I take my hat off to anyone braving the elements & the bugs above the 60th parallel! 

I was surprised to see 3 canoes of canoe-campers "passing through" (toward Hudson's Bay, I suppose) last week while I was up on Selwyn Lake.  A fairly intense thunderstorm flashed up on us quickly shortly after we saw them.  While our native guide was able to whisk us away in our Lund using our Honda 4 stroke 40, those paddlers had to deal with big lake wind & the hail & the waves on the spot.  I can tell you that the shoreline wouldn't offer much protection, either.  Those trees weren't very thick & couldn't have been much higher than 10 feet tall, on average (if that).  Also, protected bays were often few & far between.  My assessment: the elements are "in your face" at all times.  You need to take extraordinary care.  That's probably especially so for these Arctic river paddlers!  Anytime we got NEAR a river the bugs went WACKO!!

While staying at the Lodge (the only habitable place on that immense lake), I picked up a book about such canoeing.  It's entitled "Cold Summer Wind II" by Clayton Klein.  It's a follow-up book to - you guessed it - "Cold Summer Wind I".  So far it's a good read.  Despite the in-your-face elements, such tripping kind of caught my fancy... enough to "read" about it, anyway.  I might even consider taking a whack at it, if only I could figure a way to do it.  Logistics, money, & time requirement considerations are quite considerable, I'm sure.

There IS a stark & different kind of beauty about the landscape up there.  However, I don't see myself converting from being a Quetico paddler to an Arctic paddler anytime soon.

Thanks for sharing the link!

Jimbo   8)

They made it!  They arrived on the shores of the Artic Ocean, in Tukatoyaktuk, on August 21.  The web site will be updated as time permits.

I guess it's not for everybody, but I enjoyed it. Going again next year.

Coppermine next year.

Baillie/Back in '08. The trip report is in here a few pages down now. Lot of before trip posts, but the report is a few pages in too.

Jackfish wrote on Jan 24^th, 2009 at 5:39pm:



what does this mean?

thebutcher