Group retracing explorer's path down Columbia River

VANTAGE, Wash. -- As the nine canoes paddled into this tiny Columbia River community, a crowd on shore erupted into whoops and cheers.

Nearby, a lone bagpiper played a lively tune heralding arrival of the David Thompson Columbia Brigade, a group that's been paddling down the river since June 3 following the voyage of the renowned Canadian surveyor.

The paddlers are among 200 men and women following Thompson's canoe route from the river's headwaters in Invermere, British Columbia, to its mouth at Astoria, Ore. -- a journey of 1,040 miles.

Thompson mapped an astonishing one-sixth of North America, making Lewis and Clark look like tourists by comparison, said Denny DeMeyer, a paddler from Blaine.

Although he surveyed extensively in Washington and the Pacific Northwest, his work was focused on Canada, which accounts for his relative anonymity in the United States.

"I've heard that if David Thompson was an American, there'd be a statue of him in every town," said DeMeyer, who is himself a land surveyor.

The brigade pulled into Vantage at about 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, after battling a headwind through the gorge for several hours.

"Today was a very long day," DeMeyer said, standing beside his team's canoe. Other paddlers said it was the hardest one they'd had so far.

While the paddlers were still out on the river, support teams had set up camp at the Vantage Riverstone Resort, bracing tents against the wind and getting dinner started.

Most crews had their own barbecue grills, and many in the support groups had purchased fresh cherries and other produce at farmers markets they drove past on the way to Vantage. A few even made banic, a Native American fry bread.

This year is the bicentennial of Thompson's voyage down the Columbia. He came to Canada from England in 1784 and worked for the fur-trading Hudson's Bay and Northwest Companies from the late 1700s to early 1800s.

His maps were so accurate that they were used by the Canadian and American governments until about 100 years ago.

The 200-person brigade includes many people who participated in a similar Thompson-themed voyage in 2008 -- a 2,050-mile, 63-day journey from Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, to Thunder Bay, Ontario.

This year, about 30 paddlers are American, including one from Hawaii.

The brigade set out from Invermere on June 3 and expects to land in Astoria on July 15.

Richard Wagers of Alberta, one of the trip's organizers, said they wake up at about 5 a.m. every day and have paddled an average of 31 miles per day.

The paddlers take at least a five-minute break every hour to hydrate and rest, which is also historically accurate. In the voyages of Thompson's day, paddlers would use their hourly break to smoke a pipe, and actually measured their journeys that way: "five pipes until the next rapids," and so on, Wagers explained.

A typical day means five to six hours of paddling, with a lunch break and optional crew change halfway through.

That's an important difference from the 2008 voyage, DeMeyer said, when they paddled longer hours during the day and had less time to socialize with the other teams in the evening. This year, they wanted to encourage that community, so the days are shorter.

DeMeyer said their biggest enemy is wind, but the group also endured days of driving rains and temperatures of about 45 degrees through the Canada-America border.

They try to get on the river early in the day to avoid the winds that can pick up in the afternoon.

The paddlers travel six to a canoe in order to recreate Thompson's voyage as accurately as they can. When they pull into towns where a group is waiting for them, they request to come ashore in the same way the legendary surveyor did, by firing a black powder musket into the air and waiting for a response from the people on shore.

Thompson always asked permission to come ashore, Wagers explained, which helped him maintain unusually good relations with the natives.

With so much snowmelt coming into the Columbia this year, the water has been unusually high, which has allowed them to travel faster, he said. The fastest they've gone is about 12.5 miles per hour, he said.

Wagers, 60, is one of three people who began planning the trip in December 2008.

The brigade is split into nine teams, which are responsible for portaging their own canoes with support vehicles, setting up camp and preparing their own meals. Members alternate paddling with driving in the support teams, so no one has to paddle the entire 45 days.

Many paddlers have signed on for the entire journey, but the brigade has also included people who join up for a week or two and then go back home.

Brigade members range in age from 14 all the way into the 70s.

"These aren't your typical 50-year-olds," said 26-year-old David Bates, a member of a team of 12 students.

"They're really cool," he said, adding that they can sometimes paddle his team into the ground.

Bates and his crew all work or volunteer at the Fort William Historical Park in Thunder Bay and have shared their passion for the cultural history of the voyage with the rest of the brigade. In the evenings, they break out the fiddle and bagpipes and sing voyager songs around the campfire, he said.

The bagpipes are historically accurate, too, dating back to the fur traders' Scottish partners.

Bates convinced his mother, 54-year-old Margaret Bates, to participate in this brigade after he and his brother paddled in the 2008 voyage. The paddling has been amazing, but it's the people in the brigade and the communities along the way that have really made an impact, she said.

"The people we meet -- it's like they've rolled a red carpet down the river for us," she said. "It's like you're in a parade every second day."

Several towns, including Kettle Falls, Pateros and Wenatchee, organized community celebrations and historical presentations to accompany the brigade's visits.

She said she knew a handful of people on her team before starting, but other than that, "it's a group of strangers who are now friends."

Margaret Bates, a family doctor from Ontario, is half Ojibwa. Her grandfather was part of a team of Native Americans who used to canoe for surveyors in northern Ontario.

"I think a lot of us have canoeing in their families," she said. "It reminds you of your roots; reminds you of how Canada started."

Bates wore a traditional "strap dress" that she had sewn, modeled after the extremely practical dresses worn by Native women in Thompson's era.

"We're celebrating David Thompson (in the brigade), but I'm celebrating the Native people who showed him the way," she said.

* Molly Rosbach can be reached at 509- 577-7628 or mrosbach@yakimaherald.com