5 Simon Fraser's Native Guides

The feeling may have been mutual, for Fraser mentions, in a rather masterful understatement, that Xlo'sem provided them with food - dried salmon and roots - but "the last though considered as excellent by the natives, we could not very well relish."

After frequent inquiries, Xlo'sem was persuaded to bring forward the slave who had been to the sea and had knowledge of the country that lay ahead. Fraser laid out a pair of oil cloths and asked for a sketch of what lay between him and the Pacific. Although the map was skimpy and required input from one of the chief's elderly relatives, the information was daunting.

"In his sketch, we could plainly see a confirmation of the badness of the navigation and thereby the necessity of leaving our canoes and as much of our baggage as we could spare, in order to prosecute our journey by land," Fraser wrote. In the meantime, however, he intended to run the river for as long as possible.

In the river's grip

On May 31, having left four bales of their precious dried salmon in the custody of Xlo'sem's brother, the expedition once again embarked, this time with the Secwepemc chief as guide. They were whisked along by the strong current "through many bad places" until, with the wind "blowing a hurricane from the south" and faced with a very long and dangerous-looking rapid where the river passes to the west of what's now Williams Lake, he camped.

"I inquired of the Chief, if the Indians were in the habit of running down this rapid: he said no; he conceived that the whirlpools would swallow up or overpower any canoes."

The next morning, Fraser, John Stuart and six voyageurs went to scout the rapid. It was intimidating. I found it equally scary when I got a look at it myself.

It hasn't changed much in the near-200 years since Fraser described it, the steep canyon walls contracting to a gorge about 50 metres wide.

 "The immense body of water passing through this narrow space in a turbulent manner, forming numerous gulphs and cascades, and making a tremendous noise, had an awful and forbidding appearance," Fraser wrote. But since the surrounding terrain made carrying the canoes impossible, he decided to run the more than three kilometres of white water.

He put his best five men in a canoe from which most of the supplies had been removed and they put on a demonstration of canoeing skill that's still exhilarating to read, even today in a world of extreme sports.

The canoe was caught in a whirlpool, the paddlers powerless to escape, "every moment at the brink of eternity," then it was spat out, "flying from one danger to the next" until, despite heroic efforts, more whirlpools forced it against a rock projecting from the canyon wall. The men and their commander concurred wordlessly, the Secwepemc had been right and "of course to continue on the water would be certain destruction."

Facing the rapids

But the crew still had to be rescued. Plunging their daggers into the bank to prevent themselves sliding into the maelstrom below, Fraser had the remaining crew cut steps into the canyon sides, got a line down to the vital canoe and half hauled, half lifted it up the cliff.

"Our lives hung as it were upon a thread," he wrote, "for failure of the line or a false step of one of the men would have hurled the whole of us into eternity."

A lesser leader might have at this point taken the Secwepemc advice and abandoned the canoes and traveled by horseback to the east where they were told they would find a great river and smooth water all the way to the sea.

Stuart obviously tucked this bit of intelligence away because he later returned and charted a trail that eventually did permit the North West Company and later the Hudson's Bay Company to transport furs from the north by pack train from the Fraser to Kamloops, the Okanagan and a navigable canoe route to the Columbia River and the sea.

"But going to the sea by an indirect way was not the object of the undertaking," Fraser wrote. "I therefore would not deviate and continued our route."

It was now June 2 and the river was cresting. It rose almost three metres overnight and any lingering thoughts about risking the rapids must have evaporated. Fraser obtained four horses from the Secwepemc and began a long and painful portage.

However, one of the horses lost its footing and fell down the cliff. Stuart's small writing desk was smashed and medicines and papers lost into the river.

The next day, once again faced with either running canoes down a violent rapid or abandoning them, cargo was unloaded for carrying by land and the canoes shot the white water crewed by five men each.

"The struggle which the men on this trial experienced between the whirlpools and rocks almost exhausted their strength; the canoes were in perpetual danger of sinking or being broken to pieces. It was a desperate undertaking," Fraser wrote.

The trail proved as dangerous as the river, forcing the exhausted men with their 30-kilogram packs to clamber along the edge of a precipice among loose stones and gravel that continually gave way beneath their feet.

One got himself stuck in a position where he could go neither forward nor backward nor remove his pack. Leadership means leading, so Fraser himself went to help.

"Seeing the poor fellow in this predicament, I crawled to his assistance; but not without great risk, and saved him, however his load dropped off his back over the precipice and into the river."

By the time they'd reached their next camp, their moccasins were in tatters, they were all plagued with severe blisters and "very sore with much walking."

There was a ray of light in the gloom, however. A few more days of rough country, Fraser was told, would lead him into a country of plenty where the people were hospitable. Furthermore, "they informed us that white people had lately passed down the large river to the left." This most likely referred to David Thompson's expedition through the Rockies to the upper Columbia the previous year.

If Fraser was determined to complete his mission by whatever means available, I decided that following his route meant it was time for me to venture onto the wild river itself and under similar conditions to those he faced.

So the search for Simon Fraser next took me to Riske Creek, where he'd made camp a bit upstream.

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