Ontario was an Anglican boys’ school whose tenets supported corporal punishment; students were to endure pain and hardship to develop stronger character. Since the accident there have been several documents produced, critiquing the misguided expedition, including James Raffan’s book Deep Waters, published in 2002. And through my own experiences as a park ranger and guide, having observed school and church groups in the wilds, there are obvious logical conclusions we critics can hypothesize about the tragedy: that the guides (or teachers) made fatal decisions based on their collective inexperience in big water crossings. I’m surprised that there haven’t been more accidents like this one. Proper jurisprudence by the guide/ teacher would have included a risk management strategy that included precautions travelling over large bodies of cold water. On my trips I’ll raft two or more canoes together to make crossings or run big rapids that can be kilometres long. Dumping on big lakes or on long rapids can be tough to remedy, not to mention life-threatening. In 2004, there were twenty-three canoe-related deaths and three kayak-related deaths in Canada.
The modern body of medical knowledge — a clearly ethical issue — about how the human body reacts to freezing to the point of death is based almost exclusively on experiments carried out in 1941 by the Nazis in Germany. The Luftwaffe conducted experiments on prisoners to learn how to treat hypothermia. One study forced subjects to endure a tank of ice water for up to three hours; another study placed prisoners naked in the open for several hours with temperatures below freezing. The experiments assessed different ways of re-warming survivors. These morbid tests were carried out by the Nazi High Command at Dachau and Auschwitz, selections made of young healthy Jews or Russians. The experiments were conducted on men to simulate the conditions the armies suffered on the Eastern Front, as the German forces were ill-prepared for the bitter cold. The two-part freezing experiments established how long it would take to lower the body temperature to death, and how to best resuscitate the frozen victim. Test subjects were usually stripped naked for the experiment. An insulated probe which measured the drop in body temperature was inserted into the rectum and held in place by an expandable metal ring which was adjusted to open inside the rectum to hold the probe firmly in place. The victim was put into an air force uniform, then placed in a vat of cold ice-water and allowed to freeze.
One of the regular occurrences I’ve come across in the Far North where hypothermic conditions have no seasonal boundaries is paradoxical undressing. Almost 50 percent of hypothermic deaths are associated with this phenomenon. It typically occurs during moderate to severe hypothermia where the victim becomes disoriented, confused, and combative. The victim may begin discarding clothing, like mitts or hats or even overcoats, which in turn increases the rate of temperature loss. There have been several documented case studies of victims throwing off their clothes before help reached them.
A late, good friend of mine, Victoria Jason, in her book Kabloona in the Yellow Kayak describes her adventure up the coast of Hudson Bay with explorer Don Starkle. Starkle ranks with other Canadian adventurers, like John Hornby, who pushed their limits well past their ability or knowledge to survive. Starkle sat in his kayak in a hypothermic state, in sight of rescue, but had removed his mitts which allowed his fingers to freeze solid.
On Arctic canoeing expeditions, where inclement weather and wind conditions prevail and clients often get wet, hypothermia is a constant concern. The guide is subject to wet conditions, always, on shallow rivers where clients continually get hung up on rocks and need to be assisted. There is often no shelter except for the tent which is pitched at the end of a day. Clothing, damp from sweat inside, or soaked through by snow and rain, waterlogged boots, and general malaise and flailing spirit, all add up and can easily culminate in a serious hypothermia climax. To say I’ve had tough days on the trail is an understatement; clients need constant attention, beyond the needs of the guide, and there have been occasional circumstances where I’ve had to rescue cast-off clothing, hats, gloves, vests, and even lifejackets — all the things necessary and critical in keeping someone warm even though everything may be damp. Paradoxical undressing can happen even at the onset of mild hypothermia: when an objective destination is set, and circumstances arise when it is best to just keep moving until adequate shelter can be secured, clients (and some inexperienced guides) get careless. Even though they know they dropped something, in their faltering mind it makes sense to forget about it, however irrational and dangerous, they plod on with a false sensation of warmth, or the anticipation of getting to a warm place soon. There have been many situations when it was necessary to stop where there was no lee-cover from the wind, set up a makeshift shelter using canoes and brew a pot of tea, simply because one client showed signs of hypothermia. Clients can only be pushed as far as the weakest member; physical and psychological conditioning has a breaking point — going beyond this point compromises the integrity of the trip and the safety of the group. Unguided, inexperienced groups generally rely on the strongest (or most vocal) member of the party if situations arise. Selecting a leader this way is a slipshod method of maintaining stability and duty of care, especially knowing that human nature casts most of us as sheep. One person slipping into a hypothermic state can spell quick disaster for a group if it is not remedied quickly; once a person hits the second and third stage of cold immersion it gets harder to bring them back and easier for the rescuer to cause the victim to succumb to cardiac arrest while trying desperately to warm them up. Tricks and back-pocket remedies found in “survival” manuals are futile when common sense has been abandoned.
Moisture is the bane of the adventurer’s peaceful existence. I hate being wet and I’ll do anything to stay as dry as possible. I have no qualms about pitching a good kitchen tarp over a firepit on a rainy day, cooking, reading, and watching other canoeists or hikers passing through, miserable and wet. There have been many occasions when the smell of fresh-brewed coffee and sweet-buns baked in the reflector oven has attracted the appearance of sodden campers who appreciate getting in out of the rain and drying out, if only for a temporary stopover.
While acting as a guest park warden in New Zealand, tending a forty-eight-bunk hut along the Routeburn Track in Aspiring National Park, I was amazed to see how poorly many of the hikers were dressed. I was there for the month of May, at the onset of the New Zealand winter, and a time when the tail end of the hiking season still attracted enough trampers to warrant keeping the warden’s hut open. People would arrive after the hard climb to the hut, often soaked from sweat, wearing nothing more than tight blue jeans and sneakers and perhaps a light wind-shell. In the Southern Alps of the park, the climate changes from balmy warm in the lush valleys to bitter cold up in the treeless passes. Several people had died along this track, either from venturing off the trail and succumbing to hypothermia, or by slipping off the icy edge of a trail along a mountain pass. I spent most of my time keeping a warming fire going in the bunkhouse, lending trampers adequate clothing (which was returned on the trek back), or moderating the effects of hypothermia on ill-prepared hikers. A young man from Quebec had left his pack, bedroll, and food at the terminus of the trail, fifteen kilometres away, and had made his way to my hut over one of the mountain ridges. By the time he arrived at the Routeburn Falls hut he was hypothermic but insisted on walking the fifteen kilometres back to his gear along the trail. I refused to let him go and he stayed in my cabin for two days drying out and shaking off a deadly chill. He was physically fit and an ardent trekker, but he lacked the ability to pace himself or to judge how far he could travel in unknown territory.
SEVEN
ERRANT MAPS
One should not take every map that comes out, upon trust, or conclude that the newest is still the best, but ought to be at pains to examine them by the observations of the best travelers, that he may know their goodness and defects.
— John Green, The Construction of Maps and Globes, 1717
After looking at the topographic map, the four Ohio paddlers decided to continue along the east side of the rapids approaching Thunderhouse Falls to see if they could locate the portage. At the time, they had no idea that the portage marked on the map did not exist, and by the time they noticed canoeists across the river, unloading their gear at the trailhead upstream, it was too late. Craig Zelenak, 33, and his canoe partner, Pat Sirk, 32, would later describe the power of the