Finlay's RiverAdventures on wild waters In Finlay's River, R. M. Patterson, whose style was described by noted author Bruce Hutchison as a a mixture between Thoreau and Jack London, tells the story of his 1949 trip up this wild river in remote northern British Columbia. Patterson uses his own journey as a framework to recount the adventures of explorers who went there before. All had struggled up the Finlay for different reasons, and all left spirited accounts of that challenging, doomed river, which Patterson brings to vivid life again. Much of the Finlay, a river of whitewater rapids that flowed through a magnificent country of dense forests and high mountains, disappeared forever under the waters of Williston Lake with the completion of the W. A. C. Bennett Dam in 1968. In this engaging book, Patterson preserves the memory of this wilderness and the long-gone adventurers who first told the world about its existence. |
Contents
Southern Approaches Chapter 1 The Setting | 2 |
Summit Lake | 10 |
Crooked River | 20 |
Warburton Pike | 26 |
Ignatieff | 37 |
Men Travelling into a Far Country | 47 |
Finlay Forks | 48 |
Samuel Black | 53 |
Swannell on the Mesilinka | 94 |
Haworth | 104 |
To the Headwaters | 107 |
Deserters Canyon | 108 |
Swannell on the Ingenika | 129 |
Prairie Mountain | 151 |
The Explorer | 175 |
Thutadé | 193 |
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Common terms and phrases
afternoon ahead Alan bank beach beaver bend Black Canyon boat Bower Creek Bower Mountain bush Butler cabin cache camp canoe caribou Cascade Cascade Canyon cliffs climbed Copley cottonwood Deserters Canyon downstream driftpile eddy feet Finlay Forks Finlay River Finlay's fire Fishing Lakes foot Fort Grahame Fort St Fort Ware Fox River Grahame Haworth head horses Hudson's Bay Company Hudson's Hope Indian Ingenika island Jim Alexander Kwadacha land Lavoie load looked Ludwig McConnell McLeod Lake miles moose morning mouth Nep Yuen night North northwest Old Slave Omineca outfit pack paddle Parsnip Parsnip River passed Peace River Peak pole Prairie Mountain Prise raft rain rapids rock Rockies Samuel Black Selwyn shore shot Sikannis slope snow spruce stream Swannell thing Thutadé took trees Trench trip upstream valley walked Ware Wicked River wild willow wind