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Remy Quinter and crew first to navigate world’s fifth longest river What: The Yenisey River Expedition Where: Howe Sound Inn, Squamish When: 8:30 p.m.

Remy Quinter and crew first to navigate world’s fifth longest river

What: The Yenisey River Expedition

Where: Howe Sound Inn, Squamish

When: 8:30 p.m., Friday, May 31

Why write fiction?

Just travel by dory and raft down the fifth-longest river in the world, and you’ve got one heckuva tale to tell.

Show, and tell, actually, in The Yenisey River Expedition, a documentary filmed in 2001 about the first team to complete the 5,500 km river journey through Mongolia and Siberia on their own power.

The crew of four adventurers – writer Remy Quinter, Ben Kozel, Colin Angus and Tim Cope – were up for a challenge.

Quinter certainly had his chance, travelling not only by kayak, but in a dory, a traditional Russian sailing vessel, from the Hungayn Mountains of Mongolia north into the Kara Sea of Siberia.

"The dory is a very dry, old raft that takes away that ‘invincible’ feeling you might get from kayak," says Quinter, currently training for his third Test of Metal event "just because I like the pain!"

When an original member of the expedition dropped out, Quinter jumped on board. A series of anecdotes about his adventures appeared in the Vancouver Sun , made possible through communication from his journey via Iridium satellite phones.

The trip, which took place from April to September, 2001, ran just two weeks longer than planned.

Previously work with the travel show Sail TV, with Squamish Kayaks, and editing an Amazon documentary served as warm-up to the trip.

"We used different techniques, sometimes shooting from land or attaching a camera to our helmets (while in the kayaks)," he says.

Stories from an earlier motorcycle trip through Copper Canyon, Mexico, might have had been good, but when you’re traversing flood waters in a 2 km wide river flow, the stories go truly Indiana Jones.

"At one point I ended up swimming after our dry bags (100 litre bags used to hold gear and supplies) during a river flood, alongside carcasses floating by. When a bag with all my previous footage (went drifting), Colin Angus, a crewmember, jumped in a kayak and left to go find it," he laughs.

Angus travelled 500 km in his kayak ending up in the town of Suh Batur.

"We ended up catching up to him two weeks later. Some local Mongolian fisherman had found it four days later down the river, waving him in to come pick it up."

But they just let him go?

"People who are attracted to this kind of trip are independent, so you know each other. They’ll go (and you) let them go, while trying to take care of yourself," he adds.

"Yenisey is a popular destination, but no one had ever been from source to sea. It was always a previous challenge because of the Iron Curtain, and Mongolia being relatively distinct from Russia."

Mongolia was taken over by China in the late 1800s, then went through a period of independence before joining forces with Communism during the 1920s. Mongolia is independent again today.

The expedition route followed the river flows straight into the heart of Siberia, which empties several hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle into the Kara Sea.

Temperatures ranged from -15 degrees at the start to +35 degrees at some points along the way, the "equivalent of the Prince George highway zone in summer."

As travellers always do, the crew met people along the way.

A female Russian psychologist joined the trip for two weeks, while a member of the Russian Mafia, known as Vladimir, sprung up like a character right out of a novel.

Vladimir had met crew member Tim Cope on Cope’s bike journey across Siberia the year before, and went right up and re-introduced himself.

"The mafia there are different then here," says Quinter. "If you want to engage in commerce you have to join the team. He took us in as personal guests and showed us the city of Bratsk, and as we were finishing dinner on his friend’s yacht, he even ordered in ice cream for dessert from a friend via his cell phone!"

Quinter, who took non-fiction studies at UVIC, says "…there’s no more fascinating world than the real world, when people are engaging themselves in activity."

Improvising amid mother nature was a key to the expedition.

"Being able to think outside the box and dealing with the task at hand are all part of it. I had to rebuild the propulsion system in the raft at one point," Quinter recounts gleefully.

"Lots of the locals predicted the boat would sink, but it didn’t."

Upon his return, Quinter produced the 70-minute documentary, which aired on Nov. 6 at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver.

A Shipton-Tilman grant from the Gore-Tex company, which supports people in self-propelled adventures that are not inherently competitive, contributed to trip financing and the Web display at www.raftyenisey.com.

Riot Kayaks of Montreal and Arie Rafts also contributed gear.

Tickets for the screening are $8 in advance, $10 at the door. Tickets are available in advance from the Squamish Kayak Centre at 604-898-5498.