2: Thundering Rapids at Fort George Canyon

RED ROCK - The muted thunder of the Fraser River in freshet was discernible from tremors in the ground long before the sound emerged behind the chorus of bird calls that tracked my progress through tall stands of birch, dense thickets of ground willow and tangles of wild roses that perfumed the air.

Branches of the thick underbrush still drooped, their leaves heavy with overnight condensation. Blades of grass gleamed with dewdrops. I was soon soaked and wishing I'd thought to put on my waterproof gaiters. I had, thankfully, put on my insect repellent because mosquitoes rose in fierce clouds with every step.

My search for Simon Fraser had led me from a chilly sunrise over the bluffs at Prince George to the disheveled backend of Pete and Maggie Stoner's Canyon View Ranch, 18 kilometres downstream, where the fur trader's epic expedition to the sea came within a hair of disaster only a few hours into the journey.

After departing at 5 a.m. from his base camp near the mouth of the Nechako River, almost 800 kilometres north of Vancouver, with the Fraser flowing deep, smooth and wide, even if swiftly enough for him to note the "very strong current," the explorer's four canoes encountered the first of a series of powerful rapids which they promptly ran.

"One of the canoes came near striking against a precipice which forms the right bank," Fraser's journals notes in the laconic understatement of a veteran to whom the hazards of white water were a standard part of the job description. "A little lower down the channel it contracts to about 70 yards and passes between two rocks. After running down several considerable rapids, we put a  shore at 11 a.m. to breakfast."

I wanted to look at this rapid where the river abruptly narrowed by more than three-quarters, sharply increasing the current's velocity, and which Fraser nevertheless dismissed with such nonchalance.

Fort George Canyon would be a harbinger of perils ahead which had intimidated Alexander Mackenzie into abandoning his journey down what he thought was the Columbia River 15 years earlier and striking overland, reaching the Pacific by way of the Blackwater River and an ancient native Indian trade route.

Red Rock is a dispersed rural community that's little more than a name left by a now-defunct post office, and from a signpost I wound up following a gravel road westward until it petered-out in front of the Stoner's rambling, age-blackened log ranch house.

I found the rancher standing by a garden already exploding with the growth that comes of long hours of sunlight in northerly latitudes. He was giving the day's instructions to his hand, Bob Lasure.

Stoner, who'd serve as a poster boy for the notion of sustainable value-added forestry, operates a small sawmill from which he produces specialty hardwood flooring for high-end niche markets. Lasure was getting directions on sorting and stacking the beautiful white boards that had been freshly milled from huge birch trees selectively logged from his 76-hectare property.

"If you ever want birch flooring for your house, you know who to call," Stoner grinned as Lasure tossed planks into the loft of a near-century-old barn redolent with the smell of hay and sawdust.

 "It's very high grade tongue-and-groove with very few knots. I try and sell two to three grades above what they sell in the store. I supply cabinet makers and homeowners putting in new flooring and there's a steady market to the Japanese and Chinese. A lot of our customers are taking carpets out of their homes because of allergies. This clear birch is a good replacement."

Not only that, the one-time mining engineer at Stewart's Grand Duc mine is keen to experiment, so he works with forest research scientists planting and harvesting new and different species on property that in Simon Fraser's day was deemed suitable only for trap lines and logs.

The rancher gave me permission to cross his land to Fort George Canyon and directions about the best route - follow a skid road until it petered out, pass some trout ponds in a natural wetland, veer west and look for a trail that's hard to spot, then head for the sound of the white water reverberating from the same rock faces that nearly claimed Fraser's canoe.

Lasure shared some local knowledge to help get perspective on what I'd be looking at.

"I was talking to a very elderly lady who told me this barn was already here way back in the '20s when she was here. When you look at that river, think about what those people went through, eh? People back then crossed the river by boat and went 10 miles west to the Blackwater Road and then they went north from there into town [old Fort George]."

As I went down through the groves of birch, stopping to examine rolls of the bark so prized by the canoe-builders of Simon Fraser's day, I began to feel the vibration of the river through the ground beneath my feet.

Then, the ground dappled with sunlight filtering through the branches of spruce trees that looked old enough to have been there in 1808, I popped out of the forest on a bluff above Fort George Canyon. It was just as Fraser described it, the river roaring past a sheer cliff face, then splitting into three channels around a couple of islands.

A huge rock in the narrowest channel created a foaming maelstrom and it tailed out into a series of the huge standing waves that canoeists call haystacks. The gigantic whirlpool that almost claimed his canoe still pulsed beside the precipice, although it's no longer the same menacing eddy that Fraser encountered.

"That whirlpool, they did some blasting there," Stoner said, but he told me that it was formidable water. It had claimed the 38-metre-long sternwheeler Charlotte in 1910 and the rancher had personal experience with its threat.

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