I hope as you read this you are settling down to your first or fifth beer of the night. Maybe you are enjoying a meal at the KPI, in Bob’s opinion the best restaurant in the Yukon.
In August of 2016, I got to guide a trip on the Bonnet Plume with Bob and Theresa. They didn’t really need me to come along, but enough nudging and asking on my part got me a seat on the float plane.
Our trip kicked off with the 9 of us, a cataraft, a small 13 foot Tutshi raft, and an inflatable canoe all getting flown into Bonnet Plume Lake. Arriving in the afternoon we paddled the short trip to the mouth of the river where we made our home for the night. Camp set up was quick and smooth, having been on a couple prior trips with Bob I’d learnt a few things:
• The groover needs to have a view. If it doesn’t have one, you will be asked to move it.
• When making meals use food items at your own risk, they might be for another meal. If it is beans it is definitely for something else, but you may never find out what.
• You get up in the morning when you get up.
The Bonnet Plume is a stunning river and the upper section is full of playful rapids, exceptional mountain views and clear water. We had mostly great weather, briefly interrupted by abrupt torrential rain pours that would pass overhead leaving vibrant rainbows in their wake. We paddled along, all of us, guides included, enjoying experiencing this river for the first time. I am so appreciative that despite how little experience I had compared to Bob and Theresa, they always included me in discussions over what lines to take when we stopped to scout the harder rapids.
A few days into our trip we abruptly came up on a class 4 rapid. Theresa and I pulled our boats into a small eddy just above the canyon but Bob in his much bigger, much heavier cataraft decided to send it. The cataraft dropped down into the large hole at the entrance to the canyon and with one well timed oar push Bob shot it out with ease, firing down the narrow canyon just wide enough to accommodate the raft and strategic oar placements. As he disappeared around the corner, a very muscular bull moose poked his head out from the trees on the other bank and started swimming right towards the rest of us standing on shore. There was nowhere to go, so crossing our fingers and hoping that the moose didn’t care about us, we watched in awe. At one point I thought the moose was going to get sucked down the rapid, but he stood up firmly, water still up to his belly and marched out of the river and into the forest directly in front of us. Theresa and my descent of the rapid was not nearly as graceful as Bob’s. We hit that first large hole and immediately flipped ass over tea kettle. Luckily the river became a nice pool just around the corner and Bob was waiting there for us, looking cheeky as we dealt with our upside down raft.
As we continued down into the lower section of the Bonnet Plume the valley opened up, and the river spread out into many channels. Bob had fun playing short bouts of “Canoe Therapist” intentionally putting two clients with very conflicting opinions in the inflatable canoe and watching the power struggle as they navigated the braids.
We found some truly spectacular campsites in those last few days on the Bonnet Plume and Bob would always get the stories rolling around the campfire in the evenings. The best thing about paddling up North in August is that you avoid prime mosquito season. The second best thing is that the darkness is returning and along with it, northern lights! In the open valleys of the Lower Bonnet Plume, they streaked across the entire sky.
Bob had decided that instead of flying out of Taco Bar, a gravel bar where most people catch a bush plane back to Mayo, we would continue on the Peel and get picked up near Fort McPherson. To accomplish this trip, instead of paddling our incredibly slow inflatable vessels, Bob had had an outboard motor flown into Taco Bar and we Jerry-rigged the boats together into one franken-motorized boat. With Bob at the helm we put-putted downstream for two days, at one point trading a family in a motor boat a knife for some much needed gas. We rolled up to the ferry crossing in Fort McPherson at 2 in the morning of the second day, running on fumes.
The drive back to Whitehorse was no less eventful than the days on the river. We needed to find a place to camp in the middle of the night, the bus had more quirks than usual, and we saw lots of wildlife along the road. Bob seemed to thrive in those times when things weren’t quite going according to plan and I think that is a huge part of why he was able to run such an amazing company. Guides were given responsibility and the freedom to learn from their mistakes and clients left trips feeling taken care of but also like they got to be part of an adventure with stories to tell.
I will always be grateful for Bob’s mentorship and the time we spent together on the water!
Much Love, Amaya
Photos by Theresa Landman
