Elated by the first descent of Doctor’s Brook we checked the map and while driving to find more water, ran into some local hunters. Full of both local color and local knowledge they pointed us towards a “Niagara” sized waterfall on a tributary high up in the mountains.

Satisfied with the beta we headed deep into the hills next morning, Chris and I struggled to keep the rental in sight as EJ flew down the pothole filled dirt roads.

Scurrying around a corner it came into view and we instantly knew we had found it, she certainly was large. View from about two kilometers away.

The falls were over a kilometer away and we were surrounded by logging roads. Wasting almost an hour of driving we were back where we had first seen the falls and commenced gearing up, using as much humor as possible to delay changing in frigid temperatures. “I’d better just stay here, the best shot is from the car”.

Eric Jackson showing off his backing up skills (they’re good).

Thirty minutes of hiking through typical Newfoundland “tuckamore” and downed trees had our highly motivated group at the base of the falls.
Jesse Coombs

We all smiled looking at the stacked up gradient.

Post drooling over the gradient a quick hike led us to the base of the largest drop. The first big drop looked quite dubious from the road, and once we gained a view of the base our suspicions were confirmed. At most three inches of water was all the padded the landing of a fifty foot freefall. We had high hopes for the thirty to forty foot waterfall downstream, which unfortunately landed on a pile of rocks. Well at least there was still plenty of gradient left.

The boys scouting up the first good drop.

The river split around an island, the right side dropping full force onto rocks, and on the left a nice juicy lead in dropped over a thirty foot sliding waterfall that everyone enjoyed.

Joel Kowalski enjoying the first sliding falls of Leg Pond Feeder.

Just downstream was a slide that during the hike looked innocuous enough, but deeper inspection revealed a slide dropping about thirty feet, landing in a big hole on the right and a rock shelf on the left.

Ben Stookesberry opted to probe the slide first, and made a strong left to right move boofing through the hole with no problems. EJ followed suit with a different but equally effective line.

Dane Jackson went next, taking a piton and having one of the scariest swims I have ever been witness too, described in detail by EJ here. All I can say is he is an absolute champion to keep up the good attitude.

Chris and Joel went next, both styling the line and making it look easy.

Chris Korbulic

Filming from the top, Nick went last and was pushed too far right and clipped shallow rocks, causing us all to have a minor heart attack as he flipped over, falling onto the barely submerged shelf on the left. Ejecting on impact, Nick floated still in the water for a second before making an attempt to swim. EJ pulled him to shore where he signaled ok, suffering a concussion and sore back. We were all relieved the injuries were so minor considering the circumstances.

A picture tells a thousand words, Nick Troutman.

After the rough treatment by Leg Pond Feeder, we started the long drive back out to the highway. Thanks to Nick’s cell phone we were able to secure a flight through Portland Creek Outfitters. A late night drive took us all the way to the small port town of Roddickton on the east side of the Northern Peninsula. Here we would paddle out from our two day descent of the reputed Cloud River.

Some bumps and bruises, but thankfully everyone was ok.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

We all hoped against all hopes for the best of endings after our month long drought in Newfoundland. It had to rain at some point right? After chasing water all over the island Nick, Jesse, EJ, Dane, and Joel had flown out. With a promising weather report Chris and I coerced Ben into staying on with us. Six hours of fruitless driving, followed by Ben going for a jog resulted in anticipating prospects. He found it. Big, clean. No water. Two days of rain forecasted, one of heavy rain. We camped out for three days and observed heavy mist at best. She wasn’t going to pull through for us. Driving back to Deer Lake spirits were at an all time low for the trip. Feeling the down of a major expedition being over and the last week of it a complete bust, we joked once more about the beautiful fall colors and anticipated home and somewhere warm.

Ben Stookesberry scouting.

Photo: Chris Korbulic.

Days of driving….ferries….cold days, colder nights. We’re still going at it hard here despite some injuries, equipment problems and vehicle issues, we are still going on and getting paddling in when we can find the rain. Got a decent one today with one nice waterfall and one very manky slide. Write-ups will go up as I get downtime or am back home.

Scouting up another first descent.

Black Brook IV-V

As the rest of the group arrived it appeared that to our horror we were under the Newfoundland expedition curse. In the ‘90s, Brandon Knapp and Johnny Kern made a spring journey to Newfoundland and got skunked by low flows their whole trip. After a five dry days it seemed that we were under the same curse, and started following their footsteps for guaranteed flows. Looking through Brandon’s website I had seen a picture labeled “Johnny Humber” and with this clue plugged into our local contact we got directions for the falls just out of our current location in Deer Lake.

The new arrivals finish loading the rental and are ready to get it.

Fired up with the arrival of more paddlers, we spent a few hours of driving, backtracking, four wheeling and dealing with general logistical problems. We couldn’t find the falls we were looking for, but made it to “Big Falls” a six foot ledge on the Humber River. Optimism was still high, and after we weighed options we were off to “Star Pond” where a high gradient brook had our hopes set high. With over fifty kilometers of dirt roads and over four hours of driving behind us, we found our brook. The gradient was there, but where was the water? Newfoundland isn’t shy of using hydro projects to supply electricity to the island, and we were on the road again.

Dry weather prevailed another night as we camped out, and headed for Black Brook, a tributary of the commercially rafted Indian River. Upon arrival we found access to be good, a nice bridge to lake run, and flows were low but in the upper section the river looked to hold its (lack of) water well.

Stoked to be on the water we had to scrape over a few rocky spots before the river turned to bedrock, where it dropped over a nice series of ledges and slides that would be beautiful at highwater. I’d imagine at high flows sticky holes would rear up all over in this section.

Ben Stookesberry enjoying a little low volume action.

Making quick time down the low volume slides we were at a halfway bridge only too soon, and debated taking out there, or continuing down through the rocky sections to a waterfall that was marked on the map. Opting to push on down stream, the next several kilometers were torture at our low flows, full gorilla boating over the wide stream bed filled with rocks.

Numbed by all the scraping and bashing after only too long we saw a large horizon line and got out to scout. The river split into two channels and dropped through either a sluice box, ledge, ledge rapid, or a bouldery lead-in to a nice, somewhat clean slide. It looked like it would be easy enough to run the right side sluice, ferry across and hike back up for the left slide.

Nick Troutman has a nice clean line down through the sluice into the first boof.

Nick again with an equally nice line for the final boof.

The whole group fired off the right slide, with some entertaining results, four pitons and a few missed boofs, but no carnage of consequence. Switching over to the right side of the island we found the clean slide to have a questionable depth lead-in boof. After some inspection Ben fired it off first and with a boof, it was plenty deep.

Dane Jackson followed next. He entered boofing left to right with a bit too much speed and got carried into a rock outcropping at the top of the slide, broached and flipped over, right at the top of the shallow slide. Dane quickly rolled up and got his boat straightened out for the rest of the slide.

Dane Jackson straightens it out for the slide.

Eric Jackson throwing some style out on the slide.

The rest of our lines went without anything remarkable happening, and we resumed another two kilometers of low water boulder torture down to a small lake. Paddling across didn’t take long, and soon enough a few of the boys ran the shuttle while we dried out by a fire and looked forward to our next mission.

With low flows, Black Brook was too low inbetween the bedrock sections and in general IV-IV+ character, but at higher flows this would be a rocking IV-V run that we would love to get back on, and has every right of becoming a local classic.

The whole crew has arrived, and exploration has been in full force, lots of driving and hiking, some rivers a little low and two just perfect. Futility defines our attempts at securing a float plane to our major destination river, but we are hoping to lock one down this week, or we will hop on the ferry to Labrador.

Ben Stookesberry

Nick Troutman

Chris Korbulic

Jesse Coombs

Jesse Coombs

Ben Stookesberry