07 Jul

Posted at 16:08h in Blogs Only
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5:30 AM and I'm outside in my long johns trying to calm a wildly flapping tarp. The rain and wind has been hitting hard all night and tore our dinner tarp free from its pegs. A few minutes later and the tarp is stuffed into the tent, where I climb back into my sleeping bag, a little wet and I still very groggy. By the time we get back up for real, the wind is still howling but the rain has at least stopped. I load up my painting gear, and we quite literally head for the hills. As we...

06 Jul

Posted at 16:04h in Blogs Only
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Kicked off today shooting a time-lapse of our camp tear down and then paddling off onto the river. The filming is going well. The biggest challenge being the very limited amount of sun we"™ve been getting to charge our gear with the solar panels. Paddling weather is good today. Just some rain followed by dead calm waters for a stretch. It's so peaceful floating down this wild river when the wind dies down like that. An ice rock bluff on the left side of the river is accompanied by peregrine falcons, their cries pierce through the landscape of this corner...

05 Jul

Posted at 20:34h in Blogs Only
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On the water by 1pm today. For a paddling "schedule", that seems like a really late start, but up here it feels pretty normal. The last two nights give us really late light and it was an attractive time to be creative. So we are shifting our schedules to suit the environment. The winds die down a little after a few hours and we check the GPS for our speed. The flow combined with our paddling has us hitting almost 9 kms an hour. We decide to take advantage of our good fortune and keep at it. This is where...

04 Jul

Posted at 20:31h in Blogs Only
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Today we have the privilege to do what few will ever get to do, dip our paddles into the Thomsen river and canoe its Arctic waters. It's considered to be the most northernly canoeable river on the continent, and other than the 6 parks staff we met, we will be the only visitors to Aulavik this year to ply its waters and take in the views that surround it. Knowing this adds to the purpose of my being here, and I feel the need even more to share this experience with others who will never see it for themselves. We...

03 Jul

Posted at 19:58h in Blogs Only
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This is the big day. Today we board a twin otter and fly into the Arctic wilderness of Aulavik National Park. Seems pretty straightforward, but in the north you have to be ready for anything. Case in point, there was another group here just before us trying the same thing. Unfortunately for them, bad weather kept them grounded for over a week before they had to call their entire trip off. You just never know. After months of planning with clear skies, we pack our gear - including 2 canoes nested together in the plane - and we taxi down the...