NOEICK EXPEDITION: The Pleasure of Purgatory

What can you expect when you combine 80-plus years of paddling experience with the variable, hard to predict flows of a distant creek in British Colombia? Anything, including bears, as Chris Korbulic, Ben Stookesberry, Jules Domine, and Sandy Macewan know well. On any first descent, the hope is that the stars align and everything goes perfectly, only not too perfectly, because sometimes, as Korbulic discovers on the Noeick, the reward of an expedition doesn’t taste as sweet without a little bit of suffering.

Words: Chris Korbulic

Purgatory Camp: Night 4 Tap. Rain. Tap. Another warm night. Tap. The rain drummed a maddening beat on the tent, the watery sounds surrounding me. Hissing river, thundering glaciers and the incessant tap, tap, tapping of rain kept my mind awake, wondering. Had I spent months, the better part of the year even, planning around and dreaming of this river in vain? Almost all of the paddling still lay ahead, and we needed the seasonal low flow through the three steep gorges that drew us here, not the flood we had. Tap. Tap. Tap. My thoughts shifted to Jules. He could barely pull on his drysuit, much less hold a paddle, his fingers, hand, and wrist swollen into one nearly immoveable shape. Even if flows dropped, all four of us knew only…

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Kayak Session (Digital) - 1 Issue, Summer 2020

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