A detailed video trip report documenting our journey down the fabled South Nahanni River in 2022:
Tag: canoe
TRIP REPORT: BEAVER RIVER – KIMBERLEY TO CLARKSBURG
The route cuts north in the Beaver Valley, through the Niagara Escarpment en route to the southern edge of Georgian Bay. The upper portion of the route, from Kimberley to Heathcote, is known for its easy, scenic paddling through flooded silver maple forest and farmland, while the bottom portion, from Heathcote to Clarksburg (and beyond to Thornbury), is characterized by thrilling rapids, especially early in the season.
TRIP REPORT: NAHANNI NATIONAL PARK RESERVE – VIRGINIA FALLS TO NAHANNI BUTTE
Few wilderness canoe destinations, the world over, have been documented and celebrated to the extent of the fabled South Nahanni River in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The river valley and its surrounding wildlands – the rugged Mackenzie Mountains – are famous for their immense natural beauty. This is a land of towering 3,000 foot canyons; cathedrals of limestone, castles of sandstone; of Virginia Falls – one of the largest waterfalls in the world; a land of spectacular karst terrain, cave systems, hot springs and gemstone lakes; northern lights, wild rapids, roaming grizzly bears and wood bison. This is a place with a river that flows through a greater diversity of landforms than virtually anywhere else on the planet.
TRIP REPORT: WABAKIMI PROVINCIAL PARK – ALLANWATER – WHITEWATER – CARIBOU
Grey vapours loomed above us as we stood on the edge of Mattice Lake in Armstrong, Ontario. The cool, early morning air held a faint scent of smoke; a manifestation of record-breaking wildfires raging just to our west that would claim some 800,000 hectares of boreal forest by the end of summer, 2021. Under the hazy, overcast sky, a slight breeze tickled the surface of the lake. The water was cold and dark and the forest was dark too. The scene held a magnetic gloominess that stoked my sense of anticipation. We were about to begin an adventure through the heart of Wabakimi Provincial Park – a land of some 10,000 lakes and 2,000 kilometres of canoe routes…
TRIP REPORT: HALIBURTON HIGHLANDS – HERB AND GUN LAKES
I have always loved paddling the Haliburton Highlands Water Trails (HHWT). Here, outside the town of Dorset, on the southwest edge of Algonquin park, lies a diverse, interconnected web of canoe routes over a swath of 28,000 hectares of beautiful wilderness. The mixed forests and exposed Precambrian rock that characterize the area are typical of the southern Shield and support rich habitats for an assortment of wildlife…
TRIP REPORT: MUSKOKA RIVER (SOUTH BRANCH)
Beyond Thompson’s Folly we found ourselves paddling through picturesque Crown forests, with gently sloping, tree studded hills running up from the rocky shoreline on either side of us. By this time of the season, the splendour of the colourful fall foliage had long passed and in its place were barren deciduous trees, beige leaf litter on the forest floor, coating the hills, and long, dry, sun-bleached grasses along the riverside. We were now approaching Cook’s Falls, a scenic, gurgling CII rapids that lay in the shadow of a towering granite cliff – this would be our campsite for the night…
TRIP REPORT: MISSISSAGI RIVER PROVINCIAL PARK
In the summer of 1912, Tom Thomson – one of our country’s most beloved artists – ran the Mississagi from Biscotasing or “Bisco” to Lake Huron over two months. In a subsequent letter to a friend, Thomson remarked that the Mississagi was “the finest canoe trip in the world.” While we can only guess what precisely caused Thomson to write those words, it is clear that the Mississagi still undoubtedly retains the magic that he must have felt as he sat on its rocky shores and sketched the wild panoramas that surrounded him that summer.
As you embark, perhaps, on your own journey down the Mississagi, please remember that in exploring these immense and formidable landscapes, we not only draw ourselves closer to the earth, our home, but we also rekindle the glory of our country’s formative years when the land was younger, before the ceaseless march of the modern world. When we carve through the emerald cathedrals of the Mississagi, we reawaken the ghosts of a still wild kingdom, so that they may sing and chant and paddle once more.
TRIP REPORT: CHAPLEAU CROWN GAME PRESERVE – MISSINAIBI HEADWATERS
In the boreal highlands northeast of Superior, on the edge of Algoma, is a land of rugged adventure and romance. This country, where it has been spared from steel, is a lush, wilderness paradise that affords the type of quintessential setting that would be nostalgic and familiar to any Canadian: the hill-studded silhouette of the forested horizon, aglow in pink and gold with the last moments of the burning mid-summer sun; the air, sweet, with the fragrance of pine, and silent beyond the quiet murmur of a distant waterfall; two lonely canoes beached upside-down on the sandy shore, their slick hulls casting a reflection off the sky; three small tents nestled in the forest over a floor of pine needles, in their natural place amongst the spiring conifers; the ghostly smoke of a campfire hanging low and curling over the still air of the glassy lake; a dream-like world, which has no earthen match in tranquility or peace.
TRIP REPORT: WABAKIMI PROVINCIAL PARK – KOPKA RIVER
The magnificent, primeval ridges and valleys of Wabakimi were carved and scoured in the twilight of the last ice age, some 12,000 years ago. Black spruce, tamarack and jack pine, thin and stunted from long, harsh northern winters, cling to the shallow veneer of soil that scantly coats this portion of the Shield country. This harsh world still wholly belongs to the woodland caribou, the grey wolf and the bald eagle.
Signs of humanity are sparse; few tread here. But if you endeavour to pass through this land, look carefully under the shadowy canopies of those weathered and stunted tamaracks; under the beard lichen and Labrador tea; amongst the sphagnum moss, wood ferns and wild blueberries bushes; you will find trails of another time. Gaze over the placid waters, down the tumbling rivers, across the serpentine lakes, and envision the water trails of yesteryear. These canoe routes were established over centuries by the North of Superior Ojibwe – ancestors of the Whitesand, Mishkeegogamang, Saugeen, and Eabametoong First Nations. Today those canoe paths remain.
WHERE THE RIVERS RUN WILD: A JOURNEY DOWN THE LOWER MISSINAIBI AND MOOSE RIVER
The cold subarctic gales, driving rains, unrelenting headwinds, the ruggedness of the lands, the turbulence of the waters – the Missinaibi and Moose Rivers in northern Ontario may well put you on a threshing floor and strip you down to your rawest emotions. Isolation, desolation, fear, and at times, utter despondency; nature here is unforgiving, uncompromising, and is capable of testing the upper limits of your endurance and fortitude. You may question why you do it.
But it is here that you will find colours you have never seen and Gods that you never knew existed. Swallows will flicker as they feed in the dimming dusk, the Aurora Borealis will dance through the northern sky as it has for aeons and you will edge closer to answering the great questions.
THE TERRA INCOGNITA 