Canoeing the Wildest River in New Brunswick

What's going on guys? Noah here with Northern Scavenger and I am on arguably the wildest river in New Brunswick. I'm out here with Tristan and over the next 130 kilometers we're going to be paddling down the Nipissiquit River. We're going to be starting in Mount Carleton Provincial Park and ending in the city of Bathurst on the ocean. You've heard there's some wild big white water and also we're gonna be paddling through some of the most remote country in New Brunswick so stick with us this is gonna be a good one. All right so just without paddling going drifting down this river sideways I'm seeing a seven and a half kilometer average. Without any sort of flow when you're just paddling you're usually paddling at about four to five kilometers an hour. We're harvesting a few fiddleheads. Fiddleheads are a young fern, a head of a fern and there's different types. Some are edible and I suppose it's probably good to like leave some out of each bunch so that the fern keeps growing. But basically I think you take that little kind of brown covering off and fry that up in butter and you're good to go. That's not a bad little amount for like dinner. The headwaters of this river start around the base of Mount Carleton and Mount Carleton is the highest point in the Maritimes and it's part of the Appalachian Mountains which stretches all the way from Newfoundland in Canada down to Alabama in the United States. These are some of the oldest mountains in North America forming over a billion years ago and because of that a lot of the mass has been eroded away leaving smaller rounded humps compared to the younger rocky mountains. Along the Nipissiquit Trail there's these random lean-to's and we spotted one on the side of the river that we're just going to check out. That's a pretty cool spot. I don't know like if it's like pouring rain. This looks pretty new. This trail is historic and it's been used for thousands of years by the local indigenous which are the Mi'kmaq and since then it's been established into a well-known hiking trail. One of the largest in the Maritimes. It's about 150 kilometers from start to finish and I believe it was also listed in National Geographic as a top hike to do out here. Okay that's a class two I'd say. River difficulty is categorized into six classes. One being the easiest and six being the hardest. In a canoe we're not going to paddle anything beyond a class four. That one's pretty distinct. Moose tracks. Moose turds. Looking at the map we're approaching a pretty consistent class three than some class fours. This looks like the bulk of the first track. It's a pretty decent V right there. All right that wasn't too bad. It's big but it's not as technical as we're used to. You're not diving rocks, you're kind of diving people. Yeah. A little more significant. Wouldn't want to stumble upon this one by accident. No it's looking quite boisterous. The first portage. First portage, first campsite. A little dive. I'm really excited to eat this. I've always wanted to go on a canoe trip and collect fiddleheads. So this is like a dream come true. I'm 90% sure these are the right ones and I want to cook them good. I know that if you undercook them it's not great. There's like a toxin or something in them. But I feel like that's kind of it. They're done. Oh it smells like butter and garlic. Yeah that's good. That's got to be the right one. Yeah it tastes good. Kind of tastes like rapini. For dinner we had a pasta lentil marinara. Just wrapping up the day here. Looking at the map we did about 54 kilometers. Which is an incredible distance. But we also had a strong current with us all day. But this river is beautiful so far. Camping beside these big rapids. Can't ask for anything better than this. Anyways I think we're ready for bed. So we'll see you guys tomorrow. Hoping the rain holds off. It's still cold. It's mid-May but it's feeling like that shoulder season still. It's keeping the bugs at bay though which is always nice. Also update with the fiddleheads. We did not get sick. So we might try to find some more. Yeah so we're just camping right here at the end of the rapids. And then in a kilometer ish there's a minor ledge, a C2. And then it's just miles and miles and miles and miles and miles of fast flowing fun river. What do you think? It looks all right eh? Kind of down the middle. Yeah it looks chunky but it looks pretty straightforward. Yeah. So we just ran into three trail workers working on the hiking trail. They're having a great day working in the rain. They got the chainsaw. They got their helmets. But overall they said the trail is in pretty good condition. They gave the impression that the narrows which is sort of the next significant set of rapids coming up should be manageable. But it does sound like it's a proper canyon situation with steep cliffs. Conditions have gotten quite miserable out. The temperature has dropped probably around six or seven degrees. And there's a constant rain and wind. We're still having fun I think. We're still having fun. Yeah it definitely is raining more than forecast had shown. It's day 143. We've been living on fish and rice for the last four weeks. Oh man this is awesome. Oh you brought full pickles. Nice. Oh yeah. You got a double bag of pickles. So it feels like the temperatures continue to drop. Look you can see my breath. It's gotta be four degrees or so. When we stopped for lunch I started shivering. We both threw some layers on. We're warming up. We're gonna boil some water have some tea. Just being out of the wind makes it feel like a few degrees warmer. Maybe there's just things holding some of the heat. I don't know. Were you cold out there? It's freezing. Yeah it's cold. I mean it just got colder and colder all day. Got these nice little tea packs. A little uh masala chai. That'll be great. We're in a teepee and talking to the volunteers that manage the trail. These teepees once were where the warming huts are. And they're replacing these teepees with the warming huts because they're getting a little moldy over time. But this is one of the ones still that remains. Good to be in here right now. Out of the wind. Out of the rain. Warming up. Feeling good Noah? Feeling much better. Full stomach of food. Some tea. We got the spray skirt on. It's not windy right here. It's not raining at the moment. So from here it looks doable. We've got to the narrows. And it really is a narrow. This section is really committing. And it's a class three. So once we're in we can't get out. So it's all or nothing. We went for a little hike. We scouted the river. We have a bit of a game plan. We want to try to end far right. There's a bit of a slit that we can take. That's our number one option. All right let's do it. Nice. I'm gonna go far right here. We're in. You ready for a brace through here? Nice. Bang on. That was awesome. Bang on. Hit the line perfect. Oh it's a good feeling. Nipissiquit Falls? Nipissiquit Falls. This is a three kilometer portage around the dam. But we're gonna still try to see if we can cut off a couple kilometers. We have heard that there is some decent white water. And it's quite the cliff. So I don't know if we're going to be able to do it. 5.6. Oh yeah. Along the path we found a brook that runs into the river. And we followed it down. And it looks like it's good enough to take a bit of a shortcut here. It's still winter. Day 194. Still just eating fish. Fishing the leather from the boots. Eagle. But the trail should be right along the river. But maybe we just uh let's just stop before we get to this rock. We're on the trail. We've approached a class 3 rapid which is uh we were warned about. But it's also where we want to camp tonight. There is uh potentially a teepee or one of those warming huts. Sweet. This is home. Great place to be for tonight. It's gonna rain through the night and all tomorrow. So not having to worry to put up and down a wet tent is gonna be great. All right guys I got the mudler minnow on. See if I can catch a trout for dinner. The cashews and peanut butter. Important step. Peanut butter mixes with a little bit of water and makes like a nice creamy sauce. Yeah a lot of protein a lot of calories. I'm pretty lightweight as a meal. And there's also beef jerky that I've rehydrated back into beef. I never thought about beef jerky becoming beef after it's hydrated. It sort of does. Yeah it's true. Socks too. Yeah. All right guys we're sleeping without the tent tonight in the shelter. Today we paddled 52 kilometers. So we've had two good days on the river. Tomorrow is going to be by far our biggest whitewater day yet. Looking at the river it is full of swirls. And we might even start our day tomorrow with this set that we um we walked around today. We're expecting lots of rain. It's gonna be cold and it's gonna be a lot of whitewater. But this is why we're out here. Today we have a lot of whitewater and six named rapids. We're starting off with the Chain of Rocks right out front. Middle Landing. Pabineau Falls. The Jacuzzi. Boucher Falls. And then the final crux. Rough Waters. A long stretch of Class 3s and Class 4s with a waterfall. So today we're expecting a lot of rain. Eight degrees and there's gonna be a lot of whitewater. So I'm wearing a dry suit. And then Tristan's wearing a neoprene wetsuit with a rain jacket on top. And we'll see today how warm this keeps us. All right. Ready when you are. Let's do this. We got this Noah. We got this. Up river we ran into a couple groups that said do not run the Chain of Rocks Rapids. There's a lot of stories of kayakers and canoeists dumping and getting the boat wrapped around a rock. It's just water. But because the water level is so high there's just a lot of big haystacks. A lot of big moving water. So we decided this is the time to do it. All right. Two big drops coming up. Hell yeah. How's a slap for that? Way bigger once you're in it too eh? Yeah we probably could have tied up this paydeck. Day 234. It's getting cold. We found some seagrass to eat. That kept us going for a few weeks but it's all out now. All this debris up here would have been from high water. We're talking like four feet higher. This river would be raging. Looks like some serious falls here. We're not going to mess around with lining or running it. There's a good portage here so it makes our decision that much easier. That wasn't even marked on the map as anything. The river's really widened up here and we hear a thunderous sound. Hey that's exactly where we wanted to go. That was awesome. Now we're in this little eddy. So we got ourselves stuck a bit in this eddy scouting down river. This extends into a pretty significant class 4 rapid. So what we're going to do is try to stay as close as we can to shore and go and back paddle and slowly make our way down. There's a very very tiny eddy down there. It's like it's probably the drop off we see up there. We've entered a section called rough waters. Nipissigwe in Mi'kmaq means rough waters. So I think there's a correlation there. We're gonna cut way over? Yeah. Bring us around this. There's a sneak route here that might be good. Nice. Is it? Oh it's scary. All right we got to avoid the smelt wheel. I love the stuff in the water cables bro. Just so sticky. Oh yeah. So I mentioned this a bit in the last episode but these man-made dams are hazards for paddlers and canoeists and anyone that could fall over. Because it creates a monster hole that you can get stuck in and it's really hard to get out. Let's try to get it in that more recirculating part. Yeah. Guys that's a wrap. We made it to Bathurst. Awesome. Three days. I can't believe we did this entire river in three days. Guys thank you so much for watching. You guys love the content. Make sure to subscribe, like the video, all the things. And on that note, we'll see you next time.