MT

It's not a very long book, so I'm guessing you'll be through with it before you finish your morning coffee.  I'm so sad you're suffering in that terrible Florida winter cold.  I'm afraid I've just subjected my wife to the same, putting her on a plane an hour ago destined for Ft. Lauderdale & a cruise to the Grand Caymans... where she will, no doubt, suffer further.

As for us up here in MN, we're having a heat wave.  It almost got up to the freezing mark last night.  They tell me it's back into the freezer, though, later today.

River trips are a different animal from the lake-oriented adventures we mostly read accounts about here on QJ.  I was probably better suited for whitewater challenges in my youth... when I was notorious for placing bets on my ability to stand on my head in the canoe while shooting Class 1-2 rapids.  Ah, the joy of my idiot years!  Where did those days go?!

David Curran stayed fairly conservative with the Class 3 & above whitewater that he did encounter on his Athabasca adventure.  When in true wilderness, that is of course the wisest course of action.  

I've been up in that Stony Rapids area before and it is about as remote as it gets.  I'd love to get up there again but would likely want to cruise some of the lakes around & above Selwyn Lake in the NW Territories.  I stayed at the famous fishing lodge on that lake a few years ago & used motorized craft & First Nation guides to get about.  My favorite memory from that trip was watching 2 sprayskirted canoes appear out of a post-thunderstorm mist on the north end of the lake one afternoon.  I found myself wishing I was noodling around that scrub pine coastline & camping with them versus buzzing around on a motorboat and dining on fine cuisine at a 5 star fishing lodge.  That land at the very north end of the Canadian boreal forest can be brutal but it sure is beautiful during those very few months when it is not covered in snow.

The fishing is pretty darned special, too!

Jimbo   8-)