The Land God Gave To Cain
Bucking and weaving, I forced the GS through another patch of deep gravel, clear piste ahead, 40, 50, 55. Another stretch of gravel comes into view, slow to 40, accelerating as we hit the gravel. The bike weaves almost uncontrollably for a second before we gain traction. Through the gravel and the surface changes to a lumpy sand and gravel mix; better traction as our speed builds 40, 50, 60 – more gravel ahead, small patches and I accelerate through each one, feathering the throttle on the smoother patches, leaving me space to accelerate through gravel without building to much speed on the heavily laden GS. Then several miles of well worn piste, the gravel thrown to each side of a smooth wide rut, 50, 60, 70, 80; back off to cruise at 60.
Then sand again, hard packed heavily corrugated; the bike shaking like a road drill as I try and find the speed that will smooth our passage through the ruts. We make progress.
Then comes the rain and wind. Howling gusts build into a crescendo of side wind that starts to kick the GS off track. I moderate speed as the bike is forced across ruts through deep ‘berms’ of gravel that send the rear end of the bike swinging from side to side. The rain gets heavier and the wind starts to howl as we traverse an area of rugged and bare moor land. The clouds hang heavy and lower over the high moors as smaller wisps scud across a darkening sky.
The piste starts to destabilise as the drenching downpour works its way into the sand mud and gravel. We are being thrown about and before long, the rules of off road riding go out the window as we struggle to maintain any kind of reasonable speed on the ever deepening gravel and sand mix; wide ruts become narrow water filled rivers and the gusts keep driving the GS into the deep gravel to the right. Keeping the bike on track becomes a matter of sheer strength and will power.
We hit a long section of pink granite gravel; scattered by the grading crews in vast quantities across the whole piste, speed can only be maintained with great effort in the wind and rain. I stop to take a break from the wind behind a granite bluff which overlooks to high moors of south eastern Labrador. Rivulets of water run down the rock, splashing out efforts to light a cigarette. Barbara looks exhausted, the effort of being pillion taking its toll on her. She takes some photos as I walk across the piste, trying to gauge the depth of the pink gravel. In some places my boot can be driving six inches into the stuff before the hard surface is reached. It’s a glutinous mess of large chip granite mixed with thin slimy mud, a kind of pink porridge.
We set off, sliding and weaving as the gravel continues to deepen, the rain gets even heavier and the wind shrieks harder, it’s as if the gods don’t want us to leave the Labrador. But at the bottom of my GPS screen, the coast comes into view and the line of the tarmac road appears. After 750 miles of off-road riding, the end is finally in sight. But we still need to clear a passage through the pink porridge. Our going is slow, ever mindful of the terrible wind conditions the gusts sometimes picking the front wheel from one rut and forcing it into another, the rear wheel struggling to gain traction in the thick mess of mud and stones. But the tarmac road creeps ever nearer to our position point on the GPS – three miles to go.
We power up a steep rise and semi slide around a sharp corner. Ahead we see Nigel, stood by his parked bike just over the crest of the hill. He’s totally drenched and as we reach him I can see a look of shock on his face. He mouths the dread words.
“There’s been a crash.” …
I write from Blanc Sablon, a small coastal town by the ferry port which should have taken us to Newfoundland yesterday. A deep Atlantic depression turned into a storm which has delayed ferries and swamped the southern Labrador area with torrential rains accompanied by high winds. We are now just waiting, hoping that the weather won’t compromise the final stages of our itinerary.
I last wrote to you from Forestville in Quebec. The group was full of anticipation of starting the ground breaking ride along the Trans Labrador Highway; Route 500/510, the TLH as it’s known in these parts.
Our first day to Labrador City, meant high mileage and an early start. Thick fog presented us with an inauspicious start, promptly followed by my headlamp bulb blowing. There’s been many times on our Africa journeys when I’ve been glad of Touratech’s support and again this was one of them, the Touratech spot lights coming into service to replace my now defunct headlamp.
We headed up the tarmac road to Manic 5. The last of a series of dams and power stations that are fed from the vast Manicouagan reservoir, which itself was created by the world’s fifth largest meteorite strike. At Manic 5, breakfast awaited – as did the piste. As we rode by the base of the reservoir, tarmac abruptly gave way to packed mud, and we bade farewell to reliable tarmac roads for the next few days.
The piste started well and with good weather replacing the fog, the packed smooth mud allowed for excellent riding at normal road speeds. It would have been a different matter had it been wet, but for our team this was a good start to our off road adventure.
The TLH has been developed over many years and is constantly in a state of construction and repair. No two sections are the same, with different roads authorities and contractors responsible for the numerous sections that we would ride. But this is an important road, linking Quebec to its iron ore mining operations at Fermont and linking the major towns in the Labrador itself. So far two sections have been completed, with the final stage; Goose Bay to Cartwright Junction under construction. Our hope was that the third stage, if not finished, would be OK to ride with care, making us the first motorcyclists to ride the full TLH.
At Gangon, we encountered a long stretch of badly maintained tarmac. Gangon is a ghost town, with side roads leading to nothing, with the odd building foundations and bits of dug up pipework indicating that this was once an active area. There were no clues to indicate what used to go on there.
The tar ended again at Fire Lake, another ghost town; as did the good weather; a huge rain storm rushing across the sky towards us, a mad scramble to don waterproofs not quite quick enough to avoid the first thick drops of rain.
The piste changed to become a series of switch backs, which wound its way backwards and forwards across the railway that carries Ion Ore out of Fermont. This was an exciting ride through patches of gravel and mud, each mile adding a new challenge that was enormous fun to ride, despite the wet conditions.
Fermont is a company town based around an vast open iron ore mining complex. Massive industrial scale mining takes place as a large mountain is literally being eaten away, processed and dumped in a slag heap that stretches for miles. The rivers run red with ore stain and other toxins, an environmental eye sore.
We rode across the border and into The Labrador, back into English speaking territory and our night stop at Labrador City. It had been a successful day and we had arrived ahead of schedule to enjoy the dubious pleasures of a town that 50 years ago didn’t exist and today exudes an air of bleak utilitarian misery, where the focus is entirely on work and the next escape from the ‘bush’
The next morning was a bit of landmark for me, as Barbara and I left town ahead of the group. I wanted to find the place where the Labrador Railway crossed the main road. As a teenager, I was inspired by the book ‘The Land God Gave To Cain’ by Hammond Innes, a story of intrigue and murder set in the Labrador. Innes differed from many pulp fiction writers in that he extensive researched the locations for his books and he wrote a separate account of his time with the rail laying crews as they pushed ‘head of steel’ further into the virgin wilderness that was the Labrador of the 1950s. The goal was to complete a rail link to iron ore deposits at Burn Creek in the far north, with the ongoing aim to lay as much rail as possible before the ‘big freeze’ of late autumn stopped operations for the year. Innes’ tale is an impressive stuff of pioneering hardship in little known lands. It’s little wonder that the 16th century French explorer Jacques Cartier described the Labrador as ‘the land God gave to Cain’.
The piste varied enormously that day, with the route allowing excellent riding, with the occasional stretch of deep gravel to trap the unwary. The route wound its way through impressive hilly country of jackpine, lakes and rivers. The Labrador is an area of incredible natural beauty, but at the same time seems to exude an air of brooding menace. An area of remote and challenging riding that opens up vistas of breathtaking country, but at the same time can turn on the unwary with ferocious savagery as the weather changes.
We reached Churchill Falls, another company town, which serves the huge underground hydro electric plant that takes its power from the vast Smallwood Reservoir. Electricity from here feeds much of lower Canada and New York State.
Our pre journey research into the Labrador had turned up all manner of horror stories about riding the piste. Many tales of adversity and woe emerge from motorcyclists who have ridden the route. But until this point, our experience did not match what we had read. Perhaps we were just lucky; the weather was holding and the riding in the main excellent. Not easy, too much in the way of gravel for that, but a very fulfilling off road ride. But that evening we met Hector and his wife Joanne. Hector was hauling a pick up truck back to his home in Goose Bay, with a much larger pick up. In the back of this was a smashed and broken R1200GS.
“Guy from California” said Hector. “Bust himself up a treat and I bought the wreck from the insurance company. The guy’s OK though, broke his leg, but has bought another bike.” It was a salutary reminder of our remote location and the fact that the Piste may not always be as easy as we had already encountered.
The following day we had a further reminder. Miles of fresh deep gravel and badly graded roads meant slow going for our GS. Laden with luggage and two up, it was not the ideal configuration for this kind of loose dirt, so much of the ride was spent going far more steadily than is enjoyable, none of us too keen on adding our bike to Hector’s collection.
The difference when riding two up as opposed to solo riding on dirt roads is extraordinary. Later that day, Barbara had a chance to ride solo on Ann’s bike, which liberated us both and gave us the chance to blast down the piste at high speed, scattering the gravel and enjoying the freedom as the GS danced over the stones and packed mud.
Our group spread out along the piste that day, Nigel thoroughly enjoying his fast solo ride, Barbara and myself following on our GS at a less extravagant speed, enjoying dramatic scenes of deep valleys, rivers and forests. Alex and Ann several miles further back, having started much later that morning.
Goose Bay was founded around the huge RAF base that was built just prior to the Second World War. Today it’s the largest town in the region and is twinned with Happy Valley, a residential district a few miles from the airfield.
When we checked into the imaginatively named ‘Hotel North’, we were told of a motorcycle crash that had occurred on the piste that day, a solo rider now in hospital in ‘The Goose’ as the locals call the town. Another reminder of the latent menace that his hidden on the TLH, ready to catch out the unwary. We were to hear about a further bike crash before we left Goose Bay. Although our ride had been good, we were now realising that the TLH is not for complete novices and that enjoyment of the route needs to be tempered with concentration and in some places caution.
The air base at Goose used to be a large military operation and although the RAF/RCAF have largely finished operations there, there is still an air force presence, which shares the facilities with a smart modern civilian airport. We saw the occasional military plane fly in and out. A Luftwaffe Hercules flew in closely shadowed by an RAF aircraft. We met the German crew later that day, a cheery bunch who told us that they had made an emergency landing at Goose due to a fire and hydraulics failure. As we were hearing about their alarming final moments in the air another Hercules roared close overhead towards the runway, with its port inner engine shut down and the port outer streaming a thick trail of smoke. Another day at ‘The Goose’.
That afternoon, we finally got to see a bear. We were beginning to think that we would never see one of the beasts, having crossed most of Canada without a single sighting. But Nigel was assured by a local that the local rubbish tip was the place to go, so off we went to spend an hour among the refuse before finally being rewarded by the sight of a large Black Bear which slowly mooched over the site at a safe distance from us fortunately.
We left Goose Bay by ferry. To our disappointment the TLH ‘Phase Three’ is not yet finished, with some forest clearing to be done and rivers to be bridged before the long awaited highway is opened next spring. We will be back!
Our ferry took us to Cartwright, where we set off for the final stage of our off road ride, 220 miles of tough, but fairly fast going piste of varying quality and condition.
Ann crashed within three miles of the tarmaced highway. Conditions that afternoon had become truly atrocious. None of us could remember riding in anything that came near to the maelstrom of wind and driving rain that we encountered. The same storm is currently keeping us stuck on the wrong side of the Labrador Straits. This coupled with the glutinous pink porridge of oozing mud and deep, large chip, gravel created a dangerous situation for any off road rider.
We had all been impressed with Ann’s riding and ability to stay with the group when the piste was very loose or rutted and she is currently very disappointed to have not made that final few miles after the hundreds of successful miles already ridden. She broke two small bones in her ankle and is now having this fixed up in Newfoundland. Alex is with her.
So we are now back to our original group of three and waiting for the ferry. Will it go today? Who knows. But we are all looking forward to our ride across Newfoundland and our Trans Canada destination – St John’s.
Behind us lies the mighty Trans Labrador Highway. Aptly described on one web page as ‘not for wimps’, it is certainly a challenging ride, but also one of the most enjoyable and unique experiences any motorcyclist can have – as long as the rider is respectful of this uniquely stunning part of the world and the sudden surprises that it can throw at the unwary.
Craig Carey-Clinch
Blanc Sablon, The Labrador Straits.
