Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie Whitewater Expedition – Province of , Canada

West Branch of the Magpie River Whitewater Kayaking Expedition Province of Quebec, Canada August 1983 Written by Paul Kiefner December 2013

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Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie River Whitewater Expedition – Province of Quebec, Canada

Forty Eight Degrees North Latitude

Unrelenting in its pursuit of sea level the Magpie River plunges off the Plateau on its race through the Canadian Boreal Wilderness until it finally empties its history and rage into the Saint Lawrence River.

Thirty years have passed since our expedition kayaked the West Branch of the Magpie River - a very challenging wilderness adventure trip fraught with mishaps. It’s a miracle no one died. None of us ever went back. The experience changed me forever. I cannot speak for the others.

While recently browsing online information about the Magpie I came across a trip report in Canadian Canoe Routes about four guys who kayaked the river in 2000. John Arnett, a kayaker on our expedition, read the article and offered the following comment.

Submitted by: John T. Arnett Seven of us did the west branch in August 1983. The best description of this river came to us from a Canadian Canoe club -- "Only those whose level of kayaking expertise has reached the level of Nobility should attempt the West Branch of the Magpie". After 36 years of kayaking, the West Branch of the Magpie has to be the stand out.

John T. Arnett Laramie, Wyoming

Most people will never see this river. Few will kayak it. It is simply too remote and dangerous and requires too much planning and time. Commercial rafting companies now run trips on the river, but that was hardly the experience we desired. At the time, we were one of only a few self-supported groups who had run the Magpie. Commercial rafting on the Magpie was nonexistent then.

Occasionally, I wonder why I never chronicled this trip, but I believe people do things only when they are truly ready. While in Ottawa this summer, a memory sparked my desire to record the experience for once and for all.

There are many things I have forgotten, but this trip is not one of them. Some of the precise details may be missing or inaccurate, but this will not change my indelible impressions of this trip or alter my ability to communicate them.

Back then, the Magpie was considered one of North America’s Top Ten Extreme Whitewater , breathtaking in complexity and scope and highly respected for its dangerous character. In our grand delusion, Charlie Duffy and I excitedly put together an expedition to run this river. We had paddled the classic West Virginia Whitewater Rivers including the Gauley, Cheat, Tygart, Blackwater, New, and Big Sandy, and many others. We were at the apex of our skills and confidence. Yet it proved insignificant considering what the Magpie had in store.

Charlie’s mindset was that this trip would be a “Piece of Cake”. My mindset was more of apprehension, although I was excited about paddling a true wilderness river. I would have given anything for a “Piece of Cake” on this trip being that I was constantly hungry.

As the planning progressed, so did the formation of our group of seven, all of whom took the bait so carefully prepared with embellishments of enthusiasm. There were five kayakers: Paul Kiefner, Charlie Duffy and Greg Kalmbach from Maryland and Mark Kiefner and John Arnett from Wyoming. Our raft support consisted of

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Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie River Whitewater Expedition – Province of Quebec, Canada

Vietnam Bruce from out west as the sole oarsman and Dr. Hubert Yockey as the chief logistician and rapid scout. Bruce rowed the raft while Dr.Yockey reconnoitered and hung on for dear life as the raft careened off massive boulders like a pinball while the river dropped off the Labrador Plateau into whitewater oblivion.

This trip had all the ingredients of a recipe for disaster. Divergent personalities, an overloaded raft, post-traumatic stress syndrome, a marijuana addict, ancient cooking methods, too much beer, too little food and a variety of unexpected problems that would have paralyzed weaker personalities. No one died on this trip, but some should have been killed.

There are only two pictures in this chronicle. All remaining images are on Kodak slides which were not digitized. The words will transport you. Use your imagination.

Dr. Yockey helped Charlie and I plan this trip. Dr. Yockey was probably more excited that either myself or Charlie and also basked in the glow of euphoric delusion.

Ah! The Grandeur! The Rapids! The Boreal Forest! The Camaraderie!

Dr. Yockey had a lot of experience planning and running whitewater wilderness trips in Northern Quebec with the Explorer Scouts in the Hudson Bay watershed. He was instrumental in the detailed organization so critical to our borderline success achieved only through the grace of god who so kindly spared our lives.

Fortunately, we had moderate water levels. Even so, it was a miracle no one was injured on this trip. I would not want to run the Magpie in high water due to the exponential risk increase.

The river was not the sole unknown or concern. My brother, Mark, advertised for a raft guide and hired a Vietnam Veteran, who, unknown to Mark at the time, essentially hated humanity. An acute misanthrope, Bruce Vietnam made a point of setting up his tent a hundred yards from our tents. You can imagine Bruce’s reaction after his raft got wrapped around a car-sized rock during the early hours of the first-day descent. Behaviorally, think of Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. If we had been carrying guns, someone surely would have been killed on this trip.

The Classic Pipe Dream plan was to cover 120 miles of river in 12 days. Charlie and I argued about this but somehow decided on the longer trip versus my proposed 60 mile trip. The first part of the longer version would be a 60 mile, hair-raising descent of the boulder and waterfall strewn West Branch followed by the 30 mile section of Lac Magpie then through the lake outlet into the big water of the main river for the remaining 30 mile descent down to the Saint Lawrence River. This 120 mile trip is what Charlie insisted was going to be a “Piece of Cake”.

Dr. Yockey had a twelve passenger van which we used for the 24 hour drive to Sept Iles, Quebec. We loaded it at his house in Belair, Maryland, and piled in for the thousand mile drive to Sept Isles. French for "Seven Islands", Sept Iles is a city in the Côte-Nord region of eastern Quebec, Canada. It is among the northernmost locales with a paved connection to the rest of Quebec's road network. In Sept Iles we chartered two float planes through Air Brousse to fly us north into a small lake near the headwaters of the West Branch. The pilots flew the DeHavilland Otter and Beaver above the main river so we could see what we were in for, but rapids seen from 1000 feet look different than when your kayak is being swallowed and smashed by them.

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Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie River Whitewater Expedition – Province of Quebec, Canada

After landing on the lake we loaded the raft and got into our kayaks. The lake outlet into the West Branch was not far and soon we were riding the smooth tongue of water into the main river.

Rapid number one had a single narrow channel with a big boulder in the middle with a large volume of water pouring over it creating a deep hydraulic depression. There was only one way through – down the middle. Eyeballing it from above, I thought it very nasty, especially for the start of the trip. Paddling into it, I immediately flipped and rolled. Now calibrated, I was never completely at ease after this.

Heavy with provisions the eighteen-foot oar-powered raft was hard for Bruce to maneuver quickly around boulders due to the steep drops and fast current. Even with Dr. Yockey yelling directions and pointing Bruce’s reaction time and the raft’s responsivity were too slow. In no time the raft was pinned against a car-size rock and was held fast by the current. The bottom of the raft was against the rock and water was pouring into the raft compartments. It took all of us working feverishly to deflate the raft chambers and peel the raft off the rock. For anyone who watches reality television this is your wakeup call.

The metal tubing of the raft’s rowing frame was bent but we were able to straighten it sufficiently. This incident pissed off Bruce and fueled the start of his psycho-erratic downward spiral. Twitching mentally like lethal injection.

Kayak materials and design at the time were crude compared to today’s many advanced lightweight custom designs. We paddled heavy plastic rotary molded Perception Mirage kayaks which did the job but were not as light or maneuverable, a major advantage paddling complex rapids. In the overall context of this extremely dangerous trip this was the least of our problems.

Somewhere along the way a recommendation was made to Bruce that he rope-tether his oars to the raft frame. This would prevent the oars from going into the river if Bruce lost control in a heavy rapid. Bruce wanted nothing to do with this idea which proved to be a critical error in judgment.

We ran rapids, too numerous to count, of every conceivable class and complexity. Rapids were portaged by some and run by others. I never felt I would miss out by not running a rapid. The risk was too great. I’ll never forget one rapid shaped like a horseshoe. The rock throat was open at the top of the rapid and it had to be sixty feet wide and twenty feet deep slanted at forty-five degrees just boiling with water coming from every angle. Some, like mile- long Black Granite Gorge, had to be portaged. This portage was a day long affair where every piece of equipment had to be carried around the gorge. I completely shredded two pairs of shoes on this trip and they had to be duct- taped to prevent them from falling apart.

The rapids were like nothing we’d ever run. Charlie and I were ahead of the group one day eddy-hopping down a long staircase type rapid. We were sitting in a small eddy on river left when Mark turned in beside us. The river below us could not be seen, only the tops of spruce trees sloping down like the steep-pitched roof on a church.

We looked at each other with wide eyes. I said, “Here Goes!” Charlie was laughing as Mark said, “You guys are nuts!” My first paddle stroke out of the eddy was fully committed as I turned the kayak’s bow into the current, blind. With Charlie behind, our boats dropped out of Mark’s sight down the turbulent staircase. We were crazy!

This is called blind reactionary paddling. Since the entire rapid cannot be seen, a course through the entire rapid cannot be determined. The technique is to surgically methodize the rapid working from eddy to eddy, wherever they can be accessed. The eddy allows you to rest while scouting the route through the rapid to the next eddy. The Page 4 – Revision A

Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie River Whitewater Expedition – Province of Quebec, Canada reactionary component comes to life once the kayak is in the current. The rapid now looks entirely different due to the changing elevation, current speed and direction convolved with the kayaker’s vision, water reading skills and paddling technique. At its best it is a flowing synergy as the kayak is directed by split second paddle strokes and body movements melded with current dynamics. At its worst it is a nightmare. People die doing this.

The Magpie is a magnificent, wild, scenic, remote, technical, unforgiving, whitewater river. Magpie cares nothing. The Progression Panels

Panel I Panel II Panel III Panel IV

River twisting Mind smash hero Seed on rock Seed off rock Current down Mind away All alone Cannot stay

Head smash hero Push the fog Mind pain hero No Archangels Out of town Seed to stay As not known Lead the way Call from forest Memory stuck Fit of sleep Mindful hero Fool for more Bitter war Battle worn Dragon slay Mythic spit Battle score Emotion torn Seed be gone Seed to floor Nevermore Night to morn No DNA!

As kayakers, we were thrilled to be on the river. Thrill seekers. Yeah, that’s right. We were thrill seekers - in the most absolute sense of the words. People who take risks because normal life does not excite them enough. Or they need to escape from something. Psych Ward.

We worked so hard every day and faced so many challenges that the only thing to look forward to was resting and eating. Getting up early was a struggle, but we had to stay on schedule. This trip was becoming very exhausting.

Ten miles a day on a normal river is not difficult. But this was no normal river. Nothing was normal about this trip. One day we traveled only one-half of a mile.

Dinner was cooked in a reflector oven, a holdover stainless-steel contraption Dr. Yockey had, and loved, from his Explorer Scout days. It cooked well, but way too slowly for paddlers who were ravenous by days end. This was just another issue that exacerbated the ever increasing tensions among the group. By the time dinner was over we were in our tents and fast asleep. Getting out of a warm sleeping bag in the morning took a lot of effort.

The Magpie has a good Brook Trout population and Mark and John caught enough on fly rods for dinner one night. Most of the fish were less than two pounds and surely there were large specimens, but we did not have the time to do much fishing.

Today, day unknown was just another day on the river and we gathered in a large pool above a Class VI waterfall. Certain death if swept over. Somehow, Greg lost his paddle and was in the current moving toward the falls. Mark managed to rescue him just before the drop and later found out that Greg had been smoking marijuana before this

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Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie River Whitewater Expedition – Province of Quebec, Canada situation developed. Greg was smoking dope every day and became liability number two. I am not philosophically opposed to smoking marijuana but there was obviously no place for it on this trip.

I forget the day hell began. Only that it ended in grand fashion. No one died, but the probability increased.

It all started in a nice calm pool above a rapid with a very wide, very deep and very well-formed hydraulic depression, meaning if you got in it, you were praying for help.

The setting sun was forcing us to decide where to camp. There was no space above the rapid. We, meaning five of us, decided to rough it and camp above the rapid, rather than risk running the rapid so late in the day, even though the camp spots were better below the rapid. Charlie and Vietnam Bruce had not bothered to consult with the group after we had reached consensus and they decided to take the raft thru the rapid. That’s when all hell broke loose.

The raft slid down the wide smooth tongue of water and did not punch through the wide hydraulic as intended. Instead, it was stopped instantly, and rotated so that the long axis of the raft was parallel to, and deep within, the hole. Indeed, they were in deep shit. And, to make matters worse, both oars sprung from the oarlocks, projected overboard and washed away!

And now, after all these years being in the dark, let the truth be revealed. The expression, “Up Shit’s Creek without a Paddle”, originated on the 1983 Magpie River Expedition.

Hell is not only hot and dry but it is also cold and wet.

Everything is as it seems. And it was.

The raft was stuck fast in this monster hole and was moving back and forth while being thrown up and down by the exploding vertical turbulence. The Trauma Boys looked like two Blue Crabs in a steamer pot trying to figure out what the hell was happening. All hell, cold and wet, was breaking loose!

Loose gear was ejected into the river! We sprang into action like Special OPS! Quickly we deployed throw ropes to Charlie and Bruce but could not pull the raft from the hole.

Finally the hydraulic released the raft which began its uncontrolled descent down the river toward the unknown as dark crept in. The Trauma Boys were now officially on our shit list.

Up in smoke Greg would you please pass that joint!

If I knew then, what I know now about risk mitigation, I may have decided not to go on this trip.

Mark, Greg and John jumped in their kayaks and pursued the loose gear and raft. I should call Brad Pitt now and offer him the lead role in Magpie Mania.

Dr. Yockey and I gathered whatever gear remained and assembled it along the shoreline. Soon thereafter, we got word the raft was beached and the Trauma Boys were alive. We took inventory of the gear only to realize some critical items were missing, like the tent Mark and I slept in. And the raft oars. Now tell me, does this sound like your kind of trip?

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Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie River Whitewater Expedition – Province of Quebec, Canada

Bruce and Charlie were barraged with our anger. “You idiots! What were you thinking? Risking our food and gear! And now we have no oars. No oars, explain that! Bruce you are a damn rock scientist! Charlie, the Wizard of Oz is offering you a brain.” I tore into Charlie like never before. “‘Piece of Cake’- right Charlie! Remember when I wanted to go 60 miles but you just had to go 120 because it would be a ‘Piece of Cake!’ Well guess what? The entire cake just got flushed down the toilet with our tent and our oars and god knows what else. Screw you!”

“See you in the morning.”

Camp was among the rocks. I crawled into my sleeping bag which lay on a rock slab. Cannot recall what everyone else did. I used a plastic trash bag as a covering.

Overnight, no one was murdered.

I awoke with an ear swollen shut the size of a tennis ball. Black fly bites. They were pervasive. We wore mosquito head nets most of the time. I never thought of sleeping with one on. By the end of the trip we were covered with bites. It was ugly, and getting uglier by the minute.

Six of seven awoke and all seven immediately got into a very serious discussion. The Classic Pipe Dream was quickly aborted in favor of The Classic Survival Plan. This included crafting oars from spruce saplings – Mark’s expertise. Calculating the distance to Lake Magpie – we were close. Then hunkering down on the lake shore - there we would figure the next steps. It’s amazing how a disaster creates cooperation.

And so it went. We made it down river to Lake Magpie and were overjoyed to find an empty fishing camp close to shore. It was well equipped and oh so pleasurable! There was a wood stove and some provisions, but not much. The gear was brought inside and organized and rations allocated. After a few days Charlie was getting agitated thinking he was going to starve. He wanted more food. But there was no leftover cake.

As luck would have it, a floatplane landed one day and taxied up to the camp, just in the nick of time. The pilot had come to replenish food supplies in preparation for some fishermen. We were overjoyed!

We flew out that day.

The drive home was anticlimactic, and quiet.

We learned a lot about ourselves, each other and group dynamics under severe stress.

During this trip I made some critical decisions which altered the course of my life.

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Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie River Whitewater Expedition – Province of Quebec, Canada

Paul and Mark Kiefner at Air Brousse following our successful descent of the West Branch Magpie River

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Chronicles of Paul Kiefner – 1983 Magpie River Whitewater Expedition – Province of Quebec, Canada

Epilogue

A few weeks later I received a phone call from Dr.Yockey. He tried to convince me to join him on a trip the following year. He described it as a 150 mile ascent of a river with many portages, portaging along a mountain top to the source of another river, and then paddling downriver into the Hudson Bay.

I said, “Dr. Yockey, I don’t think I am up for that”.

He continued to press me, saying, “Paul, you are as tough as nails from the Magpie!” and then something like, “You can kill someone with your hands! I need you on this trip!”

By now I was thinking, “He’s off his rocker!”

And then I said to him, “Dr. Yockey, I will never go on another trip like that again.”

I paddled sporadically after this. That fall I ran the Upper Gauley in West Virginia and thought it was a Piece of Cake. In 1987 I moved to New England and purchased a Vulcan Squirt Kayak and came to realize that it was just too dangerous to paddle. I lost interest in the sport and stopped kayaking in 1990.

Years later in 1992 I did go on another wilderness canoe trip with my brother, Mark. At first I wanted to attempt Ontario’s Drowning River, but the name seemed inappropriate. We selected and ran Ontario’s Albany River where at one point I could have died had Mark not rescued me from a rapid.

But that’s another story for another time.

I still love Canada and take solace in romanticizing the wild rivers that transport me back in time. Ah……

The Grandeur! The Rapids! The Boreal Forest!

Paul S. Kiefner

December 15, 2013.

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