Free-Form Rafting on the Slave River in Canada

“Get ready!” yelled Yves, my French-Canadian voyageur. “Rapids ahead. Check your life jackets! Lean into the raft! If you fall out, grab an overboard line!”

The Slave River was no longer the pussycat it had been when we lay back in bikinis or shorts, munching on sunflower seeds and idly watching pelicans fly by.

It was a tiger. I heard the sound of thunder ahead and decided against pointing my camera into a wall of white water. Better to crouch in the bottom of the boat.

“Get up,” hissed Yves, struggling with the long clumsy oars as the quickening current grabbed the raft. “You’ll get gashed by the rocks if they come through the rubber. Hang onto the lines.”

“Hang onto me,” offered Perry, my partner on the pontoon.

Time ran out for contingency plans. We were into the chute. The tiger had taken over. Not a wall of white water but a wall of rubber reared up on one side, buckled almost in two, then squealed around sideways in the turbulent current. Yves’ oar slipped from his grasp.

Well, here we are up the Slave without a paddle, I thought facetiously as my eyes blinked open an instant to catch sight of bodies and a blur of water.

But Yves lunged half out of the boat and, amazingly, grabbed the oar before it disappeared, then pulled us through water and air, safe but hardly dry, on the other side.

I was glad the camera was under plastic but sorry afterward that it had missed the action. The film crew documenting the expedition caught it overhead from a float plane.

Exploratory Trip

Ours was an exploratory three-day, 27-kilometer trip down the Slave River between Fort Fitzgerald, Alta., and Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories. The historic Slave, gateway to the Arctic for adventurous pioneers seeking fur and gold and oil, is a pool and drop river: flowing slowly like a lake, then suddenly and unexpectedly plunging over high ledges into abysses of churning foam.

Its four famous rapids, the Cassette, the Pelican, the Mountain and ominously, the Rapids of the Drowned, force boatmen to portage, but we in our rubber boats were tackling them by their less violent side channels.

Our daily rhythm was as erratic as the river’s: long periods of rowing on flat water among the islands, interspersed with short bursts of heart-thumping, adrenaline-pumping excitement at the major rapids and an enjoyable, carefree ride through the riffles of the minor ones.

Although our leader jested that “sometimes we had bodies scattered all over the river,” nobody fell overboard. We did achieve such ultimate intimacy with the Slave at our campsite near Pelican Rapids by doffing our clothes and jumping into the middle of the river as it surged between two islands. The current sucked us down into the river but our mandatory life jackets drew us up through spray to air again.

Spluttering, gasping, spitting, we reveled in the river’s power, knowing that a few moments later it would spew us to safety into calmer water just around the bend at the end of the island.

Memorable Moments

Perhaps more memorable than the rapids, which are gone in a brief moment of fear, are other experiences: the bright pink islands of the Rock Garden that look like concrete lily pads and are handy granite tablecloths for “help yourself” lunches; the curved white sandy beaches, backdropped by a hillside of trees, that look as if they should be the centerfold of an exotic South Seas travel brochure, not the centerpiece of a northern boreal forest.

The early breakfasts at sunrise after hiking to the middle of the many-bouldered river by Pelican rapids; the late suppers by a campfire, watching the northern lights as they surged and rocketed across the heavens in a multitude of shapes and colors; the pelicans, the buffalo and the people.

“The Slave is 30% thrills but 70% beauty,” said our leader, Jacques van Pelt of Subarctic Wilderness Adventures. Van Pelt has dedicated his life to preserving the wilderness values of the river by taking small groups of people to experience it.

Wildlife Watchdog

Nicknamed affectionately Jacques van Pelican Pelt, he is especially interested in showing guests the wildlife of the river. For more than 20 years he has been studying the threatened Slave River pelicans, monitoring their population and productivity, trying to protect them from those who would tame the wild Slave permanently by dams.

The Slave pelicans are the farthest north of the three remaining breeding colonies (the other two are in Texas and Mexico) and the only pelicans to nest on islands in a river. About 60 adult pelicans arrive in April to nest near the Mountain Rapids. Out of about 46 chicks that might be hatched, about 20 survive to migrate south in September.

Guests rafting the river encounter pelicans swimming in the riffles or flapping overhead.

The Day Before

They meet buffalo by creeping through the trees in Wood Buffalo National Park the day before the rafting trip begins. Wood Buffalo is the second largest park in the world and until recently one of the least known. It was established in 1922 to protect the last remaining herd of wood buffalo, the larger, darker northern relative of the plains bison.

When you encounter these huge black mammoth-like creatures looming suddenly from the spindly spruce and pines, or lumbering down a sandy track or wallowing in a dark swamp, it is just as heart-stopping as the Rapids of the Drowned.

In a five-day trip with three days on the river and two exploring Fort Smith and its hinterland, guests have plenty of opportunity to experience pelicans and buffalo, black bears and spruce grouse, or learn about the last remaining flock of whooping cranes that make the park their summer home.

Memorable Companions

But perhaps it is people more than wildlife that make a wilderness encounter with the Slave different from any other rafting trip. It could be your tent mate greeting the sunrise with her flute. Or your rafting companion, disabled and in a wheelchair. Or your guide attaching to the prow of your boat the buffalo skull you found in the forest.

Certainly much of the distinctive quality of this trip is due to its leader, Van Pelt, who in summer meets you at the Fort Smith airport driving a farm wagon loaded with flying hay or in winter driving a dog team. He is also nicknamed Jacques Rabbit van Pelt because of the rabbits he raises in a warren that tunnels into a hillside beside his house.

Waste Not, Want Not

Aiming to live as independently as possible, he uses all parts of the rabbit: the meat for food, the heads and ears for slipper tops, the hides for hats and sleeping bags, the entrails for dog food, the feet for good luck charms.

Pelicans, buffalo, rabbits. All have a special place in Jacques’ heart. But it’s the ancient river, the Slave, to which he returns daily and from which he draws his energy and spiritual renewal.

Seeing the Slave through Jacques’ eyes makes it more than a rafting trip.

For further information: Jacques Van Pelt, Subarctic Wilderness Adventures, Box 685, Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, Canada XOE OPO, phone (403) 872-2467.

Departures are June 1 to Sept. 10. Trips of one to four days or half a day. Cost: $110 Canadian a day from Fort Smith, inclusive.