Copyright ©2003

Copyright ©2020 Estate of Wes Boyd

It had started out a nice blue sky, but windy, even before they’d gotten into their kayaks and out onto the blue water. Then the wind brought clouds, and with the clouds was more wind, and now big waves. Even behind the shield of islands they could feel the swells remaining from the waves that crashed on the windward shores of the islands.

Candice Archer didn’t like the way the weather was turning. As the trip leader for this Spearfish Lake Outfitters tour on the big lake, the decisions on what to do fell on her. This was supposed to be the last day, but she knew that they’d have to come out from behind the screen of islands to paddle the last two-mile crossing to the little creek where the boat launch and their van and kayak trailer awaited them.

In the worsening conditions, it was hard to keep the party together. Candice was a skilled and experienced kayaker, but the party she had with her was mostly newbies, although some of them had been in a kayak a few times before. As far as she knew, none of the clients knew how to roll a kayak, and none of them had experience paddling in storm conditions. The chances of all of them being able to make the crossing were between slim and none, she figured, but there was no harm in going to take a look. “Stay close to me,” she yelled to the group.

By now the sky was dark with the gray of heavy storm clouds rushing past, and the wind was howling. The temperature had dropped a good fifteen degrees since they’d been on the water, and in spite of the exertion, some of the party had to be getting on the cool side. It wasn’t raining yet, but it couldn’t be far off. If they could make it to the landing, everything would work out, but Candice was already thinking about alternatives.

They came to the last of the islands that had been screening them from the fury of the lake. Now, all that was left were rocky shoals, with some rocks that barely poked above the water, but those and the shallow water between them still offered some protection. The boats were being bounced around quite a bit, and she could see it was a lot worse a hundred yards or so farther on.

She looked out across the crossing the group would have to make, and instantly rejected it. If she’d been with others at about her own skill level, she might have been tempted to give the crossing a try, but it was too wild out there for this group, that was for sure.

“What do you think?” Dave Knox yelled from his boat a few yards away.

“Not a chance,” she yelled back. “Somebody would be swimming before we got there. Maybe more than one. And the way the surf from this storm will funnel into the creek mouth, we’d get wiped out there if we did make it that far.”

“I don’t know,” Knox said. “We really need to be getting back.”

“This is going to have to be that weather day we told you to plan for,” Candice told him. “I’m not going to take the responsibility for anyone drowning out there.”

“What are we going to do, then?” Dave’s wife Jill said with a worried look.

“Find a place to hole up and wait it out,” Candice told her. “We’d better do it soon, before the rain hits.” She looked around; one of the outer islands looked like it might have possibilities; it wasn’t real large, but it had a nice little grove of trees on it that would protect them from the storm. On the other hand, the wind-driven surf and spray could make it a wet place. She remembered passing another rocky island with perhaps a few more trees a short distance back. It was inside the outer line of islands, so it might be a little more protected from the big waves. “Let’s head back to that island we just passed,” she said, twisting around in the cockpit and pointing behind and to her right. “If we get a break in the weather, or the wind shifts, it might leave us close enough to make a try at the landing later.”

“I still think we should try for the landing,” Knox said stubbornly.

“And if you drowned, then what?” Candice replied with a scowl. “Look, this might blow through today, but no one belongs out there now.” She was lying, and she knew it; this wasn’t a frontal storm, but a low, and it wasn’t likely to move through, soon. They could easily be holed up for a couple days, and with Dave chomping at the bit to head back, they wouldn’t be pleasant ones.

“Dave, Candice is right,” Jill said anxiously. “I don’t want to go out there. I don’t think I could make it.”

“I don’t like it either,” Stan Rhodes said. He was probably the next most experienced kayaker in the party, next to Candice, although with nothing like her experience or skills. “I’ve swum out of a kayak, and in these conditions there’s no way you could get back in, and this water is too cold and rough to swim all the way. Now, which island were you talking about, Candice?”

“The one about a quarter mile back, to landward,” she said, leaning her boat on its side and sweeping for an edged turn. “Come on, we want to get camp set up before the rain hits.”

Stan was already turning, and she could see that Pam Rhodes and the Firebaughs were hanging back and had taken her cue to turn as well. Dave was going to be a problem, but apparently his wife’s apprehension had an effect on him.

The wind was picking up even more as they paddled the short distance to the island Candice had suggested. The swell was coming up between the islands here, and backwash from the waves was crashing not far offshore. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the island when they had passed it earlier, and hadn’t noticed any sort of a landing on the windward side, which was probably just as well, since it turned out to be pretty exposed to the elements. She leaned into her paddle a bit to get to the front of the group and led them around to the lee side of the island.

As she drew closer, she could see that it was like all the other islands in the area – smooth, solid rock, just one big weathered and glacier-smoothed expanse. Apparently there was a little dip towards the top of the island, for enough soil had accumulated there to support a small grove of trees. It would have to do.

Fortunately, the waves were a bit less rough on the lee side, and there was a narrow channel that led to a piece of gently sloping rock that would serve as a landing. Even there the water wasn’t smooth; the wind was howling down it, and the wave surge was causing a rise and fall of a foot or more.

“Looks too narrow for a sideways landing,” Gary Firebaugh said from next to her as she eyed the place.

“Probably,” she agreed. “We’ll have to do a seal landing, one at a time. I’ll go first, and that way there’ll be someone to drag the boats up to where they’re out of the water.” It was going to be a hell of a way to treat the bottom of the treasured Nimbus Njak that she’d used for guiding the last three years, but she remembered Josh, her brother-in law and business partner’s husband, once saying that gel coat comes in gallon cans. He’d have some work to do on hers, come the following winter.

Well, there was no putting it off. Conditions were visibly worsening, and this looked like the proverbial any old port for this storm. She leaned on the paddle, turning the kayak to point directly into the channel, and paddled hard for the sloping rock, hoping to slide as far as she could up it. She tried to time herself with the surge flowing up and down the channel so she’d hit it as high as possible, and managed it pretty well. The kayak rode the water up onto the rock, and as the surge died down, it set her down enough to where she could reach down with her hands to skooch her way farther up the rock. It wasn’t quite as good a landing place as it had looked from the water, but it would have to do. Quickly, she popped the spray skirt and sprang from the cockpit just as another wave rolled in. Standing, she could feel the cold water work its way up the legs outside of her wet suit, and the wave lifted the kayak again and threatened to wash it away, but quickly she grabbed the cockpit rim and hauled the heavily loaded boat farther up the rock, to where the waves couldn’t get to it as easily. She ran to the front of the boat, grabbed the bow toggle and hauled it clear of the water.

The wind was howling now, and not sure that the little group of clients out at the mouth of the channel could hear her, she ran down the smooth rock and shouted. “All right, one at a time, and give us a chance to get the previous boat clear before the next one comes in. Come in as hard as you can. Gary, you’re next.”

Gary waved at her, and she hurried back to the landing as he started to paddle. He was making good time, and she had to run to catch the bow toggle as he rammed it up on the rock, but with a good hard pull, she managed to haul the boat far enough up that he could get out without getting wet. She held onto the boat while he clambered out, and together they dragged it up the rock. She waved at the group for the next one to make their approach.

It turned out that Stan was the one to more or less organize things on the water; he was the oldest of the party and he sent the three women in next, one at a time, then Dave, and stayed out to be last in. In no more than five minutes, all seven boats were out of the water.

“We don’t want to leave the boats here,” Candice told them. “We’ll have to carry them up near the trees to find a campsite.”

The loaded boats were too heavy for one person to carry, but with two and sometimes three on a boat it wasn’t much of a trick to get all the boats the fifty yards or so up to a spot near the clump of trees.

“Looks like we’re here for a while,” Candice said, looking out over the channel to windward of the island; in the now strong wind, it was a mass of whitecaps. “Better here than out there.”

“Didn’t you listen to the weather report this morning?”

“I did,” Candice replied, noting once again that he was going to be a problem. “You were there. That’s why we carry a weather radio! This stuff wasn’t supposed to blow in till tonight.”

“Put not your faith in weather forecasters,” Stan shrugged. “They’ll bite whenever they get the chance.”

“Ain’t it the truth,” Candice said. “Look, we’d better dig in, rather than standing around talking. Pitch your tents up there in the trees, and make sure they’re tied down to a tree upwind of you before you raise them. As soon as we get that done, we’ll get the tarps up so we can sort out the rest of the gear. Once we get the boats unloaded, we’ll haul them back into the trees and tie a line on each one. People, it’s going to rain, and as damp as it is, if we get wet or get wet things, they’re pretty well going to stay wet, and dry clothes are going to be like gold, so let’s just stay in wet suits for now. If it starts to rain, they’ll do well as rain gear. Let’s be prepared before it hits.”

After five days on the trip, everybody knew what to do. The tents were soon up, and sleeping bags, clothes dry bags, and sleeping pads were stashed inside. It took Candice about as long to get her little Aires set up as it took the rest of the party to get their bigger Eurekas dealt with. As soon as Candice had her own tent and gear halfway dealt with, she pulled a couple of tarps from the stern compartment of her boat, selected some likely trees, and began to rig one tarp high enough for them to get under and keep the rain off. Stan and Gary came over to help her, and quickly they rigged another tarp to windward, to help divert the wind from under the overhead tarp.

By now, the kayaks were pretty much empty of gear, and Candice told those who weren’t helping with the tarps to get the kayaks up where they were more protected, and to get a rope or two on them to keep them from being blown away.

They were getting things mostly under control by now. It was none too soon, the sky to windward was looking blacker and blacker. “We’re going to want a fire,” Jill suggested as Candice carried a load of cook bags from her kayak. “Maybe we ought to fan out and find some dryish wood before it starts to rain and gets too wet.”

“Good idea, Jill,” Candice agreed. “I haven’t seen a lot of firewood laying around, but let’s everybody give a quick look for down, dry, dead wood.”

They fanned out through the little grove of trees. There were no real logs available, at least in sizes small enough to drag back to camp, but there was enough smaller stuff that could be broken more or less to the right size, so in just a few minutes, a reasonable pile of branches was under the tarp. It wouldn’t be much of a warming fire, Candice knew, but it would be cheery, and there could be the need for some cheeriness. She was just getting back under the tarp with her second load of wood when the first drops hit, and in only a minute or two they became a cold, driving rain. By then, the whole party had assembled in the shadow of the tarp blocking the wind and out of the rain.

Now, there was time for everyone to take a break. “Anyone want a cup of coffee?” Candice asked, getting out a Trangia cook set. Whether anyone else did or not, she did, and now was a good time to catch a breath.

As it turned out, everyone did. “We’ll need some water,” she said. “Any volunteers to get a bucketful?”

“I’ll go,” Stan said. “I’m sweaty enough in this wet suit that getting a little wetter isn’t going to hurt.”

By the time he got back from the walk down to the lake, he was running wet, but had the bucket of water. Candice already had the little cooker going behind an improvised windscreen of cook bags, warming what water she had. Stan dug out the water filter and began to get more ready, and Candice added it to the pot of warming water.

By now, everyone was unwinding. “Nasty out there,” Pam said.

“Could be worse,” Candice said with a smile. “Now that reminds me of a story.”

“Kayaking or dog sledding?”

“Dog sledding,” Candice smiled. “It’s one of those old saws that’s floated around the Iditarod for years. Up on the coast of Norton Sound, when the conditions are right, or wrong, depending on how you look at it, there’s some places where the shape of the valleys funnel the wind, and in bad conditions they turn it into a real wind tunnel. Probably the worst of them is a place called Topkok Funnel. Well, a few years ago, Mitch Seavey and Charlie Boulding were running together out of White Mountain, not far from the finish. The conditions were lousy, and they figured they’d better stay together for safety. Well, they got to Topkok Summit, a hill overlooking the funnel, and they pulled up and stopped. It was bad enough on the summit, but Topkok was roaring a hurricane. A full whiteout, blowing like hell.”

“Worse than this?” Jill asked. It was blowing pretty good, now, enough to set even the smaller trees moving, and in spite of being on the lee side of the island they could hear waves lashing against the windward side, and over it they could hear the roar of surf on the outer islands.

“Lots worse,” Candice said. “I’ve been through Topkok when it’s pretty bad, and it is a whole lot worse, and colder than hell to boot. Anyway, Seavey looks down into the storm, and says to Charlie, ‘Well, what do you think?’ Now Charlie is an old sourdough, and he’s pretty pithy at the best of times, and he just snorts and says, “Could be worse.” She gave a little hesitation for the sake of the story. One of the talents it took to guide trips like these was a good stock of stories and skill at telling them. “Well, Mitch just shook his head and said, ‘How?’ And Charlie said, ‘We could be in an office in New York.’”

“He was right,” Gary said distantly. “I went to school with a guy who worked on the 71st floor of the south tower of the World Trade Center.”

“Did he make it out?” Jill asked.

“Just barely,” Gary said. “Some of the people he worked with didn’t.”

“I used to work on the 37th floor in a building in Decatur,” Candice said. “The offices are closed and moved out now, but I’d have to think real hard about working there again.”

“Is that why you’re a tour guide?” Sandy asked.

“No, that goes back further,” Candice said, glad to be getting away from what could be a depressing topic. “My husband left his job about the time mine got downgraded. As it happened, an opportunity to buy into a local business in Spearfish Lake opened up just at the right time, and we were up there for a wedding, so he just walked into it. Then, my sister-in-law needed help with the outfitting store, and I was available, and the rest is history.”

“That’d be Tiffany, right?” Dave said. “When we signed up for this trip, we thought she’d be leading it.”

“That was the plan,” Candice said. “You must have signed up last winter, before she realized she was pregnant again. Usually, we trade off, but I’ve done most of the trips this summer.”

“What does your husband think about that?” Sandy asked.

Candice smiled. There was steam starting to come off of the water pot. “It’s kind of funny how that worked out,” she said. “When we first moved up to Spearfish Lake, John was all excited about being able to go out dog sledding with his brother, and go kayaking with the kids, go fishing and like that, and I guess he figured that I’d just be a stay-at-home mom again. But guess who’s run the Iditarod and leads kayak trips, and guess who stays at home?”

“Well, it is a little different,” Sandy smiled as they all laughed.

Candice smiled back. “It’s John who turned conventional on me. His getting outside consists of sitting on bleachers at every ball game the boys are in, or inside on bleachers if its basketball. When he’s not doing that, he and his brother are filling the basement with a model railroad.” She let an instant go by before she continued, “and the weird thing about that is that his brother runs a real railroad.”

“That’s Josh, right?” Stan asked. “I sort of wondered why he quit running the race.”

“Basically, he got too busy with his day job,” Candice said, knowing that it was much more complex than that, but it wasn’t her story to tell. “Though, I think the spark went out of it a little for him. He still has dog teams, but after fifteen years, well, sometimes people get antsy about finding other things to do.”

“How did you wind up running the Iditarod?” Jill asked. “I know you told us all about your race this year, but why would anyone want to do it?”

“It just seemed like the thing to do,” Candice said. “After all, I hang around with all these Iditarod people. Josh and Tiffany have eleven runs between them, and my best friend’s husband, Phil Wine, now has four, so when the question of where we were going to take the junior varsity dog team for a long run last winter came up, I thought it would be a good time to try it, especially after I ran that team in the Beargrease last year, and that qualified me for the big race.”

“What did your husband think about that?” Jill asked.

“I guess he knew it was coming, sooner or later, under the circumstances,” Candice said with a smile. “At least, he didn’t put up too much of a fuss.” She looked at the pot – bubbles were starting to form. “I think we can start on the coffee now,” she added. “It’s going to have to be singles, and hang on to the bags. We may need to get double duty out of them. If we wind up having to sit this out for a couple of days, well, the supply is going to get pretty low.”

“If we are here for a couple days, how are we fixed for food?” Pam asked, setting out some cups from one of the gear bags, as Candice pulled out coffee singles.

“We’ve got a day of good eating,” Candice said. “We’ve got some overs and odds and ends that we might be able to stretch out for another day or maybe two as long as we’re not real choosy about them. If we’re here longer than that, it’s going to get a little hungry out here.”

“You think we might be here that long?” Dave asked.

“Don’t know,” Candice told him truthfully. “I sort of doubt it, but this is a low, and it all depends on how fast it passes. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe not. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

“I sure wish I could call my office and let them know I’m not going to be back on time,” he said. “I tried to use the cell phone, but no signal.”

“I did bring a portable VHF,” Candice said. “That’s pretty much line of sight, and I wouldn’t expect anyone to be out in this crap, but maybe we can get on Channel 16, give a shout, and have someone relay. Don’t get your hopes up, though. My experience with VHF is that there is never anyone around when you need to call someone.”

“I still think we should have tried the crossing.”

“What if we did?” Candice said, using a pot gripper to hold the hot pot as she poured the steaming water into each of the cups. “Listen to that surf, especially the way it’s crashing on the outer islands. We’d have to make it into the creek through surf like that. I could have made it, probably, but I don’t think all of us would have. That’s why we’re here, and better getting back late than not at all.”

“Under the circumstances, I’d just as soon be sitting here,” Stan said.

-30-

Editor's note: Sorry for the abrupt ending, but that’s where Wes left off in the only version of this we have available. It is likely something that either didn’t make it into Facing the Storm or was meant as a chapter in another book never completed.

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