The Dean River is probably most famous for its world-class steelhead fishing but we are here to kayak its length, navigating its drops and canyons from the Chilcotin Plateau near its headwaters down to the ocean at the head of the Dean Channel just north of Bella Coola. En route we will face many obstacles and challenges, including rapids, cataracts, constricted canyons, and the possibility of logjams.

We’ve obtained information about the river from a number of sources but many uncertainties remain. A friend who did the trip almost twenty years ago has given us his maps with all kinds of useful notes marking various features. From a paddle shop in Williams Lake we’ve heard that the Dean gets paddled a few times a season, that it has innumerable tough drops, including lots of Class 5- rapids with violent and irregular features, often vertical drops, and requiring complex series of maneuvers- but that all the drops do have a “line” through them. And off the Internet we’ve gotten an intriguing image of a kayaker running a thirty-foot falls in a granite canyon. To say the least, we’re pretty pumped!

The four of us- Rod, Val, and myself from Smithers, and Jean from Grande Cache Alberta- have probably about sixty years of whitewater kayaking experience between us, including numerous multi-day wilderness trips, so we feel like we’re ready for the Dean. On the other hand, three of us have done hardly any paddling over the summer and so we are a bit worried, we might be “rusty”- but hey, “it’s like riding a bicycle, you never forget how to” I joke, trying to cheer us all up. Jean’s been paddling lots all summer, so the rest of us agree that he’ll be our “probe” down the tough drops. Jean seems less than enthusiastic about the idea.

It takes us a couple of hours to get organized on the marshy shore of the lake where we’ve been dropped off. We had arrived late the previous evening after the all-day drive from Smithers to Nimpo Lake and had had to scramble to get ready in time for our 10 AM flight time. The waitress at the coffee shop where we went for a hurried breakfast must still be shaking her head about our poor manners and general stress level.

At the floatplane base there were lots of last-minute questions about what to take and what to leave behind. Did we have enough food? Do we really need to bring a camp stove? Are the loaded boats going to be too heavy? In the end we decided to go as light on gear and supplies as possible. Lean and mean on the Dean. Somehow, Scotch and liqueurs are retained as necessities!

Finally, our gear is all stowed inside our kayaks and we’re ready to head for the river. The weather is blustery on this mid-September day as we paddle across the small lake into a chilly headwind. We’re looking for the outlet channel that will take us into the Dean River. There is no conversation. Each of us is lost in his own thoughts. Fortunately, it is a good channel, barely deep enough but it gets us to the river in ten minutes.

The Dean is not much more than a stream in volume where we enter it, the water is slightly tea-colored and quite warm, and there is almost no perceptible current. We’re glad that we flew to this point rather than spend two long days paddling a meandering course in sluggish flat water from the last road access near Anahim Lake.

Within an hour of starting down the river, the current starts to pick up. First there are some easy rapids and then shortly we arrive at the first of what will be many horizon lines where the river drops out of sight. Being the safety-conscious boaters that we are, we paddle to an eddy near the edge of the drop and get out to scout the rapid from the shoreline.

“Oh wow, this is BIG!” we all realize, as we gaze at the rocky cascading falls sloping down about 30 or 40 feet and then crashing into a corner with a log across the current. With sinking hearts we realize that we can’t possibly run this one and we’ll have to carry and drag our loaded boats around it. Oh well, we’ve done this sort of thing before, we’re prepared for it, and so without any further ado we portage over and around boulders and through the brush to where we can re-enter the river.

We end up doing one more portage on that first day on the river, but we also run some good drops and we all feel like we’re back into the paddling groove.

As daylight begins to wane, we find a good campsite beside a tributary stream. In no time at all, we’ve got a huge roaring blaze going on the rocks beside the river. There’s plenty of driftwood around and we feel a need for some heat to ward off the autumn chill. While Rod cooks dinner the rest of us string up a tarp and lay out our sleeping bags and bivouac sacs. The theme for this evening is “lighten the loads- let’s drink.” There is much talk about what lies ahead. We know that the next couple of days are going to be a lot tougher than what we’ve done so far. The Scotch helps us sleep well that night.

The next day dawns clear and by the time we get on the river it’s getting quite warm. This helps lift our spirits somewhat as we head down the steepening river. The Dean starts to cut its way down into ever deeper and more constricted canyons as it leaves the interior plateau landscape and flows down into the coastal mountains. The vegetation also changes, becoming more lush and dense. Our progress is slowed by the need for lots of scouting and some portaging around the most difficult drops.

In some places we think we could run the rapids if there were an extra few inches of water covering the sharp rocks. We finally get to the Iltasyuko River, a major tributary which doubles the volume of the Dean. We are now heading into the steepest sections of the entire run and the increased volume makes for much more powerful rapids. Our stress levels are pretty high as we are surrounded by the roaring sounds of the current echoing off the canyon walls. It’s getting late in the day and we know we have to find a place to camp soon.

We run one more violent staircase of foaming whitewater after having contemplated it from a rocky outcrop directly above. There was quite a bit of discussion and some reluctance expressed because of how powerful and big the drop looked, but we were exhausted and the portage looked horrible, and we convinced ourselves that no matter what happened, the rapid would flush us through and there was a large pool of calm water at the bottom to recover if necessary.

I was the “probe” and went first, and the others were impressed with the speed with which I got shot through into the pool at the bottom. Rod came down next and got flipped over right near the bottom, but hardly slowed down, and he Eskimo-rolled up without difficulty. Val and Jean felt slightly encouraged by our success and came down without incident.

We were now truly in the “gut” of the canyon, facing another horizon line, and running out of daylight. Fortunately we found a spot with several nooks and crannies amongst the steep rocks to lay our sleeping bags and we camped there for the night. And a memorable night it was, surrounded as we were by the gloom of dark rock walls and with the roar of the rapids in our ears.

The “Gang of Four” were in a serious frame of mind as we contemplated the day’s adventures and realized how little distance we had made, putting us well behind schedule to make our rendezvous with our pilot three days hence. We knew we had at least one more long day of hard canyons ahead of us before things would start to open up a bit and get somewhat easier. It would have to be a “crack of dawn” start the next day. But first, we had some more load lightening to do- I believe it was tequila that night. Somehow we managed to sleep well again.

Day three was a big one. We got on the river before nine- as close to the “crack of dawn” as we ever seem to get- and kick-started our run with the big drop right beside our camp. That went well and we carried on through a succession of big drops including several waterfalls and some pretty complicated rapids. We had one swim when one of our party got stopped in the “hole”- a recirculating hydraulic- at the bottom of a drop and was getting “trashed” while still in his kayak.

The rest of us were sitting in our boats in an eddy just above the drop and could only occasionally see one end and then the other end of our buddy’s kayak briefly appear above the horizon line. We knew he was being worked in the hole, going end over end. We wondered how long he could hang in there before running out of air or becoming exhausted. He finally bailed out of his boat and miraculously got washed high up onto the rock beside the hole. He frantically signaled to us that his boat was now being carried down the river.

This, we knew, was serious trouble, because without his kayak our friend would be stranded here in this canyon, too far from any roads to contemplate trying to walk out. There was no time for second thoughts- we had to run this drop immediately, hope that we’d “punch through” the hole that had trapped our friend, and charge down the river and recover his kayak before it went over the next big drop.

Luckily everything went well. I got to the empty kayak in time to push it into an eddy just before the next horizon line beyond which was a huge falls. We reunited our friend with his boat. He had hung on to his paddle, and basically nothing was lost- other than a bit of pride.

By mid-afternoon the worst of the canyon was over and we were able to make some good mileage as the difficulties eased up. There were still lots of rapids but things were going well, we had a lot of confidence, and it seemed easier after the challenges we had already overcome. But we knew one more major obstacle lay ahead of us- Salmon House Falls, so named because this is the farthest point upstream that returning salmon can swim from the ocean. We knew it had to be a very big drop and we thought it might be the one we had seen an image of on the Internet.

Therefore it was with some anxiety that we arrived at a horizon line with a veil of mist rising from the depths below and a thunderous roar echoing off shiny black rock walls. We scrambled out of our kayaks and gazed down from the lip at the edge of the falls. It was a powerful scene, and the gathering gloom of dusk and the smell of rotting salmon added a touch of menace.

Because of the late hour, we had to make a quick decision, to either run the falls or to lower our boats by rope down the rocks into the pool at the bottom. This time Rod went first, down the right channel where the volume was less than in the main channel and therefore the power a little less daunting. His kayak got momentarily caught on a rock at the lip of the falls and as he plunged into the abyss it looked like he was going to land face down.

Luckily the pool at the bottom was deep and “soft”, and he rolled up unscathed. We each followed one at a time, each one refining the “line” a little more and making it look easier than the previous one. The emotions at the bottom were sheer joy and exhilaration, not to mention relief. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of big air time, freefalling off the lip of a waterfall into a pool below.

We were a relaxed and happy bunch around the campfire that evening. The stress was gone. We knew we had lots of miles to cover yet, but the hardest parts were done.

The last two days down the Dean were scenically spectacular, reminiscent of the area around Terrace and Kitimat. There were huge walls of smooth rock, waterfalls, and glaciated peaks. The river gained volume with numerous large tributaries flowing into it. There are several fishing lodges on the lower Dean and we encountered a number of guides and clients. By all accounts the fishing was great. Because of all the fish in the river, there are lots of bears in the area, and we encountered some grizzlies as well as a fairly bold black bear.

On the last day, just a few miles from the mouth of the river, we chose to portage around part of a long intensely powerful rapid. It looked huge, complex, and very dangerous- like Moricetown canyon magnified ten-fold.

We arrived at Kimsquit with only an hour to spare, exhausted and elated. It had been an intense five days during which we had pushed ourselves to our physical and mental limits.

So what was uppermost on our minds as we lay there on the shoreline, soaking up the late-afternoon sun and gazing at our spectacular surroundings? “We’re out of food, we’re really Hungry. Where is that plane?”