One day was particularly memorable. We had to traverse a tricky 14-kilometre stretch of black spruce bog, rivers and boulder fields, that appeared as lakes on our maps, in the pouring rain and temperatures hovering around 7 C. At one point we were all standing on boulders in a river, shivering and wondering, “How are we ever going to get through this?” But we had no other route to get to Lac Machault, Que., near the Quebec-Labrador height of land, the border between two watersheds (one draining to the Atlantic Ocean and the other to the Arctic Ocean). So we kept going, dragging our boats filled with gear for hours. By the end of that day, we were thoroughly wiped, but we had made it. 

Under grey skies, we portaged, paddled, lined, tracked and grunted our canoes from one watershed to another, moving from Labrador into Quebec to the Rivière De Pas, where we portaged overland to Rivière George. Further on we portaged to the headwaters of the Rivière Dumans, through a series of shallow lakes back to the Quebec-Labrador height of land and finally beginning our downward slide to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mistastin River watershed in Labrador. 

Though this section of the Mistastin River was only six kilometres long, it took us two whole days to negotiate. The river tumbles over 300 metres in what can only be described as a series of unrunnable rapids and waterfalls. We encountered tricky portage after tricky portage, often shouldering our loads for frustratingly long distances just to find places where we could lower our boats down cliffs and back into the water. Though it was a slog, the payoff was incredible. We witnessed two sets of spectacular waterfalls, cascading more than 45 metres, last seen by paddlers Herb Pohl and Pat Lewtas nearly 20 years ago. It was a truly magnificent landscape, and we spent hours wandering through it, absolutely speechless.