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Tales from the Torngats
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The Memorial Plaque
It is July of 2005, less than one year after the search expedition. George Luste, an avid Canoer and member of the online ottertooth.com backcountry canoeing website, climbed to the 'upper football field' and installed a memorial plaque from Dan and Sue's parents. Here on this page I've posted a couple of photos and a short bit of a writeup from George.
George Writes:

"When we arrived there [at the 'upper football field' - jal], the original rock cairn from 2004 was somewhat reduced from the photo John Howie sent me. But it was the same cairn - in the location on the upper football field where Susan was found lower down on the cliff face. The upper two layers of rock from the 2004 cairn had fallen over. We used the same cairn but rebuilt it a bit, adding more rocks and placing heavier rocks in inukshuk fashion on top so they would not blow over so easily again. For the bronze plaque I built up three horizontal layers of flat rock slabs, weighing between 30 and 60 lbs each (I'm guessing) in front of the new inukshuk cairn (see group photo). I picked the one with the smoothest surface and no visible cracks for the top stone (freezing water in any cracks would speed up more cracking).
courtesy AWilliams
 Memorial Plaque
We scraped and cleaned the rock surface (in preparation for attaching the plaque) with white gas and heated the surface a bit by burning some gas on it (to help the adhesive set). In sealing the plaque to the rock we used three tubes of the special RTV silicon and made sure there was no opening that would allow water to seep in between the rock and the plaque (freezing water would undo the attachment otherwise).

I left a spare tube of my RTV silicone adhesive (plus your large tube) there (out of sight in the rocks) with a note should it be necessary to do repairs in the future. I hope that our efforts are not undone by the first few cycles of freezing and thawing. Time will tell.
courtesy AWilliams
 Memorial Plaque Crew
There was another roundish rock cairn about 30 feet to the north of this cairn. There was no note inside. I don't know who built it, when or why. We ignored it. As our group photo indicates it was an unseasonably cold July day up on top. The three in the photo are myself, Bill Pollock and Eric Leroux (both from Ste Agath in Quebec). Andy Williams (from Vermont) took the photo. They all were willing and helpful in making this climb safe in less than ideal weather conditions. On our first effort (three days earlier), when we turned back at the "middle football field" (between the "upper" and the "lower") in cold blizzard-like weather, we encountered a lone caribou wandering around at the 4,500 ft elevation level. This surprised me. It looked like a ghostly apparition in the white snowy weather and mist."


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