The roar of the current was deafening as we shot down the river, bounced and jolted by waves that curled over the sides of the canoe and drenched us. We had already stopped to bail three times when, as the river narrowed into a zigzagging canyon, near disaster struck. Rounding a tight corner, we took on water once again — but before we could get to shore to bail, we were swept into the next rapids and capsized. Mike and I suddenly found ourselves thrashing desperately across the current toward the rocky shore, each clinging to a pack, as our upturned canoe hurtled down the river to oblivion.

Our salvation: the canoe eventually slammed into a rock in the middle of the river and held fast, close enough to retrieve, and was angled just enough that the force of the water crashing against it didn’t fold it around the rock like a piece of tinfoil. By the time we managed to get the canoe unpinned, recover our belongings, and find a place to camp, it was 7 p.m. We had taken all day to cover the first five miles of a 175-mile trip.

We didn’t paddle anywhere the next day. Instead, we nursed our bruises and dried our sodden clothes. Where the clear waters of an incoming creek collided with the silty turquoise flow of the main river, we cast flies and pulled out half a dozen fish for dinner — iridescent Arctic grayling and a Dolly Varden trout. And throughout the day we wondered, silently and to each other, whether we had ventured too far into the wilderness.

Moods brightened the next morning. Blue sky broke through the clouds, and, as miles flowed by with no further mishaps, we began to relax and take in our surroundings. Mountains on either side of the river formed a corridor stretching toward the horizon. High on the rocky hillsides we spotted thinhorn Dall sheep; above us, a bald eagle soared.

We camped that night at the inlet of a creek whose waters were as white and opaque as full-cream milk, colored by limestone sediment from a massif to the west. We’d descended far enough that scraggly black spruce interspersed with spindly beech now lined the riverbanks, providing fuel for a roaring campfire — though the flames seemed dull and lifeless compared with the bright light of the midnight sun.