2013/06 NWT trip - Fort Smith |
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We got back onto the main road; it passes in and out of the park on its way to Fort Smith. We took a side road to a muddy track that led to the Salt Plains overlook. Springs bring the salt water to the surface. Nothing much grows on the plains except some red samphire, but there are islands of normal soil where pine and spruce survive. 
I hiked down to the plains and squished my way across the wet salt over to one of the islands; the bugs followed me. I heard an unearthly croaking sound, like a strangled soccer rattle; I’d invaded the space of a pair of sandhill cranes. They flew off and I climbed back up to the lookout. Up above was this rather strange honeysuckle, another tough plant.
Fort Smith was larger than we’d expected, as it’s not much more than a government town with a bit of park administration. The locals were originally Slavey Indians, but the ones we met were Cree.
We went to the visitors’ centre for the park, toured their museum, and watched a film about the whooping cranes, white birds with red caps, much larger than their sandhill cousins. The park includes the only place where they still breed; they nest where the water is shallow and the mud deep; this keeps the wolves and humans away.
The park includes some unique environments, but most of these are inaccessible without launching an expedition. For example, the mighty Peace and Athabasca rivers come together at the biggest freshwater delta in world, near Lake Athabasca. That lake drains northward through the Slave River, but like many north-flowing rivers it is prone to ice dams in the spring; the south end is water while the north end is still frozen. The water backs up, causing massive floods around the delta and keeping humans from settling the area.
We went to the library to get Wifi and found that Michael and Lauren had closed on the house a few hours after we had set out, and they’d moved in on schedule.
We visited the old church with its strange grotto altar and the town’s museum, quite good, and then hiked down to the Rapids of the 
Drowned. North-bound travelers used to get off the Slave River at Fort Fitzgerald and portage all their boats and goods to Fort Smith to avoid four sets of violent rapids. Some travelers chanced the rapids, not always successfully; hence the name. The picture gives some idea of the scale of the river, and of the rapids, which go on for ten miles or more.
The route down to the river was steep, muddy, and buggy. We only found out later that the slope is man-made; back in the 1960s, a 
half-mile section of the river cliffs fell into the river, complete with houses, and the remainder has since been stabilized. We arrived at the river’s edge coated with mud and bugs and found – pelicans, hundreds of pelicans, some close by in the rapids, others in a half dozen groups scattered across the rocks of the rapids. They mostly ignored us even when we climbed out on the rocks with them. They were floating wing to wing with synchronized scooping for fish and looked to be doing very well.
The next day was a holiday and we needed to find diesel or we weren’t going anywhere. Everywhere was closing early and we were lucky to find an automated pump – just a diesel pump with a nearby card reader.
We drove the gravel road south to the Indian hamlet of Fort Fitzgerald, a few miles into Alberta. The road just ended there in a small group of houses by the river; this spot has been the portage take-out for millennia. I wanted to hike out to view the first set of rapids but Sandie thought it was too buggy (she was right). We parked by the cemetery and I set off, passing a nicely-kept market garden. A mile or so down the muddy trail, I heard crashing in the woods, a familiar noise. I needed to make noise too, so I started singing the Teddy Bears’ Picnic, and the noise stopped instantly; my singing has a similar effect on humans. I never saw the bear or whatever it was. The trail eventually gave me a good view of the river and I could hear the rapids but I didn’t go all the way.
The cemetery included the usual simple white-fenced tombstones, but this family grave was quite elaborate.
Back at the campground at Fort Smith we heard the first news about the flooding in the Calgary area, but no details. The Cree manager gave Sandie a local cook book, perhaps as compensation for their showers not being ready for the season.
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