Dakota's first trip to trouble

August 10th would be the first time my son Dakota was able to make it to the trapline. He'd been chomping at the bit to get here but a summer job had kept him from joining me. Dakota grew up traipsing behind me as I trapped beaver and coyotes for farmers near Genisee and then later near Chip Lake. He is now 17-years-old and he will eventually become my Junior Partner on the trapline. For now, he's another set of muscles - work never seems to end here.

We had been away on summer holidays and then the Alberta Trappers' Association Rendezvous in Stettler. It was a heck of an event and if you ever get the chance, it's a great time spent with the salt of the earth. It had been six weeks since my last trip in. During that time, I had been keeping an eye on the Environment Canada website watching the weather. And it had been raining hard in the foothills. In fact, Jasper and Hinton were experiencing flood problems and every time I logged on to check the weather, it was calling for heavy rains. I was concerned about the runoff and how much water was coming down. Would the cabin be flooded? Surely the bridges must all be gone? Are we even going to be able to make it to the cabin?

The answers to my questions were soon answered. The first bridge we reached on the Cabin Trail was gone. Completely washed away. You could see where the logs had been scattered and tossed about. But somehow the terrain had been altered and we could now pick our way around without too much difficulty. The next bridge was the same, gone, but it too was passable. I was beginning to think this had been for the good, and then we reached the third bridge and went to work putting it back into place. The logs were once again scattered but with a little bit of sweat, we were able to salvage them all and put the bridge back together. We were now able to reach the cabin. At the cabin you could see where the water had breached the bank of the main creek, but thankfully the closest spot had been behind the cabin and we didn't get flooded. The water had come up at least four feet.

I was now concerned about the bridge Pierre and I had built with the Alaskan Sawmill. Surely it would be gone too. Then I remembered the two other log bridges we'd built, one on South Trail and the other on an unnamed trail not too far from the cabin. If the bridge on South Trail was gone, we'd have to rebuild it to find out if the Alaskan Sawmill bridge was still in one piece.

The next day, as I feared, the bridge on South Trail had been annihilated; logs were strewn all over the place and the creek was still running hard and fast. Dakota and I spent the better part of two hours putting the bridge back together so we could continue on to see what the fate of the Alaskan Sawmill bridge was. I had ridden my quad over that bridge and back, once. I feared that would be the only time I'd ever cross it.

When we arrived near the bridge, we were cut off by a huge wet bog that had given us trouble previously, but now it wasn't passable. We began the short walk to the bridge that was now 30-feet downstream from its original position. Amazingly, it was still in one piece.

Without enough time left on this trip, recovering the bridge would have to wait until the next weekend. It was a lot of work I hadn't planned on. The bridges we'd replaced were quickly thrown together and would each have to be reworked. The cabin Trail bridges would also have to be reworked, somehow. The one closest to the cabin was also washed away, but we had time to put it back together, and so we did.

Welcome to the trapline buddy!

The bog before the bridge that is now a mess.

Dakota on the Alaskan Sawmill bridge 30-feet downstream.

You can read the bridge story in its entirety in my Outdoor Pursuits column in Alberta Outdoorsmen magazine here: Back to the Drawing Board