Horton River 1996.

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Horton River 1996.

In the summer of 1996, Bob Walker (my father), Jan Walker-Roenisch (my sister), Alan Roy (an NRAO postdoc at the time), and I (Craig Walker) canoed the Horton River in the Northwest Territories of Canada. We flew to Horton lake on July 26 and back from the river mouth on Aug. 14. These are pictures from that trip.

The pictures were taken with either my Konica T3 SLR or by me with Joan's tiny Olympus XA. The Olympus was in my pocket once when I slipped into the water, dunking it. That explains the odd colors of the pictures in the canyon region - the film was soaked and had to be recovered by a professional lab in Albuquerque. There were massive color shifts in the process, including loss of much of the blue. What you see is the result at compensating with color corrections in the Gimp. In any case, after being dried as well as I could, the camera was fully functional again two days later. The water was very clean and fresh and the camera has very little electronics, including no flash, so it could stand the soaking. The photos were scanned to PhotoCD by Kodak. The photos were made with Kodak Gold print film.

I have not done much annotation for this show yet. I want to do more of that and I want to scan some more photos that I did not have added to the PhotoCD, including some taken by Bob and Jan.

By the way, the broken canoe in one picture was not one of ours. We found it abandoned along the river. Valiant attempts had been made to repair it, but in the end, they did not really work. We don't know how long it had been there. We also found 3 other canoes that had been cached, but had been damaged by the weight of snows or maybe animals.

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Unloading at Horton Lake. The flight was long enough that the planes had to carry extra fuel in cans. Those cans were carried inside the floats. Here the pilots are refueling. Soon we will have that moment on trips like this when the tie to civilization is cut and you realize you are committed.	At the junction between the side stream going to Horton Lake and the main Horton River.	Jan, Bob, and I. A family gathering in the far north. Here we have hiked up a ways from our camp along the river.	A fairly typical scene along the upper part of the river. The violence of spring breakup can be imagined from the way the river banks are stripped of vegetation.
A muskox that we have surprised sunning himself along the river bank.	We lined a few drops. We also portaged one. For that one, we could have lined past the drop, but then there wasn't enough room to get going again safely and the portage around a spire of rock was easy.	Our camp near the start of the canyon section.	In the canyon in the central section of the river. This was a beautiful area, and had the only real rapids. The water was still very clear (visibility over 20 ft). The colors are a bit odd because this is one of the photos from the roll that got dunked.
Bob and Jan visiting some sea ice at the mouth of the river.	Looking over the mouth of the river. This is where the oxbow broke out about 150 years ago. Before that, the river continued through several more very large oxbows and came out finally on the other side of the peninsula. You can see sea ice on the ocean to the right. The two small dots on the flat green area to the right are our tents.	This is a panorama is made up of 4 image taken from about the same location as the above photo. I have not made a careful effort to match the photos and, since they were taken looking slightly downward, they don't match all that well at the edges. But still you get an idea of the sweep of the view from this spot. To the left is the ocean with its ice. In the center is where the Horton River broke through the coastal hills. Below are the remnants of the old oxbow that the river followed before it broke out.

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Click on the image for a screen size version. The "2000" and "full size" versions are larger (not available in web versions).

Click on the image for a screen size version. The "full size" version is larger.