In 1976 I was part of the first Women's Expedition of the Nahahanni River. We were 6 women chosen from all over the U.S. Our original plan was something never done before: to pull up the Ross river in the Yukon Territories; portage the Rockies; run the Nahahanni from it's source; then run the Laird to the confluence with the great McKenzie river. Record rainfall and snow prevented us from the first part. We had to get a pilot drunk at the one cabin town of Ross River to fly us into the moose pond source of the Nahahanni. A book about the lower 1/2 of the river is titled "The Most Dangerous River". The maps of upper 1/2 were almost useless at 24 miles/inch scale and were highly inaccurate as few had ever run that part of the river and none of them were surveyors. The names of everyone who had run the river, including the vast majority that had started in the lower 1/2 were scrarched into a 2'x2' board in Deadmen's Valley. A group of elite British Marines tried to run the upper river a week before us - all perished - hence the reluctant, drunk pilot. The spectacular lower 1/2, called the South Nahahanni, became the first United Nations International Park a few years after we were there.
The geek part comes in the preservation of my 450+ photos. They are all on deteriorating slides. I took them to Costco to have digitalized. I no longer have a light board so I could not organize them before I emptied the boxes of slides. I thought I would be getting back a DVD that I could just put into my photo editing program. My plan was to organize then edit/spruce up the photos and make a permanent, in-order, record. Well, I did get a nice CD of random pictures. I spent over 4 hours on initial editing and decided I might be better off putting them in order so I could just delete the bad ones before I went to the trouble of any more editing. The editing program would not arrange. I switched to another program and they became again arranged randomly. I now had 800+ photos with the edited ones scattered throughout. I spent 8 hours matching photos (think a mega child's game of matching the pictures) and arranging everything in order. I hit "save" and walla they were saved again unmatched in random order. AARG! Today instead of skiing in fresh powder, I put them on Picasa and rearranged them in order but I can't edit them to the detail I want in that program. All of my intuitive attempts to put my Picasa file into my photo editing program have failed. AARG! I need a geek!
Me portaging my canoe on the upper river
The Nahahanni has 3 canyons deeper than the Colorado Grand Canyon. I am floating toward the first.
Lunch in the third canyon.
Our group (I am back row L) at the confluence of the Nahahanni and Liard Rivers. 
The Nahahanni has 3 canyons deeper than the Colorado Grand Canyon. I am floating toward the first. Lunch in the third canyon.Our group (I am back row L) at the confluence of the Nahahanni and Liard Rivers. The poor Chinooks are missing out on training time while I tackle this project - geek anyone?
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