the race - Part 3 - Kirkman Creek to Dawson!

Kirkman Creek is a mosquito ridden site on the side of the river - we got barely any sleep.  We left again with Head First ready to pick our way through the Islands that hang around the White and Stewart River confluences.











As soon as we got past the Stewart River confluence the speed of the river increased, a lot.  Suddenly we were in a maze of Islands with log jams in the middle of the river coming at you very quickly.   They made me quite nervous as avoiding them was high on the list of priorities and speedy hard paddling was needed to avoid them.





By this time we were both hurting - Esther had hurt her elbow paddling hard to avoid a log jam and my wrist had been painful on every right hand stroke for about the last 12 hours (and even as I write this it's still painful).









After hours of following the current round islands, Esther falling asleep at the paddle (as I had done the day before) and the water seeming to flow downriver and slanting to the left we reached the 60 mile checkpoint.  A break was very much needed and we agreed for a wake up call after an hour at the checkpoint.  We also discovered that Super Maryo was asleep in her tent here too - reunited maybe?










Unfortunately the checkpoint crew were feeling kind and left us to sleep over - when I woke up I then had difficulty waking Esther (who hasn't forgiven me for not shaking her awake).  After coffee and an offer of a bacon sandwich we were back on the river for the last few hours.  It seems like only a few hours but was actually five.







More island dodging and following the current and we were again caught up with Super Maryo and another male tandem team.  The rain was so hard you could just make out masses of land that were islands and we grouped together to pick a safe path through.

I had taken my glasses off so that I could at least make out the shape of land.  At this stage the river alone was doing over 16kph.






As we were coming closer to Dawson we saw some landslides from the steep river sides, where the ground was so water saturated that whole trees were coming off the cliff face and crashing into the water.  I was very glad that we were not underneath the cliffs when that happened.












As we went through the terrible weather we were singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Three Blind Mice in rounds to keep spirits up.








Gradually the weather improved and we were on the run into Dawson.  The cloud clears gradually and the moose hide slide came into view (it's called that because it looks like a moose hide).  Unfortunately it didn't clear well enough for us to get a decent picture.

As we paddled closer we were catching up with other boats, including the other ladies team who had helped us when we capsised.

We crossed the line in a row of 3 with the boats that we had found our way through the bad weather with, all in line and 2 minutes behind the other ladies team.

We were met by Deb and Steve, a tandem couple from the UK who had withdrawn at Carmacks (they need to come back again) and Karla, Steve, Brooke, Lisa and Jason.

 The atmosphere at the finish was great and we really felt that we had achieved something.   They were soon sorting our boat out, packing our stuff into the van and carting us to the hotel.  Karla and Steve had finished 1st in the mixed tanden class around 12 hours before us.  On top of sorting us out and getting us to the hotel they had also booked the table for dinner!  Fantastic people.