Alone Against the North

by Adam Shoalts

  I nodded. “I saw it yesterday.”

  “That’s a man-eater that one,” the pilot said wide-eyed, “one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. It’s strange to see it inland like that, normally they’re by the coast. He probably caught wind of you.”

  We wasted little time in strapping the canoe onto one of the plane’s aluminum pontoons and loading the gear. The engine roared back to life and we were soon airborne. From the co-pilot’s seat I watched endless green swamp, labyrinthine muskeg, and snaking black rivers unfold below us—and dreamed of exploring them all. It was both comforting and frustrating to think about the thousands of waterways below—even if I devoted the rest of my life to exploring them, I could never hope to cover more than a fraction. In the meantime, I welcomed the thought of a hot shower and a good night’s rest.

  Some six hours later, with one stop midway on a lake to refuel the plane, we were back in Hearst, the small frontier logging town. The next day, on my drive home, a wild idea entered my head—the thought of turning off the highway and heading straight for the Again River. The thought of exploring it still haunted me. And now, flush with the confidence of my solitary triumph, I knew that if need be I could do it alone.

  [ 9 ]

  NEW HORIZONS

  It is absolutely necessary, for the peace and safety of mankind, that some of earth’s dark, dead corners and unplumbed depths be left alone.

  —H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness, 1936

  ONCE I RETURNED to civilization, the work of the expedition wasn’t over. The difference between an adventurer and an explorer is that an explorer publishes new geographical knowledge and documents findings. I had to write my official report for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and submit my photographs and film footage. Furthermore, as part of the Society’s public outreach and education mandate, I was due to speak at schools, libraries, and other venues. But before I could bring myself to complete these tasks, I was seized by the urge to set off on another adventure. My father and I went on a short exploration of some lakes near the northern boundary of Algonquin Park. Early one misty morning, paddling in one of our cedar-strip canoes, we found a moose skeleton lying on a lakeshore. The small antlers on the skeleton were the perfect size for knife handles, so I sawed one off with the intention of crafting a new handle for my hunting knife.

  In the fall, while polishing off the expedition report, I accepted a position teaching survival and woodcraft to students at a wilderness academy. The students seemed to pick up fire-making faster than Brent had, and I was impressed by their willingness to sleep outdoors in temperatures below freezing. But, never having been a Boy Scout or attended a summer camp myself, it was hard to feel much like a kindred spirit with my fellow instructors: they tended to enjoy loud conversations, campfire songs, and strumming on acoustic guitars. When the other instructors would gather around the nightly campfire to sing and socialize, I’d usually slip away into the forest to examine animal tracks and any wildlife I could find. Still, there are worse jobs than teaching wilderness skills, and it was with reluctance that I left to embark on a number of speaking engagements.

  Like an itinerant preacher, I spoke at a wide variety of venues—hunter and angler associations, environmental organizations, local libraries, public and private schools, retirement homes, universities, literary festivals, conferences, and museums. I shared photographs from my expeditions, discussed exploring the Lowlands, and emphasized the importance of preserving wilderness for the future. At the end of each presentation, a forest of hands would shoot up, but the first questions were always the same: “Are you and Brent still friends? Are you still on speaking terms?”

  Brent and I remained friends much the same as we had before. I genuinely liked Brent, and despite the fact he had abandoned me in polar bear territory, I found it impossible not to forgive him. But he never went into the wilderness again. Based on his experience, Brent quickly concluded that he was not cut out to be an explorer. Whatever he was to amount to in life, it would have nothing to do with wilderness.

  Meanwhile, the Geographical Society and Canadian Geographic offered me a position on a new project: creating an eleven-by-eight-metre historical map of North America. As appealing as I found cartography—I’d been in love with maps since I was a child—there was yet time to squeeze in another adventure before the map project started. Oddly enough, the taste of solitude I had after Brent quit the expedition had whetted my appetite for more. Thus, with three weeks on my hands, I decided to set off alone into the mountainous wilderness of British Columbia. My objective was to track down and study petroglyphs—ancient rock carvings thousands of years old—in preparation for my doctorate, which I planned to begin in the fall.

  TO EARLY EXPLORERS, the distant mountains on the far side of the continent were a foreboding place of dark legends, rumoured to be inhabited by strange tribes and all manner of monsters. Long before Europeans reached the mountains, they heard fabulous tales of what lurked there. In the 1660s, the French missionary Claude-Jean Allouez reported that his native guide had “made mention of another nation, adjoining the Assinipoualac, who eat human beings, and live wholly on raw flesh; but these people, in turn, are eaten by bears of frightful size, all red, and with prodigiously long claws.” Other explorers heard similar tales when they sailed along the uncharted coastline of the Pacific Northwest. In 1792, the Spanish explorer José Mariano Mociño recorded what may be one of the oldest “sasquatch” stories:

  I do not know what to say about the Matlox, inhabitant of the mountainous districts, of whom all have unbelievable fear. They imagine his body as very monstrous, all covered with stiff black bristles; a head similar to a human one but much greater, sharper and stronger fangs than a bear; extremely long arms; and toes and fingers armed with long curved claws. His shouts alone (they say) force those who hear them to the ground, and any unfortunate body he slaps is broken into a thousand pieces.

  The tribes along the coast that Mociño met with lived in permanent villages with large cedar houses, elaborate artwork, totem poles, wooden armour, and huge ocean-going war canoes. They looked upon the mysterious tribes of the interior as primitive, half-savages that wandered the forests in small bands like animals. They called these uncouth wanderers “sésq’əc,” a Salish word meaning “wild man.” In English, “sésq’əc” later became sasquatch. These traditions were garbled up with tales of the grizzly bear—a huge, shaggy-haired creature that stands up to three metres on its hind legs—to create the legendary sasquatch. At least, not believing that such a thing as Bigfoot exists, this was the theory I had formulated based on an examination of archival explorers’ journals and research on aboriginal oral traditions.

  One of the more intriguing sasquatch accounts that I came across was in the pages of David Thompson’s journal. Thompson, an explorer with few equals who mapped more of North America than any other person, penetrated the Rockies from the east in 1811. In the dead of winter, he recorded a singular experience:

  January 5: … we are now entering the defiles of the Rocky Mountains by the Athabasca River … strange to say, here is a strong belief that the haunt of the Mammoth is about this defile … I questioned several (Indians), none could positively say they had seen him, but their belief I found firm and not to be shaken.… All I could say did not shake their belief in his existence …

  January 7: Continuing on our journey in the afternoon we came on the track of a large animal, the snow about six inches deep on the ice; I measured it; four large toes each of four inches in length to each a short claw; the ball of the foot sunk three inches lower than the toes, the hinder part of the foot did not mark well, the length fourteen inches, by eight inches in breadth, walking from north to south, and having passed about six hours. We were in no humour to follow him; the men and Indians would have it to be a young Mammoth and I held it to be the track of a large old grizzled bear; yet the shortness of the nails, the ball of the foot, and its great size were not that of a bear, otherwise
that of a very large old bear, his claws worn away; this the Indians would not allow.

  Thompson’s encounter likely reflects the grizzly bear contribution to the sasquatch legend, as he himself seemed to believe. Other explorers made similar observations about strange tracks, unknown noises in the night, and legends of monsters prowling in the mountains. I found a hint of the other side of the myth—the stories of “wild men” high up in the mountains—in the diary of Paul Kane, an artist and explorer. Kane noted in his March 26, 1847, journal entry:

  When we arrived at the mouth of the Kattlepoutal River, twenty-six miles distant from Vancouver, I stopped to make a sketch of the volcano, Mt. St. Helens, distant, I suppose, about thirty or forty miles. This mountain has never been visited by either whites or Indians; the latter assert that it is inhabited by a race of beings of a different species, who are cannibals, and whom they hold in great dread … these superstitions are taken from the statement of a man who, they say, went into the mountain with another, and escaped the fate of his companion, who was eaten by the “skoocooms”.… I offered a considerable bribe to any Indian who would accompany me in its exploration but could not find one hardy enough to venture there.

  Still, such stories were cause for reflection, and I knew more than a few individuals—aboriginal elders, hunters who had spent a great deal of time in the wilderness, and even a couple of mavericks with PhDs in zoology—who doggedly insisted that the sasquatch was a real animal in the flesh, surviving unknown to science in pockets of unexplored wilderness.

  AFTER FINISHING MY RESEARCH on petroglyph sites in southern British Columbia, I decided to head north to the Great Bear Rainforest, the earth’s largest temperate rainforest, which cloaks the islands and mountains of the northern Pacific coast up to the Alaskan panhandle in a mantle of old-growth forest. Concealed within this mist-shrouded landscape are more than just weathered totem poles and mysterious stone carvings. Lurking in the forests are mountain lions, wolves, the world’s densest concentration of grizzly bears, and the otherworldly Kermode or “spirit” bear, a rare subspecies of black bear with snow-white fur. A four-hundred-kilometre flight north of Vancouver would bring me to the isolated aboriginal settlement of Bella Coola, home to some six-hundred members of the Nuxalk First Nation. The community is situated in the heart of the Great Bear Rainforest and is the site of ancient petroglyphs. On this trip, I would go back to basics: no gun, no bear spray, no GPS, no satellite phone, just myself alone in the mountains with a knife and the bare essentials.

  From the airplane window I gazed down on endless mountains capped in eternal snow. Some of these peaks had never been scaled, and no one could know how many unexplored caves remained hidden in the mountain fastness. After miles of snow and ice, a narrow ribbon of greenery loomed into view—it was our destination, the valley of the Bella Coola River, enclosed by towering mountains on either side. Stepping onto the airstrip I surveyed my surroundings. To the west lay the lush temperate rainforest of the Pacific coastline, to the north, east, and south were mountains beyond counting. Just across the tarmac I could see the swirling waters of the Bella Coola River, the very river Sir Alexander Mackenzie paddled on the final leg of his epic crossing of North America in 1793. Downstream of where I stood, Mackenzie reached tidewater on the Pacific Ocean, becoming the first explorer to cross the continent north of Mexico, beating Lewis and Clark by thirteen years. The wilderness here had changed little in the more than two hundred years since his journey.

  I hiked into Bella Coola along the road winding through the narrow valley. First, I would make arrangements with a local guide to visit the known petroglyph sites, as it was prohibited for outsiders to visit these sacred sites without a Nuxalk guide. Then, I planned to head into the mountains to seek the unknown.

  I was not the first explorer attracted to the valley’s mysterious stone carvings. Before he won fame for his Kon-Tiki expedition across the Pacific, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl had come to Bella Coola in the 1940s to examine petroglyphs. Heyerdahl was convinced that the carvings were linked to ones he had seen in the distant South Pacific, considering them as evidence for his theory that people in the Americas had colonized Polynesia thousands of years ago. In town, when my interest in petroglyphs became known, I was shown black-and-white photographs proudly kept in old family albums of Heyerdahl in Bella Coola as a young man.

  My guide was a Nuxalk man in his twenties named Nils. We met the following morning on the outskirts of town. Nils drove us in an old pickup truck to a small stream named Thorsen Creek, where we set off on foot up a meandering mountain trail. Climbing steadily, we passed over smooth boulders and carpets of green moss and beneath towering hemlocks, cedars, and firs. Along the trail grew skunk cabbage and devil’s club—an aptly named large shrub whose sharp spines produce a painful rash when brushed against. To our left was a steep ravine, at the bottom of which roared the clear waters of Thorsen Creek as it tumbled out of the mountains on its way to the Bella Coola River. The mosquitoes were surprisingly thick, considering that it was only mid-April.

  “Just a bit farther,” said Nils as he led the way along the steep trail. I could hear the roar of falling water ahead—a small waterfall ran down the side of the gorge into Thorsen Creek far below us.

  “Beautiful,” I said, pausing to inspect the fall. I dashed over a boulder to stand on the edge of the precipice, then lay on my chest to hang over the side and photograph the waterfall.

  “You’re crazy!” cried Nils.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see Nils staring open-mouthed at me perched on the cliff edge. “What? Are you afraid of heights?” I said puzzled.

  Nils nodded, seeming to see me in a whole new light.

  “Oh, I didn’t realize … anyway, are the petroglyphs near here?”

  “Yeah, this way.”

  The first of the petroglyphs were simple circles engraved in sandstone outcrops. Beyond them, on other large sandstone slabs and boulders were snarling faces, stylized birds, frogs, owls, mountain lions, mythical beasts, grotesque shapes, and indecipherable designs. The carvings formed a sort of mural—vaguely sinister looking—and are believed to have been used in secret, shamanic rituals for thousands of years.

  “This is a sacred site, and in the old days if a white man was found here, he’d be kissing his life goodbye,” explained Nils.

  I nodded, “I see.”

  The oldest petroglyphs at this site are believed to be about three thousand years old, making them about as old as the Trojan War or Egypt’s New Kingdom. Nils, however, pointed out one carving that dated to the nineteenth century, which was engraved using a steel tool rather than stone. I carefully photographed each carving.

  “Are there any petroglyphs that depict sasquatch?”

  “Sasquatch?” Nils looked at me blankly for a moment. “Yeah, that one does,” he said, pointing to a hideous, snarling face etched in weathered sandstone.

  I inspected it closely and photographed it. “Do you know anyone who has ever claimed to see a sasquatch?”

  Nils nodded, “My grandfather has seen them. Lots of people have.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “Like people, only with more hair.”

  “Where do they live?”

  “High up in the mountains,” said Nils. “In places humans can’t get to. In caves on steep cliffs and on glaciers.”

  “Anywhere around here?”

  Nils nodded, “Yeah, come here.” He motioned for me to step closer to the edge of the ravine, where the trees opened up enough to allow for a view of the encircling mountains. “You see that big mountain over there?”

  I nodded.

  “No one goes up that mountain. Sasquatch live up there.”

  This revelation struck me as keenly interesting, and I at once began to brood over the idea of hiking up the mountain Nils had pointed out. I had no alpine gear with me, but I could explore the forested slopes at least as far as the snowline. As we returned down the trail, I continue
d to ponder the petroglyphs and ask Nils about local legends.

  After a few days milling around Bella Coola, investigating more rock carvings and archaeological sites, I made arrangements with a wildlife lodge operator to drive me to the base of the mountain Nils had pointed out. After my last expedition, I wanted to return to my roots and head into the wilderness with as little gear as possible.

  My driver quizzed me as we drove along a bumpy mountain road hemmed in by thick forest on either side.

  “Do you have a satellite phone?”

  “No.”

  “GPS?”

  “Just a compass. I prefer the old-fashioned way.”

  “A gun?”

  “Nope.”

  “Bear spray?”

  “No.”

  “Well, it sounds like you must know what you’re doing,” he shrugged as he steered the truck around a fallen tree branch that blocked part of the narrow road. “So, I’ll meet you here at the end of the road in a week?”

  “That’d be good.”

  The road came to an end at the base of the mountain. There was an old trail that led some way up the mountain slope, and I planned to follow it. “Good luck,” said my driver, as I exited the truck and strapped on my backpack.

  “Thanks,” I replied.

  “Keep an eye out for grizzlies,” he advised, before driving away.

  My first task was to find myself a sturdy walking stick that I could sharpen into a spear if the need arose. That accomplished, I started along the narrow trail into the dark woods. I hiked without stopping until mid-afternoon, when I arrived at a fine moss-carpeted glade a fair way up the mountain that seemed perfect for a base camp. There was a small pond nearby where I could fetch water and plenty of dead trees around for firewood. An inspection of the area revealed no signs of bears, but a short distance from where I pitched my tent was some mountain lion scat, with the tiny hooves of an unfortunate young mountain goat in it. But mountain lions rarely attack humans, so I wasn’t troubled. My plan was to camp in the glade and explore more of the mountain over the following days.