Planning a month-long canoe trip on the Albany

• Posted on December 8, 2009 at 10:33 AM

A fun cross-bow-draw, which I hope to duplicate on the Albany River. Frank was so excited when he took this photo that he shook the camera like a salt shaker...

My friend Frank and I hatched the idea of a trip down the Albany River about four years ago when we were both rehearsing for an Italian opera. He was in costume as the village lout, and I as the local gossip, and we were astounded to learn we were both opera singers and whitewater canoeists—not a very common combo. We figure there are probably about two of us in Ontario.

It turned out Frank and I both had the idea of some day canoeing the Albany, Ontario’s longest river. Why it’s taken so long to get to the point where we are actually planning the trip is because, with it being a long river, it’s going to be a long trip, too. That means figuring out how to take a possibly month-long chunk of time out of our summers. It’s easier for Frank, since he’s a teacher, but for others, it is more complicated.

We’ve decided that there’s a certain order to the trip plan: Plan the dates, recruit the crew, and then start working on the details, like how to get to the put-in, how much food to bring, and how to leave from the take-out.

We think a crew of eight would be the maximum. Four is likely not enough--what if someone cracks up a canoe and then you have to put four people plus gear in one canoe? Not feasible, I say…. And six would also be good. So far we have a confirmed crew of four: him, me, his brother from Holland who works in tensegrity, and his 16-year-old nephew, whom I can’t for the life of me figure out why he’d want to spend a month in the bush with a bunch of people at least twice his age..

On our crew list of possibilities we have my fantastic canoe partner of this past summer, C. who hasn’t yet decided on whether to do an organic farming apprenticeship; L, who’s a biologist and already lives up in the northwestern woods of Ontario; and L.’s boyfriend who lives in the States and has a hard time getting more than five days off work. We also have Frank’s friend P., another writer, and P.s wife. I proposed that we cap the number of writers at two or there’s going to be way too much sarcasm on the trip….However, my friend G., also a writer, has expressed interest in the trip, too. Or at least he was gungho over beers at the pub—it may have been the alcohol talking…

We’re at the stage now where we pretty much have the route figured out. We just don’t have many details on the length of time it takes to canoe the Albany from Osnabruck Lake to Fort Albany. Three weeks? Four weeks? Two weeks with good wind?

For me, a big consideration is the food supply. There are two small bush communities along the route—Fort Hope, and Marten Lake, but I need to know if they have real grocery stores where we can stock up, or will we find only Wonderbread and Twinkies? I don’t need gourmet food on a canoe trip, but I need good, nutritious food to fuel all the hard paddling and portaging. Bringing it all with us will really add to the portaging weight! We’ve heard the fishing is excellent, but who knows what the summer of 2010 will bring? It could be a bad year for fishing, so we can’t count on fish to be our main source of protein.

There isn’t a lot of published info out there about the Albany. No field guides, no government info (Albany Provincial Park has so far ignored my request for info), no canoeing maps. There are a couple of accounts on the My Canadian Canoe Routes website, but that’s it. I’ve met no one who’s paddled the Albany, and Frank has talked to one dude in Ottawa who did it a couple of times. That’s about it. Most people think I’m talking about some river near Albany, New York. So there’s very little knowledge around about the Albany—which makes it even more alluring for me and Frank.

If you have paddled it or know anyone who has, we would like to hear from you! Also, let me know if this trip interests you. To qualify, you only need to love the wilderness and river paddling--and you likely will not have to listen to much opera!