked more rapids than he ran, but he was there to confront the un-
a
L
iv
e
the d
v
e
nt
u
known. When Powell ventured down the Colorado, the river didn’t even have
re
the same name at the top and bottom of the run. His four-month trip defined
the term epic. Not only did Powell connect important dots on the map of the
West, he more or less created the whitewater river trip as we know it.
In 1971, Dr. Walt Blackadar, a 49-year-old physician with only four years’
kayaking experience, became a modern legend of first descents when he ran
Turnback Canyon on the Alsek River solo in his Mithril Vector fibreglass kayak.
Located in the middle of the Yukon/B.C.’s remote Coastal Mountains with the
only walk-around option across 16 kilometres of glacier, Turnback was aptly
named. The run typified Blackadar and topped a long list of impressive class
V solo first descents. Blackadar was inducted posthumously into the Interna-
tional Whitewater Hall of Fame in 2007 and Turnback has seen only a handful
of descents since.
Remote, committing, huge and still rarely run, the Grand Canyon of the
Stikine in northern B.C. belongs on any first descents shortlist. In 1981, fel-
low Hall of Fame honouree Rob Lesser began a nearly 10-year quest to run
the canyon in its entirety. On his fourth attempt in 1990 with Doug Ammons,
Lesser succeeded in making the canyon’s first self-supported descent. Re-
portedly, it was three days of psychological torture.
Powell, Blackadar and Lesser each represent a different era and a land-
mark accomplishment that redefined the realm of the possible. There is no
evidence to suggest someone travelled their paths before them. Unlike the
voyages of Mackenzie and other early explorers, these were the first deliber-
ate attempts to confront the challenge of a river as opposed to avoiding it.
This is why my Bonnechere tributary keeners are lining up their own Grand
Canyon descent. As with any of a thousand out-of-the-mainstream runs, this
one requires research, planning and commitment all commensurate to the
skill and ambition of the group. Class II or class V—it doesn’t matter. As far as
they know it has never been run before. Carly Harris
Would knowing change their mindset? Perhaps.
Does this fact diminish the sense of adventure and giddy nervousness that
accompanies peeling out of an eddy into the unknown? This is, after all, why
we bother. True first descents are personal, regardless of who may have been
there before.
JeFF JACkSoN is a professor of outdoor Adventure at Algonquin College in Pembroke, ontario.
www.salusmarine.com
www.rapidmag.com 1
Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48