Most people discover waterfalls by following road signs and tourist maps. Not Adam Shoalts, a modern-day wilderness explorer with an Indiana Jones hat and a matching curiosity that last August took him on a solo expedition into some never-travelled waters near James Bay.It was cold and rainy and Shoalts was shivering in his canoe as he paddled downstream on the Again River, a waterway snaking along the Ontario-Quebec border. 

The river appears on topographical maps made from aerial photographs from the 1950s. Look closely at these maps, and, every now and then, there are minute hash marks that break the river line. These indicate some sort of whitewater, picked up on the aerial photographs.Shoalts, a 27-year-old McMaster University PhD student who calls St. Catharines, Ont., home, was about to make a discovery the hard way. 

After a week of "nightmarish portages through impenetrable forest and black fly infested swamp, I thought that I'd finally reached the easy part of the expedition, and that heading down this river that no one had ever paddled before, there was nothing I couldn't handle," Shoalts says in an interview in his dining room, where the table is covered with the old maps.He recalls he was also on that damp day last August, quite soaking wet and impatient. And he tells a good story. 

"So, the river is picking up, it's getting a bit deeper, the rapids are getting a bit bigger. It's getting a little wider. Next thing I know, I can hear this ominous roar down river, a big roar, the roar of water that puts the fear in your heart."And I thought, 'Wow, this is a big rapid.' A few seconds later, I'm like, 'Where is the river?'"It took me a moment to digest that fact that I'd discovered a waterfall, which I was really excited about. That's a good discovery, a waterfall! But then, I'm like, 'Oh my goodness, I think I'm going to get swept over it.' " 

The current was too strong to back paddle. The riverbanks were near-vertical granite and slippery from the rain. Not much to hang on to. The canoe, laden with gear and food, approached the drop straight on.At the last moment, a current popped the canoe sideways. Shoalts tumbled out the side and took a six-metre plunge. 

"I hit the water at the bottom and I got sucked down, right underneath, which was pretty shocking. I remember distinctly thinking in my mind, 'I survived the plunge, great.' And then thinking, 'Why haven't I come back up to the surface?' "Eventually, he did, and "breathed in a life-giving gulp of air and I can see out the corner of my left eye, my canoe was off to the side in an eddy, upside down, just bobbing there. I could see that the hull of the canoe was crushed in." 

Since he was able to recall this tale from the safety of his home recently, you will know that he survived and should know that he was able to recover most of his gear and food, repair his canoe with duct tape "there was a bit of a 'Red Green' moment" and complete his route. 

If all has gone well since that interview, by Sunday Shoalts will be somewhere in the middle of a swamp, dragging his canoe toward the headwaters of the Again River again. He has set off to retrace his route and this time properly photograph and document the waterfall and six others he discovered (in a much safer manner) down stream. 

The 400-kilometre solo slog, which involves the navigation of five rivers, dozens of portages and a potentially harrowing 55-kilometre open water paddle on James Bay, is sponsored by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, which aims to teach Canadians and others around the world more about Canada. 

In addition to his studies and travels, Shoalts writes and gives public talks about his adventures.Shoalts recently learned Quebec government geologists headed into the lower parts of the Again River in the early 1960s and came across one lower waterfall. But, to his knowledge, he is the only person to travel the entire length of the Again River and discover the other waterfalls, including the one highest up the river, which he plummeted from. 

Where Shoalts will be at any given moment won't be entirely known for much of the three weeks he expects it to take him to reach the finishing point of Moosonee. He intends to check in, whenever convenient, via a satellite phone. When possible, updates will appear on his website.As news of this trip made it beyond the local paper to the likes of The Guardian and the BBC, here's the question he gets a lot: Why bother? 

Shoalts has always been one for the outdoors. As a student, he worked for Ontario's Ministry of Natural Resources and made his first serious expedition at the age of 18, on the Otoskwin River, with a friend.What's the difference between Marble tiles and Porcelain Tiles?Shoalts, lately, travels alone not by choice.It just sort of happened after one of his other past expedition partners up and quit in the middle of a 2011 trip and vowed never to go into the wild again. It left him alone and he was determined to complete the journey, which was also sponsored by the geographical society. 

The trip was to a different area of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, during which Shoalts explored a nameless river he has since submitted to the Ontario Geographic Names Board to be called Little Owl River, "because an owl flew over head one day.""The cool thing about this area is, you see a few big rivers, but the reality is that there's probably over 10,000 waterways in this area alone," says Shoalts. 

"There's so many rivers. We don't know as much about the world as we think we do. I could spend my whole life doing just this one little area and it's still like a little drop in the bucket."Which is his plan.You will never need to change the bulbs and your granitetrade will last for years and years. Although he's explored tributaries of the Amazon River, his focus is firmly in Canada, the Hudson Bay area, in particular.Shoalts draws inspiration from early European and aboriginal explorers. His area of academic expertise is in the history of early explorer interactions with Aboriginal Peoples. It nicely sews up his interests in anthropology, geography and archeology. 

The walls of his home are covered with old exploration maps. A set in the dining room begins with the routes of Samuel de Champlain, and progresses chronologically with other big-name explorers. Most of them stuck to the major rivers, which served as transportation and trade routes.Gives a basic overview of Stone carving tools and demonstrates their use.Where Shoalts goes, by comparison, is decidedly less accessible and far more work to get to. And then there are the bugs. 

"My favourite fact is that the Hudson Bay Lowlands has the highest concentration of bloodsucking insects in the entire world," says Shoalts. "When you see it from the air, it's more water than land. It's just endless ponds and lakes, and each one of them makes for wonderful mosquito and black fly breeding ground."Shoalts has had many travel partners, all of whom are people he grew up with and knows well. You have to get along to be able to spend that much time together, in trying conditions. There are no portage trails, aside from the ones Shoalts himself cuts. There are no majestic mountains to glare at. Often, the canoe must be dragged through water. 

After 11 days of dragging the canoe up a river in the 2011 trip, his partner, battling hypothermia, called it quits and flew out by float plane. Shoalts finished the trip on his own and learned that he could go it alone."I never wanted to do a solo expedition. If you slip and hit your head on a rock, you're incapacitated. That's pretty much the end. I didn't want to do it but I found myself in a situation where I had no choice. It went well. I succeeded." 

"I need someone who's 110 per cent committed and it doesn't matter how bad it gets out there, their morale will stay high. I have to be focused on my work. I can't be focused on playing psychologist, trying to keep the other person motivated each day."I don't intend to continue with solo expeditions. Everything is twice as difficult because you're doing it all alone. I remember after last year when I got swept over the waterfall, I said to myself never again. But here we are 12 months later, and I'm about to embark on one."

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