Brokenhead River Trek - Part 1of 3.

In mid January of 1952, we left Winnipeg early on a cold dark morning and headed for Beausejour, Manitoba. We were well on our way before the sun was up. My father was driving and I was in the front with him. Jim was in the back with a lot of our gear, and the rest was in the trunk.

When we reach Beausejour, we drove to the east side of town and stopped on a bridge over the Brokenhead River. This was to be our starting point on our overnight snowshoe trip up the river. Our goal was Ross, Manitoba, about 35 miles away. The snow was at least two feet deep over the landscape and the snowplows had piled up the snow high on the banks of the road. River is marked in yellow on the map.

We were anxious to get an early start and the sun was just coming up when we jumped out of the car and went around to the trunk to unload. We hardly got started when my father noticed that part of Jim’s nose and his cheeks had started turning white and were obviously freezing. He convinced us to all jump back in the car which was still running. We had no thermometer so we had no idea of the temperature.

As Jim got the blood flowing to his face, my father tried to talk us out of our hike. I had not noticed the cold but I was concerned about Jim, so we let him make the decision. He said he still wanted to go, and he would make sure his face was better protected with his scarf.

When he felt his face was warm enough, we all jumped out again and soon had our packs on our backs and the toboggan loaded. I agreed to break trail and Jim was to follow with the toboggan. Once we were down off the bridge and onto the deep snow of the river, we took off.

I started off at a good clip to get us warmed up. The snow was soft and deep, so that we were sinking into the snow at least a foot deep with every step. Everything in view, from river bank to river bank was soft white snow. We were at least six to eight feet lower than the banks so the trees along the river gave us considerable protection from the wind.

It did not take long before I was forced to slow down as the snow was just too deep for any sustained fast movement. The area we were traveling through was mixed farmland and the farms were far and few between. We saw no farm buildings and there were no tracks of any kind.

At first we took turns breaking trail while the other pulled the toboggan. Our snowshoe tracks made the toboggan easy to pull, as it stayed in the tracks in the packed snow. Once we warmed up we did not notice the cold.

The snow was so deep we could not see or hear any running water. It had been a cold winter so we were confident that the river had a thick coat of ice. Every couple of hours we would stop to take a break and check our gear. We had no trouble with our packs which were actually army pack boards with equipment strapped to them. The tent was tied to the toboggan and a wooden box containing the camping gear was tied at the rear.
　
　
As we hiked along we chewed on dried fruit. We carried sandwiches to eat when we got hungry as we did not plan to stop for lunch. The goal was to get as many miles behind us the first day before we stopped for the night.

About midday our legs were starting to get tired and we decided to take a break. We left the toboggan on the river and walked up the bank, almost to the top. We then undid our snowshoes and fell over backwards part way down the bank. This got our feet and legs uphill from our bodies and helped with our leg circulation. Just before we dropped backwards into the deep snow we noticed some farm building about five hundred feet away but there was no sign of any activity.

As we lay there munching on our dried fruit we were talking about our progress and our plans to make camp just before it got dark. We would pick a sheltered spot with lots of dead wood, and we had to get it gathered before it got dark.

It was about this time we started to hear a dog barking and realized it was coming towards us from the farm. Soon we had the dog standing at the top of the river bank looking down upon us and barking very excitedly. We tried to calm him down and called to him but he was too worked up, so we just ignored him. It was not a big dog so it had struggled through deep snow to reach the bank, but would come no further.

We were laughing at the excited dog when suddenly the big farmer came into view. At first he was shocked and actually thought we had been in some kind of accident. His first question was, “What happened? What are you doing there?”

It took us a few moments to explain that we were fine and that we were on an overnight snowshoe hike from Beausejour to Ross, Manitoba.

His next question was, “Why?”

“Because we always wanted to make a snowshoe hike and stay out overnight in the winter,” I replied.
His next comment was almost shouted at us, “Are you crazy? Don’t you know it is 50 F. below zero!”

He was obviously not as well dressed as we were and was getting colder by the minute. He turned and stomped off with his dog, through the deep snow muttering something about us being crazy as hell.
We certainly felt colder after he left.

As soon as he was gone we spun around on the hill, put on our snowshoes and plodded down to the toboggan. Once again we were back on the trail, eating up the miles and feeling much warmer.

End of Part one - See Part two.