How do you combine an interest in fur trade history, and geography, and paddling, all at one time?
You join a Brigade! Several members of FLCC paddled with the 2011 Thompson Columbia Brigade from Fort Spokane to Fort Astoria on the Columbia River: Katie Stein Sather, captain, Lee McGovern, Sue Tuttle, Susan Blank, Ian Bailey, Carol Woodworth, Al Sather, Eric Mast (Richland, WA), Tim Ahern (Spokane, WA), Margaret Wanlin (Thunder Bay) and Linda and Dennis Ethier (Lacombe, AB) . Some ten voyageur canoe teams from all across western Canada—from as far away as Thunder Bay, ON—celebrated the accomplishments of the cartographer and explorer David Thompson by arriving in Astoria, OR 200 years to the day after he did so.
Like Thompson, we fought the heat of the Upper Columbia Basin and the headwinds of the Columbia Gorge and the tide at the mouth. Unlike the river that Thompson paddled, the contemporary river is mostly a series of reservoirs. No rapids at all. Just dam after dam to trailer around.
The FLCC team joined the trip midway, west of Spokane, and two days’ paddle “upstream” of the Grand Coulee dam, on Lake Roosevelt. We paddled some 1000 km to the mouth of the Columbia, at Astoria. We newbies to the brigade had to learn to get up early, ie 4:30 am, for a 6:30 start on the water, and keep up to the folks already accustomed to paddling 40-60 strokes a minute for hours at a time. Our heavy boat gave us extra conditioning.
It was a great opportunity to celebrate paddling in general, and to renew and make paddling friends from across Canada. The next one? Maybe 2017 to celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary. This kind of trip is unique.
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