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A Year in the Wild: Expeditions From the Sub Arctic to the Grand Canyon (Full Documentary)

Join Jim Baird on 13 wild adventures across North America's remote wilderness, from the Grand Canyon to the Yukon, fishing, rafting, and exploring untamed nature.

Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.

Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.

Key Takeaways

  • Wilderness adventures require extensive preparation, resilience, and a deep passion for nature.
  • Fishing in remote northern lakes offers unique challenges and rewards, including catching native and hybrid trout species.
  • Time spent in wild places fosters connection, fulfillment, and personal transformation despite physical hardships.
  • Family and friendship enhance the experience and provide support during demanding expeditions.
  • Respect for nature and understanding of wildlife behavior are essential for successful outdoor adventures.

What the video covers

  • Jim Baird embarks on 13 expeditions over 12 months, exploring remote rivers, mountains, and wilderness areas in North America.
  • Highlights include rafting the Grand Canyon, solo river trips in the Northwest Territories and Yukon, and a 700 km snowmobile journey across Labrador.
  • The documentary captures the challenges and rewards of wilderness adventures, including extreme weather, fishing, hunting, and off-grid family time.
  • Jim and his brother Ted share a passion for spring trout fishing, exploring remote backcountry lakes and catching native brook trout, splake, and lake trout.
  • The film showcases detailed fishing techniques, such as trolling with spoons and jigging, and explains fish species identification.
  • The narrative emphasizes the deep connection and fulfillment found in wild places despite physical hardships and fears.
  • The video includes moments of wildlife encounters, survival skills, and reflections on the logistics and preparation required for such trips.
  • The camaraderie and shared experiences with family and friends are central themes throughout the adventures.
  • The documentary highlights the beauty and solitude of northern wilderness areas and the personal growth that comes from immersion in nature.
  • The video ends with anticipation for future adventures and a strong message about living life fully through meaningful outdoor experiences.

Chapters

  1. 00:00Introduction and Year Overview
  2. 13:17Spring Trout Fishing with Ted
  3. 26:42Backcountry Lake Fishing and Portaging
  4. 42:18Lake Trout Fishing in Windy Conditions
  5. 71:18Reflections on Wilderness and Connection
  6. 83:00Preparation and Challenges of Expeditions
  7. 100:12Family Time and Off-Grid Living
  8. 120:00Final Snowmobile Expedition and Closing Thoughts

Answers

Questions about this video

What types of adventures does Jim Baird undertake in this documentary?

Jim Baird undertakes 13 different adventures over 12 months, including rafting the Grand Canyon, solo river trips in northern Canada, hunting, fishing, and a long snowmobile expedition.

What fishing techniques are highlighted in the video?

The video showcases trolling with small spoons, jigging, and fly fishing, focusing on catching native brook trout, splake, and lake trout in remote northern lakes.

How does Jim describe the personal impact of these wilderness trips?

Jim describes the trips as challenging but deeply fulfilling, providing connection, personal growth, and a sense of meaning that can't be found elsewhere, despite physical hardships and fears.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:01
Speaker A
Early spring to late winter, 12 months, 13 adventures. I rafted the Grand Canyon, soloed remote rivers in the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, hunted in the Newfoundland Mountains, spent 5 weeks off-grid with my family at a remote cabin, slept out in 40 below,
00:23
Speaker A
and to finish off the year, I did a 700 km snowmobile expedition across the Labrador Wilderness. I've been doing trips like this for over 20 years. This past year might be the most action-packed one yet. It's a lot of
00:40
Speaker A
work putting these trips together. The prep, the logistics, the time away from home. From the outside, it can look like a lot to take on. And a lot of people ask why. There's a pull I've never been able to shake. A downright
00:57
Speaker A
addiction to the north, to wild country, to whatever it is that happens to you when you get deep into it. It's not always fun in the way most people use the word. Some days grind you down.
01:10
Speaker A
You're cold, exhausted, even scared. But those days are the ones that change you. What you get back from these trips, you can't get anywhere else. Connection, fulfillment, time that actually means something.
01:26
Speaker A
Life is short. You've got one shot to spend it on what matters most to you. For me, it's this. Big trips, wild country, the people I love. That's where I'm built to be.
01:47
Speaker A
It was a late ice out and my brother Ted and I were itching to get into new water. Spring trout fishing has become an addiction for us. There's nothing like chasing brookies into their remote haunts and ending the day with a fish
02:01
Speaker A
fry over the fire. We crossed a big lake, portaged into the backcountry, and landed our first fish.
02:16
Speaker A
Well, Ted has hooked into the first fish. How does it feel? Yeah, a brook trout. A native brook trout.
02:30
Speaker A
That's awesome. Yeah. Let me get a look at this thing. Let's have a look at her.
02:42
Speaker A
Yeah. You're a nice fish, Ted. That's a beauty. We got a fish like a gunshot.
03:16
Speaker A
We cooked it up over the fire that night with some juicy steaks and times were good.
03:25
Speaker A
Yeah. In the boat. Go on. Go on. Good boy. An abrupt entry.
04:09
Speaker A
Well, Ted and I don't have terribly far to make it today. So we stayed up late last night and had an epic meal and
04:24
Speaker A
we're hoping to complete probably a pretty challenging portage and get into where the fishing will be good. But first we got to paddle down this lake and not much wind, not many clouds.
04:36
Speaker A
So beautiful, beautiful day. You never know at this time of year sometimes you can just really get hammered with nasty weather. So we're lucking out.
04:45
Speaker A
Well, Ted's hooked into another one. Yeah. Now I'm starting to feel like I should have one, though.
04:58
Speaker A
Caught a nice splake just cruising around that point. Shallow water. Oh, yeah. The splake are a hybrid that are planted. They're stocked by the Ministry. But they're a hybrid between a speckled trout and a
05:10
Speaker A
lake trout. And that one looked like a perfect combination between the two. The way you can tell is by the tail. The lake trout have a deeply forked tail and the brook
05:28
Speaker A
trout or speckled trout have a square tail and the splake are somewhere in between. We are now two lakes into the backcountry and quite a bit of portaging to boot. And
05:50
Speaker A
this is a true wild trout lake. So I'm thinking my luck's going to change and Ted won't outfish me. Got a fish on here, baby. Just trolling using my little William spoon. Oh, it's a good size. Oh my god, dude. It's a huge brook trout.
06:02
Speaker A
Yeah. Woo! Hell yeah. Let's get a look at this guy here. Are we keeping this one?
06:09
Speaker A
I don't know. It's a lake trout. Oh, it's a lake trout. Yeah, it just has really brook trouty looking colors.
06:47
Speaker A
Oh, okay. Look at that. That is a nice speckled trout right there.
07:03
Speaker A
There you go.
07:33
Speaker A
Speckle speckled lake. Splake. Speckle lake. Man. Yeah, that splake is good, dude.
07:45
Speaker A
Yeah, that is good. After some traveling the next day, the wind really built. Well, I made it across the bay. Wind's making things challenging, but I'm just paddling past a stretch of crushed rock here.
07:59
Speaker A
And that rock continues into the lake. So, this is in the fall. This would probably be a place where lake trout would spawn.
08:32
Speaker A
And you can see the crushed rock all in here. With most of the windswept lake relatively unnavigable by canoe, we were lucky enough to find a honey hole tucked out of the wind in a protected bay
08:38
Speaker A
where the lake trout were keen to bite.
08:50
Speaker A
Well, we just gave up on that creek and came back out here. And Ted's going to blow halfway across the lake by the time he lands it. But he immediately
09:02
Speaker A
hooked into what seems like a nice fish. It was worth a shot going up there.
09:14
Speaker A
Oh, just got bites, Ted. There it is. Got one. Yep. Yes. Action Jackson, baby.
09:30
Speaker A
Oh, the Lakers were deeper down than I thought. We trolled right back over where I saw them. Sure enough, managed to hook into one.
09:45
Speaker A
Oh, nice keeper size lake trout tent. Woo. Oh, look. It was barely hooked. There. This isn't one of the big ones I saw.
10:05
Speaker A
Okay. Well, there we go. That will be a welcome little addition to the lunch menu. I would just drift past them in the wind while jigging and would smash one every time with a small Williams W20 spoon. Yeah, I'm using this
10:10
Speaker A
small Williams spoon here again. Got one. All right. Got another one on here, baby. Doesn't feel particularly big.
10:25
Speaker A
See what it is. Another lake. Another laker. Bigger. Oh yeah. Woo. Good size this one.
10:41
Speaker A
All right, baby. And there were some big ones down there that I could see, but they wouldn't take the bait.
10:55
Speaker A
Where are the big ones? The big ones I saw are deeper, eh? Yeah, that's okay. We don't need any big ones. They're nice to catch, but if you're trying to fish for food, these ones are the nice ones. Well, our
11:11
Speaker A
plan is working. Ted, take a closer look at this guy here. Nothing huge, but that'll do. Look at the golden colors on this one. Eh, I don't think I've ever caught a trout that's this golden color before. Ted's
11:28
Speaker A
just hooked into what looks like a nice one. What is it? Nice. Ted's hooked into another lake. I'm going to paddle over. Have a look at Ted's fish.
12:09
Speaker A
Oh yeah. Over our delicious shore lunch, the conversation drifted to what was coming next, the Grand Canyon.
12:29
Speaker A
Neither of us had ever rafted before, and we were feeling a little nervous. The fishing had been slower than we'd hoped, but that was about to change.
12:39
Speaker A
The next day, we tracked up river, hauled over a beaver dam, and dropped into a deep pool where creek poured in.
12:44
Speaker A
Ted struck first a tank. Well, things were going a little slow today and we waited up this creek and I just had a good feeling about the spot.
12:53
Speaker A
Ted got there first and on about the second cast, boom, he hammers a beautiful speck. Oh my god, it's huge, dude.
13:05
Speaker A
Dude, that's like a solid 3 lb. No. Oh yeah. How'd you catch that, bud?
13:17
Speaker A
Black Fury Maps orange spots with a little worm. Got into a nice one here.
13:24
Speaker A
Oh, it's fighting good. Woo! That is one hell of a brook trout there, baby.
13:59
Speaker A
Yeah. Woo! Holy crap. Look at that. That is a brook trout right there.
14:11
Speaker A
Well, times have changed for old Jim and Ted. Then we both kept landing them.
14:20
Speaker A
Yeah, baby. Oh my god. Oh my god, dude. Oh, now it's freaking out 'cause it saw the net.
14:26
Speaker A
Yeah. Woo! Oh my gosh. Holy. Gigantic, dude. What is this thing? It's a lake trout.
14:37
Speaker A
It's a lake. It's a lake trout. Is it? Yeah. Oh my god. Oh, North. Oh, North gave up.
14:54
Speaker A
All right, let's get my hands wet. We're going to release this one. Yeah, it's a lake trout, dude.
15:17
Speaker A
Lake. Yeah. Unfortunately, it's not a speck. There we go. Look at that. Beauty, dude.
15:27
Speaker A
Nice fish. Okay, I'm going to release it. Crazy colors, right? Yeah. Yeah, dude. That's like, dude, look at the size of this brook trout.
15:52
Speaker A
Oh my god. Yours is bigger. You think mine's bigger? Two very interesting variations, dude. It's a brook trout.
16:10
Speaker A
Yeah. Oh my god. It's like 5 lb. Yeah. Woo! Dude. That is like a... Oh,
16:22
Speaker A
Well, we're just taking a couple breaks here along this last portage because it's so cool. There's a rushing creek here with a big flat slanted rock on one side. Looks like it even be like a natural waterfall. And the port to trail
16:37
Speaker A
just goes right along the creek here. This is just so cool. Well, this is home for the night.
16:57
Speaker A
Unbelievable. That's like the one of the most enjoyable portages ever. Got a fire pit here. Ready?
17:04
Speaker A
Beautiful view of the lake. Go get it. Go get it, Earth. Go get it. What more do you need?
17:25
Speaker A
If you want to, I can put the tent up if you want to get the fire going. Eh, That night, after a fish feast, we heard what sounded like a lynx yowling just behind camp.
18:10
Speaker A
So, uh, we're just around the fire after dinner and we just heard a like a cat meowing. Maybe it's a lynx or something.
18:25
Speaker A
You don't think it's a cougar, do you? Like a giant tom cougar. North. Leave it.
18:33
Speaker A
North. Leave it. Good boy. There's a wild cat in the bush over here of some sort, [sighs] but you know, wild cat attacks are rare, so we're not too concerned.
18:53
Speaker A
Yep, another one. The following days, we explored sandstone caves, checked out a big waterfall, and cross [music] another big lake to camp.
19:06
Speaker A
My dog North was along the whole way and he [music] was having a blast and naturally it was great to be out there with my brother. [music] Here we go, baby. One last for all [music] in the forest boreal.
19:27
Speaker A
On the final day, I pulled in a dandy lake trout pretty close to the takeout.
19:32
Speaker A
Here we go, baby. Yep. One lacer. Running out my drag. It's a walleye, I think.
19:49
Speaker A
No, it's a lake trout. It's a nice lake trout. Fighting like crazy, eh? Yeah.
20:06
Speaker A
Woo. So, the question is, keep or let go? I mean, that's up to you if you want to come in.
20:14
Speaker A
Not bad, Ted. Look. There we go. Nice slop. Woo. Take a closer look at this guy here.
20:27
Speaker A
It's a good one, man. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. That's what my gym. [music] [music] After the trip, Ted came to see my new cabin for [music] the first time.
20:59
Speaker A
Bonfire, grilled fish, a couple cold beers. There's nothing like spring [music] trout fishing. As would be the norm for this year, I didn't have a ton of time to transition between my spring trout fishing trip and an intense whitewater trip down the
21:27
Speaker A
Grand Canyon. But before we ever saw the Grand Canyon, we were able to cram in a practice trip on the Ottawa River and essentially frantically trying to learn how to raft.
21:40
Speaker A
[cheering] Then in June, we pushed off into the Arizona heat and began floating the Colorado River into the Grand Canyon. We headed to the puddin at Le Ferry. There we began assembling our outfit, inflating the rafts, putting on the
22:01
Speaker A
frame, and doing the dozens of other small tasks necessary for a successful trip. A follower of ours, Brandon, had drawn the permit after applying for 20 years and invited Ted and me along. A private trip down the Grand Canyon is
22:17
Speaker A
one of the hardest permits in rafting to pull, so we jumped at it. We are just passing Navajo Bridge and we're just looking at these amazing condors here. I've never seen a condor in my life before. They're a very rare
22:34
Speaker A
bird. California condors, desert big horn, rainbow trout. After seeing the condors, saw two big horn sheep, and they'd be desert big horn and it was actually a female and a very, very small baby. So, pretty lazy start to the trip, but now
22:54
Speaker A
things are amping up because we have the first serious rapid. This is a great vantage point because you can't see it from the river, right? Yeah. This is We're not going to be able to see this from the river at
23:10
Speaker A
all. Here we go, baby. First major run of the Grand Canyon. Feeling a little nervo. Some nerves.
23:25
Speaker A
All right, Ted's going. like he nailed it. Woo! [music] First rapid Badger we handled cleanly.
24:09
Speaker A
Well, we did it. That was super fun. Yes, Ted. Yes. Yes. But we pushed too far the first day and the light faded as we found [music] ourselves staring down house rock.
24:26
Speaker A
We are approaching House Rock Rapids now. It's a beautiful evening. Probably later than we want to be paddling to be honest with you. Not a fun time to flip.
24:39
Speaker A
No other parties on the river to really help us either. So, those are kind of the dangers, but it will also be great to get this rapid behind us and uh hopefully find good camping at its base or down river a little bit. But, uh this
24:56
Speaker A
one's more intense than anything we've done today by a good little chunk and requires an advanced level move that I've never even done before.
25:08
Speaker A
This is going to be the biggest test so far. There's a decent chance we flip.
25:12
Speaker A
[music] Fingers crossed we don't. I'm pretty nervous because there's a lot of power going there and it's going to smash you into that wall on the left and then that huge irregular curling wave hole thing would be a
25:28
Speaker A
potential flipper if you bombed into that sideways. Holy cow. Are you scared? It's going to slam you guys for sure.
25:36
Speaker A
You think so? For sure. For sure. one of the toughest rapids on the river.
25:42
Speaker A
It demanded a downstream ferry, which meant rowing backwards against massive waves that would have pinned us right into the canyon wall where the rapid takes a sharp turn.
26:14
Speaker A
Brandon was sure we'd flip, but we didn't. All those years reading water from a canoe were paying off.
26:25
Speaker A
Yeah. I didn't really have the angle right and I ended up barely missing those big holes. I just hit them far enough to their right that they didn't tip me. But fortunately, I was able to hold on to my ore with these
26:42
Speaker A
pin and clip ores and stay in the boat. So, not exactly what I had planned, but close enough, baby.
27:00
Speaker A
Well, we bailed on our plans. We brought a little firebox. We're going to cook steaks.
27:06
Speaker A
And so late it just started hammering rain. So we decided to eat sandwiches. There we go.
27:39
Speaker A
Okay, well, we are on the water. The thing is, today's [music] going to be a more challenging day to make time because we have a ton of crazy rapids just stacked one after the other.
27:57
Speaker A
[music] Heat. Heat. Woo! Yeah! Woo! Okay. Well, again, this one doesn't look crazy from up river, but there's a big drop. So, I think this is going to be another wild ride. Short one, but challenging. Our map shows this is a
29:06
Speaker A
class six. Woo! Yeah! [screaming] The boys made it down. Woo! [music] Yeah. Well, that was terrifying, but we nailed it. I spun around in the eddy right behind the first hole, and that spun me.
30:18
Speaker A
And then I had a pretty good ride. I got a little more sideways than I would have liked to have, but no issues.
30:24
Speaker A
We're going to camp. And look at this view. With big rafts, we could carry everything. a firebox, a charcoal grill, and a huge cooler stuffed with blocks of ice. We were eating like kings out there.
30:46
Speaker A
This is just paradise right here. Yeah. Perfect temperature. Yeah. Perfectly. Zero bugs. No bug.
30:55
Speaker A
Jim and I are used to getting hammered by bugs. Zero bugs. It took me about 24 hours to get used to just not bugs coming at me.
31:10
Speaker A
We stopped using the tent after night one and just slept on our rafts or on sandbars and used a damp bed sheet over us to beat the night heat.
31:24
Speaker A
Back on the river and uh just basically trying to find some shade. This is much more seasonal. The sun is baking down on us right now. It's a dry heat. It's not like the humidity I'm used to at home,
31:36
Speaker A
but I mean, this is the desert. Um, it's over, you know, 100° Fahrenheit. Uh, and it's there's going to be hotter days than this, too. It can be 180 down here in the canyon. One thing I did at the
31:48
Speaker A
lunch break was I soaked my shirt in the river. It was shockingly cold when I put it on, but I feel so much cooler now.
32:03
Speaker A
We're just uh leaving the little Colorado River. Uh and if there's anything cool about it not being the beautiful blue color and it being completely silt laden and brown, it's that the two waters of the main Colorado and the little Colorado mixing are kind
32:22
Speaker A
of cool. You see this like brown pushing up against this emerald green color and it's kind of interesting. I'm going to paddle right through it.
32:30
Speaker A
But the trip wasn't just about white water. The side hikes were incredible. The human history. Indigenous people have lived in the canyon for thousands of years. And we walked through old pueblo villages where pottery fragments a thousand years old still littered the
32:46
Speaker A
ground. That is wild. Yeah. Just looking at these old uh pieces of pottery that are a thousand years old. Um I guess stuff just lasts a long time in the desert.
32:57
Speaker A
And these are just pieces of pottery that people have picked up and put there, but look, they're all over the place.
33:02
Speaker A
Then came Hance, another technical downstream ferry was needed. We scouted from a high trail above and went for it.
33:11
Speaker A
Okay, on the trek here to scout the notorious H rapid uh class 8 super technical maneuver that I've been trying to pull off on some easier rapids and keep blowing. So, the stakes are pretty high here. Really good
33:28
Speaker A
scouting trail tells me a lot of people get out and scout this one. Even the guides who, you know, do it multiple times a year. So, that tells me we're in for something pretty serious.
33:41
Speaker A
If by any reason where the river is pushing us, if we end up through here, we're going to flip. This is called the land of the giants, and they're just massive waves.
34:11
Speaker A
Yeah, baby. Woo! We made the right move though and managed to slip past the massive standing waves on the right that can flip a raft.
34:35
Speaker A
Holy crap. That was insane. We nailed it. Yes, boys. Woo! That was insane. The side hikes were another world.
34:54
Speaker A
Narrow slot canyons carved by rushing creeks. Deer Creek was the [music] best of them. A tight slot pouring over a high waterfall down onto the river banks below.
35:11
Speaker A
[music] [music] This almost like this looks like something you would see out of a dinosaur movie or something like that.
35:30
Speaker A
Ted mentioned the land before time. But that day Ted almost went down. You want to pull over here?
35:45
Speaker A
Approaching a big rapid, his or broke. His pin that holds his ore in just fell out of theing boat. I'm going to try to throw this to Ted. I got to him just in time. And at the brink of the rapid, I
35:59
Speaker A
threw him a throw bag and I managed to haul him to shore before a huge rapid took him down.
36:04
Speaker A
I can't hold on to anything. Get it out of your boat. Get out of your boat.
36:16
Speaker A
Ted's pin, the thing that holds his whole ore in, fell out. So, he only had one ore at the top of a class 5 and he couldn't row to shore. See the ore tower here and the pin just fell out. Okay. So, what
36:35
Speaker A
happened is the black ball came off and this part and the and this part and the ball whipped in the water.
36:43
Speaker A
So, but if the black fell down inside, but if the black ball Oh, okay.
36:50
Speaker A
Did you think we were about to whip over? I thought he was going to go for sure.
36:55
Speaker A
Pretty close, wasn't it? Jump on his boat. Crazy. Not long after, he returned the favor when my raft got hung up on boulders on another challenging drop called bedrock.
37:08
Speaker A
Here we go. This is a weird one. Well, it's shallow here. [music] Just go down to there. [music] Well, [music] that was pretty interesting. Uh, I got hung up on the rocks on the gravel bar there and, uh,
38:03
Speaker A
Ted came over and I threw him the throw bag. I went to the back of the boat and we pulled. In the end, it actually worked out pretty good, but not what I had planned. You know, the water here is
38:14
Speaker A
so murky and silty. It's very hard to see underwater rocks. After that there were backto back epic rapids again.
38:35
Speaker A
Heat. [music] [music] [music] Heat. [music] Woo! Yeah! But then came what might be the mother of them all, Lava Falls. This is the fastest navigable water in the northern hemisphere, a 38 ft drop. It is day nine and uh 20 m down river from here is Lava
39:27
Speaker A
Falls, the notorious Lava Falls. That's the rapid that has dumped the most boats. It's the most challenging piece of water on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. And knock on wood, but people have drowned there. [music] Uh so we're all a little nervous. It's a
39:42
Speaker A
class 10 on the Grand Canyon scale. [music] And uh the biggest we've run is a class 8. So if you can imagine something like significantly more intense than anything we've done up to this point. Uh so [music] there's a
39:54
Speaker A
decent chance one of us flips. So, okay [music] here we go. We're pulling up to Lava Falls, the most notorious rapid in the Grand Canyon.
40:27
Speaker A
A well-worn scouting trail on this one tells me that it's pretty serious. Well, there it is, folks. Lava Falls. It is. Uh, of course, it never looks as big from up here, and it still looks big.
40:45
Speaker A
We scouted, took a breath, and went for it. [music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] Yeah.
41:31
Speaker A
Intense, but not as bad as we built it up to be. Woo! We came, we saw, we conquered.
41:48
Speaker A
Woo! Funnily enough, what was bad came right after that. Baking hot, I jumped into the river to cool off, misjudged the depth, and buckled my knee on the bottom. Well, I didn't film it, but I kind of buckled my knees. I went to jump
42:05
Speaker A
in the water thinking that the water was hopefully six feet deep, but I was careful. I'm like, "Okay, you know, if it's three, two, three feet deep, I should be okay." And just the bank looked like it was very deep there, but
42:18
Speaker A
the water's so silty that I jumped in. It was only like 6 in deep. And so all my weight came down on my knees with when they weren't flexed at all. I only jumped from this high and just went like
42:30
Speaker A
and just buckled my knees. And they're really sore. I'm just going to ice them up here. By evening, I could barely walk and I was extra concerned because I had a major solo whitewater expedition in the Northwest Territories just 9 days
42:44
Speaker A
away. Well, my knees are pretty bad, so I'm going to be able to make it out of this trip. But like walking around and climbing in and out of the boat is like very very challenging for me right now.
43:07
Speaker A
10 days after this, I'm supposed to be doing another big trip up in the Northwest Territories. And um I don't know if I'm going to be able to do it now if these don't get better because I need to walk. I already have a sore
43:18
Speaker A
shoulder. It's been an awesome trip. It's been a crazy trip and an awesome trip. Everything from pouring rain and the clear water the first days to the California condors that we saw all the caves, the caverns, getting into the
43:33
Speaker A
intense rapids and pushing through the roaring 20s, the little side hikes, the beautiful waterfalls, the swimming pools, the tight canyons that provided some coolness and shade that were just so awesome to explore. to have a suit creek swimming in that what an absolute
43:52
Speaker A
otherworldly gem of a place and just the main stretch of the Colorado and the Grand Canyon itself is just something that's so so incredible and special. The towering cliffs on either side, the varying scenery that's incredible around every single corner. Not a stretch is
44:12
Speaker A
even remotely mundane at all. One of the really interesting things about this here is that um when Ted and I were on a loan and when we we were like suffering trying to win a loan so we would have
44:26
Speaker A
enough money to start our lives me I got married and started a family bought a house and um that's something I wanted a lot and when I was on a loan I'd look at a picture of Tori every night and she
44:39
Speaker A
would I think that she would say you can do it don't give up. We said when we win, we should do the Grand Canyon. We should do the Mountain River. And we did do the Mountain River, but this Grand Canyon dream, let's just
44:57
Speaker A
go paddle the Grand Canyon when we win this. And of course, that there's permits and waiting lists and that kind of dream got pushed to the wayside. And it's an amazing story how Brandon actually watched us on alone [music] and
45:10
Speaker A
that's how Brandon came to know us from a loan and he reached out to us. We were in contact with him and he said, "Hey, do you guys want to run the Grand Canyon?" And essentially Brandon watched us on a loan. We didn't mention we were
45:25
Speaker A
going to run the Grand Canyon on the show, but somehow [music] from watching alone, it's come back full circle and here we are running the Grand Canyon to fulfill that dream we had. So, and to do it with my brother too is really
45:40
Speaker A
special. Only about a week after returning home from the Grand Canyon, I found myself on a float plane out of Norman Wells, deep into the McKenzie Mountains of the Northwest Territories.
45:58
Speaker A
The pilot dropped me on the headarters of the Nata River. Well, there we go. My float plane just took off and left me completely all alone on this beach deep in the McKenzie Mountain Wilderness. And uh it's kind of a an interesting feeling
46:15
Speaker A
being left all alone in the wilderness by a flow plane. When it takes off, it's just you and I have 575 km to travel in front of me. I was completely on my own.
46:29
Speaker A
575 km down three rivers to get back to the same town. The Natla, the Keel, and a long stretch of the massive windswept [music] McKenzie.
46:43
Speaker A
the Northwest Territories. [music] One of the beautiful things here is we have pretty much 24 hours of daylight.
46:56
Speaker A
The sun does dip below the horizon for a bit, but it never really gets dark. Um, so that's kind of something I have going for me.
47:07
Speaker A
Late June, snow still on the mountains, water high, and my knee still wasn't right. I couldn't kneel. So, I had to run white water from one knee, a less stable position. But cancelling the trip wasn't going to happen.
47:26
Speaker A
There we go. No problem there. Just ran her nice and slow. The moment the river pulled me into the outflow, the adrenaline kicked in.
47:40
Speaker A
Boulders coming at me left and right. The Natlas squeezed into a tight canyon and dropped me through a string of rapids before letting me pull back into an edi.
47:59
Speaker A
All right, look at Eddie. Wow, a little gravel bar. actually take a momentary break here.
48:15
Speaker A
I made a [music] cast for gring and pulled in a massive bull trout instead after quite the battle.
48:21
Speaker A
Hey, nice. That's a a Dolly Varden, baby. Awesome. At the time, I thought it was a Dolly Varden as I didn't even know bull trout lived in this river.
48:47
Speaker A
I think this is going to be home for the night. Oh, awesome spot. The next day, the river got serious.
49:18
Speaker A
Bigger volume, bigger boulders. We are jumping into some fun stuff right off the hop today. I ran a canyon with three drops that I couldn't even scout from shore.
49:35
Speaker A
The Natla is a pushy river. The current always has somewhere it wants to take you and you've got no time to argue.
50:04
Speaker A
Then I made a mistake. I came around a blind corner without scouting and was surprised by a massive class 3 wave train.
50:13
Speaker A
Whoa. Action Jackson, baby. There's a rocket. After the waves, I'd taken in a lot of water and looking down river, I saw another big water rapid coming right at me with nowhere to get to shore.
50:30
Speaker A
Some holes to avoid in there. Yeah. Awesome. That's That's a mark. Well, I got a lot of water in here now.
50:47
Speaker A
Right at that moment, I hit a barely submerged rock sideways, which tipped me to the right and sloshed all the water in my boat to the same side.
50:58
Speaker A
I was able to catch myself with a low brace, barely riding myself before I paddled all out and managed to skirt the rapid, sliding over rocks on the edge to a safe eddie.
51:09
Speaker A
Yeah, that was awesome. It was a close call. If I dumped, that canoe would have been gone. Out here alone with a bad knee. That's a trip ending in a way you don't want it to.
51:32
Speaker A
That night, I cooked up some pizzadas under a tarp as the rain fell. [music] Oh yeah.
52:03
Speaker A
[music] All right. Day three, baby, on the water. What does this day have in store?
52:17
Speaker A
The next day calmed down whitewater wise. Jaw-dropping mountain scenery. Cold mountain runoff streams clean enough to drink from. Gring on almost every cast in places.
52:34
Speaker A
Oh yeah. Yeah baby. Woo. Got one. Barely hooked. Small one, but it's a fish. I think I'm going to go fill up my water bottle in this clear mountain snow runoff creek.
53:08
Speaker A
Tastes almost distilled. [music] Using my Cold Steel [music] commercial series filt knife for this. Little slits in it like this.
53:56
Speaker A
This is my beer. It says Jim Bear Adventures Windbound Campfire Pzner. It's called Campfire Pzner because there are some slightly [music] smoked uh barley in there. So like the barley that it's made with is legitimately smoked.
54:14
Speaker A
Um it's a delicious crisp pillzner. [music] It's actually available at the LCBO stores in Ontario as part of Mscoa Breweries Survival Pack. It's a mixer pack with some other delicious brews.
54:29
Speaker A
Other than that, you have to go to Mscoa Brewery's Tap House in Bracebridge, Ontario to pick it up.
54:42
Speaker A
Oh, so good. catching your own fish, cooking it up over the fire while traveling through the wilderness. That just seems so pure to me. I heard a famous psychologist say that to study a human and modern day society is like studying a zebra in a
55:02
Speaker A
zoo. We really haven't been living in the modern world and cities with all this technology for very long.
55:14
Speaker A
I'm always amazed that when I go out here and do these things, I have these like heightened senses [music] and I can pick things up really quickly, like interesting things about nature and the concentric rings of nature, tracking,
55:31
Speaker A
just an awareness, a feeling, [music] an intuition. And it makes me wonder if I can just have what I consider would be a strong intuition when I'm out here, a strong understanding and connection to the land. Makes me wonder how crazy deep
55:50
Speaker A
it is for some people, especially our ancestors, indigenous people that um lived out here, survived out here since they were babies.
56:06
Speaker A
to have a drink to that. Cheers. [music] My favorite campsite on the river had grizzly tracks crossing right through it.
56:30
Speaker A
Notice this here. Looks like a bear cub print there. Cuz you see the toes end [music] here, but the the claw ends here. It dragged the claw a little bit.
56:42
Speaker A
Just cruising right, you know, right around my tent where my tent was right there. When you live out here, you know, you live with the animals.
56:53
Speaker A
This is their domain. I uh didn't take my food barrel walking away from camp last night. I probably would have if I'd seen those tracks when I got here, though. Another site where I found some signs of humans turned out to be an
57:10
Speaker A
old mountain deni [music] sheep corral. A reminder that I was far from the first to travel these waters. Looks like there was like once a little structure here, like a cabin type thing. I'm going to put my tent right in the middle of it.
57:40
Speaker A
Happy place. Here we go. That campsite was very beautiful to me. I think it was the most meaningful. I look back at it and I swear that I could almost feel the presence of uh people from days gone by.
58:03
Speaker A
My final stand on the Natla was a class 4 rapid that probably should have been a portage.
58:08
Speaker A
I think this is the big rapid of the Natla here. I'm not nervous at all alone out here bombing this stuff. Why should I be with my knee the way it was? Portaging wasn't really an option.
58:24
Speaker A
I'm on a portage trail here. The mountain deni were the original ones to wear this trail around here. Definitely evidence of their old camp where I camped last night. Proves that uh they would have had to get by this rapid
58:40
Speaker A
whether going up or down river or both. when you're traveling this river, you're doing the same thing as these people in a lot of ways. And it's a lot easier to figure that kind of stuff out where if
58:52
Speaker A
you're, you know, an anthropologist or historian and you uh you're doing a lot of book research, it would take you a lot longer to figure that out. That's why I love the saying by J.R. about Tolki and that uh the
59:10
Speaker A
world is not in your books and maps. It's out there. Well, if you dump here, you just have this little space to get out. Otherwise, you're swept way down to the next rapid there.
59:26
Speaker A
I scouted from the canyon wall, picked my line, and went for it. It's a tricky lineup, and there's some tough water above the hard part, too.
60:06
Speaker A
At one My canoe was completely underwater. Woo! Yeah, baby. Woo! Yeah! I'm bombing a white water canyon in the Northwest Territory.
60:22
Speaker A
Woo! But I managed to push through, pull over, and bail my canoe. After a wild ride, I came out of it okay.
60:38
Speaker A
Woo! After that, I was faced with a lot of rapids, but nothing else felt too hard in comparison.
61:04
Speaker A
Oh, look at that. That is so cool. I finished the Natla that evening and made camp not far down from where it joined the keel.
61:49
Speaker A
After navigating the raging white water of the Natlo River, I find myself on the Keel, a wild and untamed river of the McKenzie Mountain Wilderness. This is the heart of my 575 km long solo adventure. It's where the
62:04
Speaker A
mountains stand tall and the river twists through ancient landscapes. [music] Out here, every bend reveals something new. Remnants of old indigenous den [music] campsites. Silent witness to stories long past. I pause, explore, and imagine the lives once lived on these
62:21
Speaker A
shores. The land itself is alive, and I explore a recent landslide reshaping the terrain. A reminder of nature's relentless power. I follow the river through narrow braided channels where currents pull tight and waterfalls pour off riverside cliffs. Wildlife is
62:38
Speaker A
abundant. Moose quietly waving along the banks. Curious caribou gaze far off in the distance and wolf prints scatter the gravel bars. Out here you quickly become aware of how small and fragile you are in this vast wilderness. And in the
62:53
Speaker A
quiet moments I find simple treasures, wild strawberries, sweet and fleeting. A taste of the wild land. Waterfalls cascade into the river. Their roar echoing through the mountains. The scenery is breathtaking. Rugged cliffs, [music] northern boreal forests, a wilderness untouched by time. Navigating
63:13
Speaker A
these braided channels demands focus and patience. A dance with [music] the river's unpredictable power. Solo paddling isn't just about miles. It's about [music] immersing yourself in the land that pushes your skills and your spirit. Ahead lies the mighty McKenzie
63:28
Speaker A
[music] River, the great artery of this land. I've come this far, exploring a world of ancient stories and wild beauty. A land that's alive and waiting for discovery.
63:38
Speaker A
Out here, it's just me in the wilderness. A journey of solitude, discovery, and respect for the land's enduring power. That's what adventure is. Stepping into the unknown, where every moment writes a chapter in the story of the wild.
64:10
Speaker A
Oh, looks like I'm going into it. Woo! Well, it appears the keel is proving to be more spirited than anticipated.
64:30
Speaker A
Oh, a bear. Hopefully I don't dump here and wash up right in front of it for dinner. Oh, there's a ledge. Oh yeah. You see that's what I just avoided there.
64:49
Speaker A
Almost bombed over a ledge while I was trying to film a bear. Well, it is about 7 in the morning. Bit of a slower start this morning because it was hammering rain and just blasting heavy winds. Seems to have died off a
65:15
Speaker A
bit, but like this whole part of the tent was compressing [music] like this into [snorts] here. Uh, it started probably around 4 in the morning and I [music] just like lay there awake hoping the tent wasn't going to break. It was
65:30
Speaker A
pretty intense. [music] The keel was tamer. 40 km days under big mountain [music] skies. The wind pinned me down before I reached the McKenzie.
65:55
Speaker A
And I was worried that was a sign of what was coming. So I passed kilometer 200.
66:04
Speaker A
That puts me 25k from the McKenzie River. Look at this big 90° bend in the river here. The wind's coming this way. So, as soon as I rounded around here and hit that wind, it just blew me. And I'm
66:23
Speaker A
tucked into the back of this island [music] right here trying to find shelter. And I can't continue down river until this wind breaks. Well, after climbing out of the boat and checking it out a bit, uh the wind here is just
66:35
Speaker A
crazy. Like, I don't even know if I can set up the tent here. But I see a spot just like 50 m down that way where there's a bunch of big trees that are kind of blocking it. So, I think I'm
66:47
Speaker A
going to just track the boat over there and try to set [music] up behind those trees and it won't be like just in the brunt of the wind here.
67:23
Speaker A
Well, here comes the rain. The McKenzie hit me with cold rain and hard wind.
67:39
Speaker A
Driftwood thick on the water. I battled it for hours [music] camping on an island as the weather cleared that night.
67:59
Speaker A
[music] The next day it was a struggle to reach Toledita, a small community on the McKenzie River. About 10 more K to Toleda.
68:15
Speaker A
And I've paddled about 15 today. Still a long way to go to hit my 50k today, though.
68:26
Speaker A
[music] Well, there are the old Hudson Bay Company buildings. And there is the Northern. There it is.
68:42
Speaker A
Just grab a thing of water. Oh, maybe not. See the clear water of the Great Bear River pouring into the McKenzie right there. I crossed the mouth of the Bear River there and made camp at the base of massive bear rock. Well, here it
69:00
Speaker A
is, the Great Bear River. Absolutely gorgeous, crystal clear blue water going up this river to Great Bear Lake and then crossing it and portaging into the barren lands. That'll have to be a trip for another time. Maybe when uh my son's
69:18
Speaker A
a little older. But pretty cool. Too bad I don't have any drone batteries left. Or else it would be cool to film the waters mixing.
69:35
Speaker A
That was a mission. Muskox and wolf prints were all over the beach. And I'm just looking at wolf prints all over. We got a bunch of wolf pup prints, even muskox prints, [music] some beaver prints, and bumblebees all
69:56
Speaker A
over the place just going after all the little flowers on the ground. And it got warm out cuz the sky cleared up and it was just absolutely gorgeous. I'm like, this is awesome. I thought I'd get up early and get a jump on the wind the
70:09
Speaker A
next morning, but as it turns out, the wind got a jump on me and it woke me up howling at 4:30 in the morning. Well, it looks like I'm going to have my work cut out for me today. Starting to think
70:24
Speaker A
maybe I should have just like taken a nap and gotten some clicks last night when the wind had totally died around like 9 9:30. The wind is like worse today for sure. [music] White caps were huge the whole way
70:46
Speaker A
across the river. I am for sure windbound here. So, I just definitely shouldn't be going anywhere right now.
70:56
Speaker A
Like, there's crazy big waves out there. I waited for 14 [music] hours and when it finally broke, I went. Well, good news. It is way better here. And looking way down there, it's not nearly as as bad as it was about an hour ago. So, I'm
71:21
Speaker A
not in a massive rush to get out of here. I'll probably be paddling till like 1:00 in the morning. It's about 6:45 and uh I'm going to pack up and head out. [music] Start giving her Holy crap. I'm on my last map. 31
71:43
Speaker A
[music] to 250, so it's still a ways to go. Wow. Bear Mountain is so cool.
71:57
Speaker A
[music] paddled until 1:30 in the morning under a sky that never fully went [music] dark and banged off 40 km in one stretch.
72:10
Speaker A
Such a dream to paddle on compared to my two other days paddling on the McKenzie like hammering rain and wind and then just blasting headwinds and waves. This is just like a whole other world.
72:34
Speaker A
Well, the sun is officially down. Just got quite a bit colder and it's pushing one. So, I think I'm going to call it.
72:55
Speaker A
[music] That's where I came from today. Well, it is [clears throat] the morning of day 14.
73:18
Speaker A
[clears throat] Slept like an absolute baby. And [sighs] I don't hear any wind. I don't know how many other places in the world there are where you could travel that far and not go under a bridge. I remember I wrote a
73:35
Speaker A
story on my uh uh East Natashan River trip for Canoe and Kayak, which is an American magazine. I wrote in it like, "We paddled under the bridge and we knew the trip was almost done." Well, there's one bridge that crosses that river right
73:49
Speaker A
at the end. And Canoe and Kayak edited it to say, "I passed the last bridge because there's no way they thought that this was the only bridge on this river and I was out there for 2 weeks." And I
74:02
Speaker A
just remember that got published and I was just like so triggered by it because like part of the thing is I want people to realize how truly remote these areas are and how special that is. Um you know
74:17
Speaker A
I live on a big patch of bush where where at my house um and you could rip across it in a snowmobile in 3 hours.
74:26
Speaker A
This [music] you could ride endlessly through the mountains and never see another soul. I mean, it's just enormous swaths of pure wilderness up here in northern Canada and Alaska. And [music] I think it's something really, really special. I think it belongs to us all,
74:43
Speaker A
to all people that love nature. But I think that [music] knowing that this is here as part of the Canadian identity, even if you never really visit it, which I suggest everybody that you should, [music] I think it's something that's incredibly
74:55
Speaker A
special that we should protect and that we should keep as wild as possible. and it gets chiseled away at every year.
75:02
Speaker A
It's easy to think, "Oh, what's one more road? What's [music] one more this? What's one more that?" But then 100 years go by and everything's completely different.
75:14
Speaker A
[music] Well, we are on the water for what may be the final day of an epic 575 kilometer long expedition down the Natla Keel and part of the McKenzie River.
75:41
Speaker A
The final day I pulled into Norman Wells just before the wind came back. Yeah, [screaming] I'm at the takeout.
75:55
Speaker A
I'd done it. By then I'd been gone a lot and I missed my family. I couldn't wait to get home because we were leaving for the cabin for 5 weeks straight.
76:07
Speaker A
exactly how to do. [music] It was a great feeling pulling up to the cabin. We hadn't all been together there in a long time. It was late July and the weather was hot.
76:20
Speaker A
[music] A lot of stuff to deal with. [music] Here's the wood I hauled out in the winter.
76:45
Speaker A
All right. [music] [music] I assembled my Swallfish inflatable [music] boat. Tori got her new standup paddle board out. Life was good.
77:21
Speaker A
Friends [snorts] and family rolled through. My cousin and [music] his wife came for a few days. We fished and explored a waterfall.
77:31
Speaker A
Tori and I tackled the substantial job of installing our new incinerating toilet. A very welcome addition to the camp. Well, getting a little bit later of a start than we wanted to today, but that is an old composting toilet that uh
77:49
Speaker A
we've never used. So, our Cinderella [music] incinerating toilet is going to go there. And this right now is a work room essentially. Um but eventually we're going to change this into a bathroom and um this all is going to go in a tool
78:08
Speaker A
shed. But uh right now it's basically going to be storage, a work room, and a toilet.
78:14
Speaker A
So multi-purpose room. Oh honey. This is our new toilet, honey. Pan poop. Oh yeah, bud. Look at that.
78:36
Speaker A
It's hammer time. We're just figuring out how the uh uh vent goes cuz you need a vent just to make sure it will get proper air flow.
78:54
Speaker A
Tori's [music] taking charge of this. Um, and I'm okay with that. 100 mm right there.
79:03
Speaker A
That's how wide is it? That is the top of the chimney. We also planned on building a large wall tent shelter. But before we dug into the bigger build, I took my son Hudson out onto a backcountry lake for a day.
79:32
Speaker A
Woohoo! Yes. Good dog. Good dog. Look at that old Oh, you did see that's a very old boat.
79:47
Speaker A
How do you notice this sunken boat here? No doubt quite an old relic. You can do it, but be a brave boy. Here, go ahead. Remember, being brave isn't about not being scared. It's about being scared and doing it anyway, right? Okay.
80:11
Speaker A
Go step to the bottom. A bad bump was on me and I can't Excellent.
80:32
Speaker A
This is fun. This is fun. You're doing so good today, bud. How do you make me so happy?
80:39
Speaker A
I'm so happy to have you. A thanks, buddy. I'm happy to have you, too.
80:45
Speaker A
I'm going to start taking some casts. Why? To catch to fish that. There's it. There it is. Got one first cast, buddy. Yeah, it's a good one. You want to reel it in?
80:56
Speaker A
No. It's a nice one. Keeper. Yeah. Look. First cast, bud. Nice. That's a keep.
81:12
Speaker A
You think so? Yeah. You want to keep it? Yeah. Okay. You think it's a little small, buddy?
81:19
Speaker A
Keep it. Keep it. Yeah. Looks a little small. Let's let it go. No. Are you sure?
81:24
Speaker A
No. Look, it's small. No. Keep. Okay. Uh-oh. Oh, lost it. There it is. It's a good size.
81:39
Speaker A
You should use the same rod as me. The same lure as me. How do you load? Oh, I lost it. Oh, next.
81:50
Speaker A
What? Got one. Yeah. Why don't you start using what I'm using bud? What? Why don't you start using what I'm using?
82:05
Speaker A
This is what's on your other rod. This worm. Like this. I want I want to keep that one.
82:13
Speaker A
This one's too small. I want to keep I know, but we're going to keep a bigger one.
82:19
Speaker A
I like your I like your style, though, bud. Got to catch a couple more cuz we're eating fish tonight, right?
82:26
Speaker A
There's one. There's one. Ah, small one again. Okay, Cass, here. Take your other line, honey. Please take your other lure. Just try one cast with your other rod. You're going to catch fish with it. I promise.
82:40
Speaker A
Okay, buddy. Do you want to catch fish? Yes or no? Okay. Okay. So, try another cast with I really like this one.
82:48
Speaker A
I know, but you don't have the right lure on there. Plus, you're tangled around the top. Pass it to me. I'm fixing it. You're tangled here. Pass it.
82:55
Speaker A
Okay. Come. You see this? This is a little tangle, Buster. Okay. I know you really like that one, but you're not catching anything on it. So, try this one here. Just try one cast with this. One cast. One cast. Here,
83:12
Speaker A
honey. Look here. One cast in close to shore. Come on, Angel. Let's see what you can do. Hold on. Hold on.
83:19
Speaker A
And I fixed this for you. It was tangled at the top. That's why it wasn't casting. So, you have both now. Now, you going to take a cast, bud?
83:27
Speaker A
I'm going to have to put this somewhere. Big one. Not a big one. No. Cast cast in closer to shore, buddy.
83:41
Speaker A
Closer to shore. Cast in closer to shore. Whatever you think I was cast I was.
83:49
Speaker A
Yeah, I was casting over that way. That's more like it. Got one. I got one. Look.
84:00
Speaker A
You got one. Reel it in. Oh, it got off it. Well, we are just catching fish after fish like this, but nothing of any size.
84:15
Speaker A
One decent one that we kept. Let's keep it in case we don't catch a tank.
84:30
Speaker A
Want to keep this little one? Yeah. So, just in case if we don't catch a tank.
84:36
Speaker A
Ow. Ow. What? I stabbed myself. It's too little. We can't keep this one. No. No. Let's keep it if in case if we don't catch a tank.
84:47
Speaker A
I know. But if we don't catch a tank, that this one's still too little. It's so tiny, you know.
84:54
Speaker A
I like it. Can I kiss him? Okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Well, we're catching a lot of fish, but we're not catching any big fish. But that's okay. We're just here to have fun and maybe keep a couple, you know,
85:09
Speaker A
smaller sized ones that that aren't too small to keep as eaters, so we have a little bit of uh food when we get home.
85:14
Speaker A
But we're going to try a bit longer, maybe go swimming. Um, but yeah, we're not going to give up on the fishing just yet.
85:24
Speaker A
There it is. There's a big one, honey. Yes, bud. Yeah, that's what we were after.
85:33
Speaker A
That's what we saw. That's a good keeper. Yep. Get away. It's not as huge, but it's a decent keeper.
85:40
Speaker A
That's the one I saw down there. You want to hold it up here? Hold it up for the GoPro. Yeah. Hold it sideways.
85:53
Speaker A
Yeah. That's what I'm talking about. We're eating tonight. Where's that big one that I saw in here?
86:03
Speaker A
How do you Where's that big one? That's the question. Maybe it moved down here. It's right there. Right there, buddy.
86:17
Speaker A
That one. Mhm. Yeah, it's a good size. Woo! Yes honey. Told you I'd be there.
86:28
Speaker A
That's what we're talking about right there. Yeah. [clears throat] Let's keep that one. Oh, you better believe it, my man.
86:39
Speaker A
That's a proper keeper right there. All right. Should we go now? No. I'm going to go to a swimming spot.
86:45
Speaker A
Swimming spot. Yeah. Okay. Swimming spot it is. We caught dinner. Mission accomplished. Huddy. I want to catch more fishies.
86:54
Speaker A
You want to take another cast before we go to the fishing spot? Yeah. Okay. Why don't you Can you catch another tank?
87:01
Speaker A
I think I could catch another tank. Yeah. Here, I think you could catch a tank.
87:07
Speaker A
Here, I'll give you my rod. Let's set the hook. Right now, set it. Yeah. Reel. Reel.
87:15
Speaker A
Reel. Reel. No, you got a reel, bud. That's it. That's it. There's a giant. There's a giant.
87:24
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah, honey. Yes. Good job, bud. What do you think about that? Good. Let's keep it.
87:36
Speaker A
Okay, let's keep it. How do you caught a keeper? Good job, Huddy. Oh my.
87:45
Speaker A
By yourself. Hey. Hey. Oh my. Oh, don't catch daddy. Well, that is about all she wrote. We ended up staying here pretty late. It's about 7. Uh Hudson and I were getting quite warm there at the last little spot where we're catching a lot
88:00
Speaker A
of fish. So, we took a nice little refreshing dip. And I'm just paddling this speed up old boat back to the portage trail for the short little carry uh back to our little inflatable boat there for RIP home. So, we'll clean up
88:16
Speaker A
the fish when we get back to camp and uh going to have a nice little fish fry tonight.
88:21
Speaker A
Well, it is 6:00 a.m. on the dot and uh I'm in the boat and I'm not going fishing. I am heading back to the boat launch, back into the tundra. I'm going to hook up the trailer. I'm going to
88:37
Speaker A
drive to Timber Mart in Thessalon. Bit of a drive, but here we are. Timber Mart. Hopefully my trailer holds everything and I don't have to get a delivery or make another trip.
88:52
Speaker A
What are we at now? All loaded up. Lot of lumber. I went out to Timber Mart and picked up all the materials. And the wall tent we [music] have is a 14x6 ft wall tent by Capital Canvas, which is a great
89:14
Speaker A
Canadian company out of BC. Anyways, we're going to get to work. We're super excited about this, but we have our work cut out for us. Um, so here we go. We're going to dive right into it.
89:29
Speaker A
After choosing the spot where we wanted [music] to put the structure, we cleared some trees and brush, made some final measurements, and then got to digging to create a level area.
89:44
Speaker A
Digging in the Canadian Shield isn't easy because it seems like there's more rocks than dirt, not to mention the neverending amounts of tree roots. After that, the first step of the build was creating a frame for the deck. We did
89:59
Speaker A
this by creating four rectangles 10x 8 ft each and then placing them all together.
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Speaker A
[music] [music] Under the corners and in the middle where the four different rectangles met, we placed large footings which we leveled out. Then we hammered the four pieces together.
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Speaker A
[music] Well, that commences the first stage of our build here. And so far so good. Uh we still got a lot of work to do on it.
90:48
Speaker A
Um, and uh, I'm looking forward to jumping in the lakes. Another beautiful day. Uh, we're going to get probably some chili going for dinner. Maybe do another boat cruise tonight, too. So, we'll see. But, uh, yeah, looking forward to, uh, getting cooled off in
91:03
Speaker A
the lake. It's a hot day. [music] [music] Yes. [music] After quite a bit of digging and picking, it was time to put in the footings.
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Speaker A
We tested [music] how flat the footings were by using a level before proceeding [music] to level it. We used some [music] slats under the middle footing and then used 4x4s along the front, lifting the structure up till it was level and then
92:19
Speaker A
securing the 4x4s to the frame using hammer, nail, and screws. [music] Well, using nails for the majority of this because that way we don't have to keep recharging our drill batteries. But also, come on, nails. That's that's kind
92:33
Speaker A
of old school. That's the original offgrid way. That's how my dad and my grandfather built our initial cottage or cabin. Why I got all into this. So, I'm not going to go away from what works.
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Speaker A
[music] [music] Overall, the structure was very strong, level and square. After all the deck frames were put together, leveled and squared off, Tori took on the tough task of nailing in all the floorboards.
93:20
Speaker A
Yes, first floorboard is on. [music] has already doubled up here. We're pretty happy with what we got done today. And [music] tomorrow we're going to finish putting all the floorboards in. So maybe we don't need Daddy burpee.
93:45
Speaker A
Uh Daddy doesn't want to do a burpee cuz his shoulder and knees are blowing up.
93:49
Speaker A
Well, I mean that's something, right? Still about 70 more floorboards [music] to go and it is super super solid. Um, yeah, not overbuilt and definitely not underbuilt and just perfect.
94:04
Speaker A
[music] Huddy's learning to swim his first time all by himself. Okay, ready? Go. No, don't touch bottom. Don't touch bottom.
94:20
Speaker A
Yeah, you're doing it. Faster kicking. Okay, good job, buddy. Yeah, good work. You're swimming. You're swimming.
94:40
Speaker A
All right, what do we got there, honey? Fish. [music] Well, we just spent a couple days having uh some friends up. They have three kids and the kids just played endlessly in the water here. Had a great time. Took
95:10
Speaker A
some time off of our building project, but we got to use our tent platform already. Tori [music] finished the decking before they got up here. We set up a tent on it because our cabin wasn't big enough to house everybody. So,
95:22
Speaker A
that's kind of cool. [music] Um, but now we're going to jump back into it. Um, I'm hoping to get the frame of the roof up today and hopefully a little more done before my parents [music] get here.
95:32
Speaker A
And yeah, my mom and dad are going to come out and check this place out. Um, be their first time here, which is exciting. So, I'm just going to take the tent down that we set up for them and
95:43
Speaker A
get back to work. The next thing we had to do was create a frame around the top of the pillars which would support [music] the roof.
96:05
Speaker A
[music] [music] Heat. Hey, heat. Hey, heat. [music] [music] All right, [music] we caught this together. Yeah.
96:49
Speaker A
Well, we're out swimming and noticed a big fish. He's like, "Dad, a huge fish." A tank. Me and Huie's lines got tangled, but we landed it and uh we're going to keep that one for dinner. Awesome fish.
97:06
Speaker A
Well, I got my parents here. It's their first time coming to our camp and uh we're going to take them for just a little tour of the immediate area. Um show them some cliffs, show them a cool waterfall and uh we're going to be doing
97:20
Speaker A
a little treasure hunt. Hudson found what looks like a very old pirates treasure map. Huddy, what what's going on?
97:29
Speaker A
We found a treasure. What did you find of this lake? Um, under the cabin in an old bottle. Oh, where did you find that?
97:39
Speaker A
I found it on the cabin. Nice. Which is just crazy um to even imagine how it would get there.
97:47
Speaker A
Mom. Hey, look. I found a Lego map. No way. Oh my goodness. How old do you think that is?
97:56
Speaker A
I don't know. Looks really old though, doesn't it? Huh? Hey, look. I see the X. Oh, we're going to go see if we can find pirates treasure. I mean, you never know. Like, this looks like our lake to
98:07
Speaker A
me. Very much so. Well, yeah, cuz look at these narrows there and the three bays. Uh, that looks like our lake.
98:14
Speaker A
Okay, what do you say we go find this treasure? Yes. Do you think there's a treasure at the end of that map?
98:20
Speaker A
Yeah. Well, we have a couple tired little treasure hunters here. So, yeah, we're off on a uh looking for Byron treasure.
98:30
Speaker A
And uh since the time Hudson found the map and we all got in the boat, uh I guess he got a little tired. So hopefully he gets back into it. I'm sure he will.
98:46
Speaker A
[music] Where's the map? All right, here's the map, buddy. Go [music] see if you can find an X on this island.
98:55
Speaker A
Okay. Okay. Don't lose that map. [music] If we don't find anything on this island, we can go to the next island.
99:10
Speaker A
Wa! Cool rock. [music] Doesn't look like it's there. Okay, so we're But wait a second cuz we're like here.
99:25
Speaker A
So then wait, where's the X? It's right there. Are we at the wrong island?
99:31
Speaker A
I think this is the wrong island. Oh, yeah. Cody, why don't we go to Let's go check the other island where the X is. This is the wrong island. No treasure here, though. But we looked. Okay. Let's go to
99:43
Speaker A
the next island and see if the pirate treasure is there. Okay. Well, we have just searched this island here.
99:52
Speaker A
Hey look. Is that an island? A little island? Yeah, that's a little island there.
99:59
Speaker A
Yeah. Okay, let's go check it out. We're looking for We got to look for something that's marking the treasure, like an X or something like that.
100:12
Speaker A
What? I [music] found it. What? You did? Yeah. Right there. Stop it. Oh. Oh my gosh.
100:18
Speaker A
Oh my god. Let's find a treasure in here. Do you think that means it's underneath it?
100:22
Speaker A
Honey, that's actually an X, dude. That's crazy. Let's stop digging. What? There's a box under there.
100:34
Speaker A
Careful. Hold it up. Oh my gosh. Yay. You going to close it up and take it home?
100:48
Speaker A
What is that? A jewel. [music] Keeping all these. We're keeping all of it. Yeah. We found treasure.
100:59
Speaker A
Woo! High five. We did it. We are keep [music] this forever. This is the best historical relic we've ever found. These are Spanish. These are like spa from Spanish gold coins.
101:13
Speaker A
Yeah. [screaming] Yeah. Wesley, we found pirate shields. Yeah. No more like pirates or timber.
101:35
Speaker A
Shivery timbers. We found the treasure. After that, Tori and I rolled up our sleeves and really started focusing on the build. The build took longer than we expected, but we stayed on it, learned a few things on the way, and we got it
102:11
Speaker A
done. [music] [bell] [music] Hey, heat. Heat. [music] Hey, heat. Hey, heat. Let's go in. We need this. Oh, no.
103:19
Speaker A
Here, take the drill. Take this. Here, take this. Take this. We're getting rained out.
103:36
Speaker A
I just saw lightning. Heat. Heat. [music] [music] [music] You're [laughter] not going to be able to get I don't think you'll be able to reach.
104:29
Speaker A
I the last thing we had to do to get this thing done is the shingling.
104:35
Speaker A
Now Tori and I had never done any shingling before outside of some basic work, but fortunately the instructions come on the pack's shingles, so we read through those carefully and figured it out pretty easily.
104:51
Speaker A
[music] [music] Well, Tori is doing her last row here, and we're going to leave this top on and fold it over.
105:24
Speaker A
Let me do the end cap. All right, climb up and pass it to me, bud.
105:32
Speaker A
Thank you. Good work, honey. So, after this, the last step is putting on the ridge cap of the shingles. And, [music] um, few ways you can do that, but um, we're just kind of keeping it simple here. Doesn't have to be perfect.
105:47
Speaker A
[music] It just has to work really well. [music] camera. I just did a little cut.
106:15
Speaker A
[music] Putting down that last shingle on the cap of our structure was the final nail in the building. We were finished. All right. Yeah, we did it. It's done.
106:34
Speaker A
Good job. What a project. What a project. Well, we are off on a family adventure.
106:43
Speaker A
We uh basically finished up our project last night and [music] uh we have to leave. We you know this is the Labor Day long weekend in Canada. So we have [music] to leave like either tomorrow or Monday cuz Huie and Wesley's first day
107:00
Speaker A
of school, including first day of school ever, is on Tuesday. So this is our [music] last adventure and we're going to do something awesome. We're going to try to get into a lake we've never gotten into before. And we think we
107:13
Speaker A
[music] can potentially follow a long wiggly twiggly creek in our big motorboat all the way in there to do some fishing. Hopefully pop a couple fish and uh maybe do a little swimming.
107:26
Speaker A
I don't know. It's pretty warm today. There's been some very cold nights, including 5° C last night. There was even a [music] frost warning for the closest town to here. But, you know, today is beautiful. Um, and this is
107:38
Speaker A
awesome. This is perfect August. No [music] bugs. And yeah, we're really excited to go check out this lake.
107:46
Speaker A
This is sick. And how do we know? This is the new lake. The secret lake, honey. Look, we made it.
107:55
Speaker A
I can't look. The adventure lake. Yeah. [screaming] Yeah. Family adventure. Before we packed up from the cabin, we squeezed in an awesome little motorboat trip where we managed to navigate up a narrow creek to reach a backcountry pike
108:13
Speaker A
lake too. Why you change the lure? Cuz I think maybe there's some giant pike in here, honey.
108:22
Speaker A
Not sure, though. Whoa, we almost got I didn't realize you were casting this way.
108:31
Speaker A
Lunch was on a beautiful island and Huds and I went for a swim. [music] By then, we were into [music] late August and Northern Ontario was cooling down. School was starting and waiting on the other side of that drive home was
108:52
Speaker A
[music] the Yukon, where I'd head out on backto back adventures in September in some of the wildest country I know.
109:05
Speaker A
[music] Only days after closing up the cabin, I was on another float plane. In September of this year, I solo canoeed the Wolf River in the Yukon Territory of Canada.
109:24
Speaker A
To reach the headwaters, I chartered a flow plane out of White Horse and flew deep into the wilderness.
109:32
Speaker A
Thank you very much. I'll see you next time. [music] Wolf Lake lies within the traditional territory of the Inland Clinket, part of Teslan First Nation. They used to travel with dogs along traditional trails and then spent winter here trapping,
109:52
Speaker A
fishing, and hunting for food. When spring came, they built canoes covered in moosehide [music] and paddle down the Wolf River all the way back to Teslan Lake. Stories like that are what inspire me to take on adventures like this, to follow in some
110:05
Speaker A
way in the footsteps of the people who once lived and traveled here. After a long flight, [music] the pilot touched down on Wolf Lake, the source of the river, and then took off again, leaving me completely alone. The sound of the plane
110:24
Speaker A
faded and the silence set in. I had the entire lake to myself. [music] So, I don't really have much info on this river at all, and I'm not really sure what I might be faced with in terms of rapids or where portage trails might
110:43
Speaker A
be, if any. So, I'm going to have to proceed with caution. Grouse season is open here, too. So, I'm hoping maybe I get the chance to hunt a little bit of rough grouse and spruce grouse and supplement my diet with arctic gring and
110:56
Speaker A
delicious grouse as well. Get my gun loaded up for bear protection. Just going to load the first shot with a double bust shot and the second two with slugs. I'm not scared of bears right now by any means, but like
111:12
Speaker A
if I'm going to lug this gun out for bear protection, I might as well have it at the ready.
111:19
Speaker A
The water is crystal clear and I could see hundreds of Arctic grings stacked up in the current.
111:30
Speaker A
Though it felt like it took forever, when I finally started casting, the gring smashed my flies, sometimes leaping completely out of the water. It was pure chaos and pure fun. Oh, there we go.
111:53
Speaker A
Yeah, nice. Woo. It's a nice one. That is awesome. Wow. That's a big gringling. That is definitely my biggest graing on a fly. And at the time, I didn't know that what I was about to walk into would turn out to be
112:15
Speaker A
one of the most memorable trips of the year. But I only had about a week to make it down the Wolf. The day I came off the river, I was heading straight back into the bush after some prep with
112:26
Speaker A
a friend from the Yukon. We do a multi-day moose hunt down another wild river, this time by [music] jetboat.
112:46
Speaker A
The next morning was cold and before long I was back out on the lake still searching for lake trout. I fished for as long as I possibly could but came up empty-handed again. Luckily the griling fishing at the outlet more than made up
113:01
Speaker A
for it. While paddling along the shoreline, I came across the remains of an old log cabin.
113:20
Speaker A
Inside were handmade snowshoes, a gold pan, and a huge moose rack was lying outside. It felt like a true relic of the old Yukon. It probably explained why the wreck of an old wooden scow that was seemingly handbuilt on the lake laid
113:36
Speaker A
discarded on the shore close to my campsite. It's likely that that old boat is tied to the people who once lived here.
113:43
Speaker A
Okay, well I am finally going to start paddling the Wolf River. By the time I finished exploring, I realized I'd fished so long, I was already behind schedule. It was time to start making some distance. As I paddled
114:03
Speaker A
downstream, I quickly discovered that this river was far more spirited than I'd expected. Back to backto back rapids came at me fast, and I had to stay on my toes to dodge the countless boulders in the shallow water. The Wolf River was
114:16
Speaker A
showing its teeth. Nice and slow. Tricky tricky. Technical, but fun. Well, I'm going to say that this is a white water canoe trip, man. Especially if water levels were higher. Mostly like ones and twos, though.
115:24
Speaker A
Around midday, I paddled through an old burn, a vast stretch of blackened spruce and charred trunks that reached as far as I could see.
115:36
Speaker A
I pulled the canoe ashore and wandered through it for a while. There's always something a little eerie about walking through an old burn. The silence feels heavier and the ground is littered with fallen slivered logs like bones of an
115:47
Speaker A
old forest. But at the same time, there's something strangely beautiful about it, too. In the northern boreal forest, fire is a natural part of the cycle. These black spruce trees are meant to burn. Fire releases nutrients back into the soil and makes room for
116:03
Speaker A
new life to take hold. While it feels a bit haunting, it's also a reminder that even [music] destruction has a place out here. The forest always finds a way to start again.
116:26
Speaker A
Well, it's been drizzling on and off and now it's just kind of picked up enough that time to put on my rain jacket.
117:00
Speaker A
Woo! Crazy. Two down trees, one completely across the river. It's looking like I'm going to be able to do 40k today, but uh I don't know, man. Having to push it pretty hard. And now I'm in a stretch of river that's
117:32
Speaker A
just wide but super shallow and absolutely no good fishing holes anywhere. And I keep getting hung up on gravel bars, too, and having to hop down them.
117:43
Speaker A
Oh man. Well, yeah. Just cuz the river's wider obviously doesn't mean it's deeper. Oh man.
117:53
Speaker A
Oh, are you kidding me? Come on. [panting] Glad to be past that. Some water. I was almost a click and a half of that. A little deeper here. Hopefully this keeps up.
118:42
Speaker A
Oh yeah, we're eating tonight. Oh, a good size one, too. Look at that. That is a beauty. What a nice grain.
119:05
Speaker A
After a long day of paddling, I finally found a nice campsite on a gravel bar.
119:10
Speaker A
So, I walked down the bank of it. That looks like a honey hole to fish there.
119:14
Speaker A
Over here, it's not as big, but it looks pretty good. There's actually a tributary coming in here. There's not really any flow to it. It's pretty much dry. But I think what I'm going to do, I walked down the gravel bar. I think what
119:26
Speaker A
I'm going to do, I'm going to float down to here and set up on this side closer to the good fishing hole. Planting a wolf prints.
119:35
Speaker A
We are on the Wolf River, I suppose. There's a big old wolf print. Look at the size of that. It's like wider than my fingers.
119:50
Speaker A
The grling were eager to bite just offshore and I spent a good while casting a floating dryfly into the current. They were hitting hard and it was a blast.
120:16
Speaker A
This is like the first little one I've caught since I've been here. That one's a little bigger. Feel a lot bigger when you're fighting them up the current like that.
120:47
Speaker A
Yeah. Oh, that's a nice one. Got to fight them up the current here. Woo! Oh, man. This is so fun. Fly fishing for Arctic railings. Well, there's dinner. Better get to cooking.
121:01
Speaker A
Got to set up camp. Got a fish stew going. But that was a lot of fun though.
121:07
Speaker A
In September in the north, you don't have the luxury of the midnight sun like you do in early summer anymore. By 8:30, it's pitch black. So, after keeping a couple fish, I stayed up well after dark cooking up a gringling stew over the
121:20
Speaker A
fire. I brought a few fancy spices along as a treat, and I made the stew with potato, carrots, and onions that I cooked up in a frying pan on the side.
121:29
Speaker A
It smelled incredible, and it tasted even better. To save time and not waste any meat, I threw in whole chunks of grailing. Instead of filleting them first, I figured I'd just pick out the bones as I ate.
121:55
Speaker A
That plan worked fine [music] until I bit down the wrong way on a bone. That one bite though sent a bolt [music] of pain straight through my jaw. I took some painkillers I'd packed, finished my meal, and crawled into my tent. But my
122:08
Speaker A
tooth kept bothering me for the rest of the trip, flaring up at random times.
122:16
Speaker A
Looking ahead at my map, I could see that in the days to come, the river would start to slow down and snake its way through long, winding bends. That meant a lot more paddling if I wanted to keep up my 40k a day. At the same time,
122:29
Speaker A
those slow meandering stretches and the swampier country surrounding them looked like prime moose habitat. I was really hoping I catch a glimpse at one of these massive, powerful animals along the way.
122:43
Speaker A
Yes, we're on the water. Took me 2 hours and 15 minutes to break camp, which I guess isn't too bad.
122:53
Speaker A
And uh the clouds are clearing up, which is really good for morale. Wow, this is just beautiful deep clear water. Yeah. So, you can actually paddle around in this huge loop. And the river actually used to go that way, but as it
123:16
Speaker A
went around this bend and as it slowly over the years built up enough sediment at the mouth of this uh big oxbow, it just redirected the river to go this way.
123:31
Speaker A
Well, there's where the oxbow comes back in. You can see there's a big pile up there, but no current coming out. So, slowly becoming its own separate lake.
123:42
Speaker A
Going to see if I can't uh sneak up on these swans. Get a shot of them.
124:20
Speaker A
So, I'm just going to pull over up here and uh pull out my lunch and then continue on down river. But uh yeah, I see a lot of beaver activity along the banks here again today, which is cool.
124:35
Speaker A
At this time of year, the beavers are extra busy getting ready for winter. And uh what they're doing is they're building up their winter store piles by going and biting off shoots, uh willow, popppler, stuff like that, like this
124:49
Speaker A
stuff we see along here. Essentially just bark of deciduous trees and shrubs. And they're getting those little sticks and they're they're piling them up in calm spots of the river so that they can access them under the ice after the
125:03
Speaker A
river freezes up. And if they don't get enough, well, they'll have an issue over the winter. Um, so I see a lot of beaver trails coming down into the river, a lot of drag marks where they've been dragging branches and and stuff like
125:14
Speaker A
that down. At the same time, I think uh the wolves don't mind fattening up for the winter either. And uh a beaver, there's a lot of fat on a beaver, so that's a great thing to get if you're
125:24
Speaker A
bear or you're a wolf. So, the wolves know that this is a time when the beavers are out of the water getting food, and the wolves are uh trotting along the bank, following those beaver trails down to the water, seeing if
125:36
Speaker A
there's a beaver at the end and maybe waiting for one, because a beaver is a great meal for a wolf, and they're pretty good at getting them, too. Um, so it's just kind of cool. I mean, it is
125:46
Speaker A
called the Wolf River after all. So, maybe I'll see one. We'll see. Feel like this is probably one of the best times to see a wolf because they're down on the river trying to eat beavers. [music] Well, I don't know what's going on.
126:23
Speaker A
Maybe it's just the direction of the river, but I am struggling against headwinds. I should be going way faster and it's just been like this for a long time now. So, I think I have to accept that I'm not going to make it as far as
126:39
Speaker A
I thought unless this wind dies like immediately. But it's crazy, man. It's like really gusting. Easily 55 kilometer per hour gust and a good sustainable wind as well. So, every time I'm a little bit exposed to it, I just slow down to a
126:57
Speaker A
snail's pace and I use up a lot of energy. We got white caps forming here.
127:08
Speaker A
Fortunately, the current still carrying me to some extent. I'm not blowing back up river, but I have to paddle hard on these stretches.
127:18
Speaker A
Looking to do about 7 more K. Uh, probably will be like 7:00 p.m. by the time I get to where I want to camp.
127:51
Speaker A
At one point, I spotted a cow moose in the shallows near the bank. Her back was turned to me, and I managed to float in surprisingly close before she noticed me. When she finally noticed me, I was close. And as I got even closer, she
128:05
Speaker A
startled and then leapt straight into the river right in front of my canoe and splashed water all over my canoe as she swam to the far side of the river.
128:14
Speaker A
Climbing out on the opposite bank, she turned and looked back at [music] me almost as if to say, "Who are you and how on earth did you sneak up on me like that?" I'd never intentionally get that close to a cow with calves or a bull at
128:26
Speaker A
this time of year. That's just asking for trouble. But in this case, it was an incredible couple moments to witness the moose up close like this.
128:41
Speaker A
Well, I'm just stopping to check where I am here and uh I noticed it's 7. Oh my god [laughter] it's going to be dark in an hour. But I've paddled past kilometer 75, exactly where I thought. So, I'm just going to take the
128:58
Speaker A
next decent looking place to camp. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like there's much around here. Uh, back before there's a whole ton of good-looking spots, gravel bars, now we're out of that. So, hopefully I don't end up having to camp in like a garbage
129:13
Speaker A
thicket like and have to fight beavers. Well, there might be something I can work with here. Hilarious. So, it's borderline dangerous.
129:31
Speaker A
If it rains, I'm going to get flooded out. But I got to make a decision.
129:38
Speaker A
Oh man. Well, this is where I'm camping against my better judgment. Well, I figured up here is a little more elevated than down here, but should be okay. The wind howled as I set up my tent. I had to wait across a
129:59
Speaker A
shallow channel to tie my canoe to a tree on shore. Then I flipped it on its side and used a paddle to prop it up.
130:06
Speaker A
This way I could use the canoe as a windbreak for my stove. There was no firewood anywhere, so I cooked my fish on the stove, crouching the shelter of my canoe as the gust tore through the river valley. It wasn't the
130:19
Speaker A
most comfortable night, but it was one of those moments that reminds you trips like this aren't always easy. But they sure are real.
130:42
Speaker A
Well, I guess this campsite didn't turn out to be too bad. I got a decent sleep, but I just woke up with driving pain in my tooth there. Just weird thing that happened. I just bit down on something
130:55
Speaker A
wrong. I knew I'd missed I'd lost a filling there. It should have been fine.
130:59
Speaker A
The doctor I went to see a doctor before. I talked to a dentist as well before I left and they're like, "Oh, yeah. It should be fine." But then, you know, that's not taking into account the fact that I just bit down on something
131:11
Speaker A
really hard the wrong way. And now it's like really painful. So, I'm going to have to tough it out, man.
131:28
Speaker A
Day five. Could have gotten an earlier start considering how much I have to beast mode, but I lost a lot of sleep last night due to the pain in my tooth. So, also doesn't get bright out until 7:00
131:44
Speaker A
a.m. Coming up to English Creek. Might be a decent spot to fish. I don't know.
132:29
Speaker A
There we go. Got one. What do we have here? Oh my god. Oh my god. This I think might be my personal best growling.
132:48
Speaker A
Boom. Yeah. [laughter] Woo. Look at the size of this grling baby. Good. Look at that fish.
133:01
Speaker A
Well, I'm let him go. Wow, that is huge. What a fish. I just I wanted to make sure my hands were wet. I was going to let him go and I didn't want to put my finger in his gill cuz
133:14
Speaker A
grling, they don't have any distance between the gill plate and the actual gill. So, if you try to hold them like this, uh, they can die. So, yeah, [laughter] personal best gring. That was huge.
133:35
Speaker A
Not long into the day, I spotted a young bull moose. I kept my distance this time. It seemed a little aggressive.
133:50
Speaker A
That's one cool thing about getting on the water a little earlier and staying on the water a little later as you see more wildlife. And that was really cool cuz I was watching a beaver and a moose at the same time. And I think I got the
134:04
Speaker A
beaver slapping its tail in the same frame as the moose stay in the bushes over there. It's still there. Now it's trotting away now that it heard me talk.
134:12
Speaker A
It was couldn't really see it anymore. And I just saw run once it heard my voice.
134:33
Speaker A
Why they call it the Wolf River? Well, as I rounded the corner and the wind came into [music] my face, it's when I heard the call. And it seemed like more of a nervous [music] sounding call than other ones I've heard. So, I
135:04
Speaker A
actually think that wolf caught wind to me. Oh, [music] [music] holy. I just called it a wolf.
135:40
Speaker A
Wow, that was so cool. The one was coming in was upwind of me where I heard the calls coming from were downwind of me. This wolf came walking up river.
135:57
Speaker A
It blended in so well. At first it was staring at me. At first when I saw it, I was paddling and I just thought it was a log or something, but I think it was looking at me for a while before I even
136:08
Speaker A
saw it. It was the craziest thing. I like I saw that wolf in my head before I saw it with my eyes. Same color and everything.
136:24
Speaker A
I must have just seen it and it only subconsciously registered at first. But it was just like I imagined something and then it just appeared. These are some of the reasons why wolves get compared to phantoms. And I had the
136:36
Speaker A
feeling something was staring at me. I think it was looking at me for a long time and I look back down river over my shoulder.
136:44
Speaker A
Wild. What an experience. Interesting differences between a fall trip and a summer trip. Typically I'm doing summer canoe trips in the Yukon.
136:54
Speaker A
And uh you see some different cool stuff in the fall like probably that wolf if it wasn't for uh them maybe looking for beavers to eat as the beavers are you know um cutting shoots to add to their
137:09
Speaker A
winter store piles. I might not have seen that in the summer. Well, I'm thinking I could probably line this whole thing and I don't even have to portage.
137:41
Speaker A
Uh, it's a little sketchy to run, but uh, yeah, I'll bust out a long rope and line it on the left. Heat. Heat.
138:10
Speaker A
Huh? [sighs] Huh? Woo! Well, that did not go quite as planned. When I tried to push it, I tried to hit the V, but I didn't push the canoe perfectly down straight to hit the tongue, and it hit like the reactionary curling boil.
139:07
Speaker A
wanted to flip, got pulled back in. It all would have been okay though if I had run up on top of the cliff quickly and pulled it out of there, but I slipped and was squabbbling around on slippery
139:18
Speaker A
rocks, not going anywhere. But when I climbed up, I pulled it down and the canoe didn't flip. I got a bor out, but uh all is well that ends well. I'm not sure I'd do it again, but I'm happy that
139:29
Speaker A
I did do it cuz I just saved a ton of time and energy. So, it's about4 to 7, 10 to 7 right now, maybe, but with the clear skies, it's going to stay light a little longer than yesterday. So, I'm going to try to just
139:55
Speaker A
get all the white water behind me. That looks like something up there. Maybe a bigger rapid. Maybe I can get over on the left though and scout.
140:15
Speaker A
Better scout this one. Well, it looks like this is the waterfall, not what I just ran, what I just lined back there. I'm going to have to front ferry over to the other side of the river.
140:55
Speaker A
Looks like I'm going to be camping at the waterfall after all. I just went and scouted out the portage thinking maybe there'd be a better spot to camp at the base of the trail. I mean, when you say trail, that's iffy if
141:25
Speaker A
there is one because um it's sort of just like down trees. A fire came through here and just burnt everything.
141:31
Speaker A
There's just crisscross down trees everywhere. But there's a sneak route where you can just like go straight down a steep sketchy hill and put in right at the base of the falls and then you got to run what looks like hopefully only a
141:41
Speaker A
class two afterwards. So that's what I'm going to do cuz there's no way I'm walking through this. This is hell.
142:02
Speaker A
[music] That night, while cooking fish over the fire, the sky erupted with another spectacular northern lights display.
142:16
Speaker A
This is what dreams are made of. Paddling at the base of the falls was awesome, but my focus immediately shifted to the white water rapid below.
142:56
Speaker A
Yeah. Woo. Well, here it is, folks. I just reached the Settling River. Yes, here is the Netland. [music] The mouth of the wolf is here and this is the Netland River.
143:31
Speaker A
As I neared the final stretches of river travel before Teslan Lake, the wind picked up again and I realized crossing the massive lake by canoe could be impossible. That's when I heard a jetboat approaching. The driver slowed alongside me and explained the
143:46
Speaker A
conditions on the lake. Big white caps and strong winds would make paddling impossible, and I likely wouldn't reach the community [music] of Teslan in time for my shuttle the next morning. It turned out the driver and his mom were
143:58
Speaker A
heading up river with supplies, and I asked if they might be able to give me a ride across the big lake. He said, "Yeah, probably." And I continued, waiting out at one of the small islands at the river's mouth. From the [music]
144:09
Speaker A
island, I could really feel the wind and I got a view out to the big lake where I saw large white caps breaking and I could see that traveling by canoe wasn't an option. It wasn't long until the boat
144:21
Speaker A
returned and I loaded all my gear and canoe aboard. Happy to have an engine helping me cover the final 9 km across Teslan Lake. From Teslan, I'd head back to White Horse to help my friend Ryan complete a unique boat he was building.
144:35
Speaker A
Once the boat was finished, Ryan and I would return to the Yukon wilderness together, this time on a moose hunt. The Wolf was one hell of a trip, but there was no time to sit still. I immediately linked up with my buddy Ryan and helped
144:51
Speaker A
him put the finishing tweaks on the HDP jetboat he'd built himself. [music] We're traveling in a 40 horsepower outboard that has a [music] jet propulsion bottom to it. So, you can take this thing through shallower water.
145:07
Speaker A
And Ryan will also sometimes use his electric trolling motor just for, you know, to more quietly putter along and to save gas for the larger engine. The plan was simple. Sleep in a boat, drift the river, cow call along the way.
145:24
Speaker A
We're just kind of going slow with the current and uh Ryan's manning the electric motor there just to save gas and he's doing some calling. Basically imitating a cow that's trying to call in a bull and we're hoping that that
145:40
Speaker A
attracts some bulls towards us. Ryan and I had about 300 km of river to cover in a week.
145:50
Speaker A
A we work the dry side slots, calling as we went. So, it's going to be dark soon and uh we're still cruising down river.
146:12
Speaker A
Haven't seen [music] anything yet. Temperatures dropped quite a bit. Um we're hoping we can connect. This is a good time.
146:29
Speaker A
River hunting for moose is its own thing. You snap branches to mimic a bull, walk quietly, put out a few cow calls, and keep moving down river, spending less time sitting in one place than many other styles of hunting.
146:52
Speaker A
Okay, so we just got off the boat to explore this little side slope, this little dry side channel.
147:05
Speaker A
So, we're just going to listen and just snap branches so we sound like a moose.
147:23
Speaker A
So, we called basically until it's pitch back, light our fire, and then we actually would keep calling. And that's um essentially to call a moose into the area that we might be able to get once it gets light the next morning. Okay.
147:36
Speaker A
Well, we are just tucked in here sleeping in the boat. Here's the boat cover. Ryan's just uh getting it buttoned up there. Oh, yeah. And we have a a little diesel heater strapped onto the back. So, it's supposed to go down
147:51
Speaker A
to about minus 10 tonight. And um when we wake up and it's absolutely freezing cold, we're going to run that heater just heat it up [snorts] in here and uh have a coffee in here probably.
148:22
Speaker A
What's that black spot way over there under the cliff? A fresh tracks. Well, we have a rapid coming up. Looks fairly substantial. We're going to run it. Obviously, we're not portaging.
149:13
Speaker A
Running rapids. Day two. Late afternoon. I saw a small bull. Young bull. Small bull. You can take it if you want to.
149:39
Speaker A
What's that? Do you want to take that one? I don't know. It's pretty. What do you think? Should I shoot him?
149:49
Speaker A
You don't want to? I might wait for a bigger one. If you're desperate for me, then I don't think [music] I know. He told me not to shoot this one.
150:04
Speaker A
Could have got him. I could tell it was a small moose. Um probably, you know, three-year-old moose. And we decided just to let that be. And I I passed up a shot on that moose. And in the end, I was glad I made
150:19
Speaker A
that call. I had a pretty decent shot at it. I was pretty far and it was pretty much a calf. Not a whole ton of meat on it.
150:32
Speaker A
Give her some more power. Give her some more power. More power. More power. There you go. Perfect.
150:40
Speaker A
Left. Follow the be. Slow down. We had a few more close encounters which were extremely exciting. We just woke up and we just heard about Moses about 7 I think on the other side of the river.
151:36
Speaker A
Well, it's slowly getting lighter and uh we think there's a bull held up over here. Ryan thinks it is, but we haven't heard a response in a little while.
151:48
Speaker A
Spotted some moose on the other side of the river. Turns out it was a cow. cal, but seems like she's trying to attract the bull that we heard that I called in uh to mate. So, we think if we go closer to her, the
152:08
Speaker A
bull will come that way. 380. We got to get closer. Wait, wait, wait. That's a bull.
152:14
Speaker A
That's a ball on our side. So, we see a post with those cows. I was trying to get closer.
152:39
Speaker A
My hands are freezing. It's freezing cold outside. Well, might have taken off. I don't know.
152:57
Speaker A
But finally, a bull is answering through the calls because it was the rut wasn't really on earlier.
153:06
Speaker A
Well, uh, we're going to head back to camp. What an incredible, incredible sunrise. Amazing. [sighs] Our trip ended a little early when the boat's intake plugged, leaving us to paddle and pull the last few kilometers out.
153:40
Speaker A
The entire jet here has completely come off. Nice to have somebody who's mechanically inclined on these adventures.
153:48
Speaker A
But this thing, despite everything that we were doing on this trip, we just went over the wrong kind of mud and it sucked it right in and clogged it. So, he's having to disassemble the entire thing out here.
153:59
Speaker A
So, so this is the water pump right here. I'm going to pull that apart.
154:03
Speaker A
There's all this See all this mud here? Yeah. I think that's what's stopping it from here.
154:11
Speaker A
It's still pumping a bit, right? But hopefully we clear this out and it pumps solid and we have a nice easy ride home or if you are doing this type of trip, it's worthwhile investing in some really long
154:31
Speaker A
ores, putting good or locks in your boat like right here right now. This is ne This is the first time this has ever happened to me. The Yukon 15 years, done tons of rivers, and I've never had a
154:42
Speaker A
boat fail where I haven't been able to fix this. So now we're paddling it out and I really regret not having like really big white water or you know.
154:50
Speaker A
Yeah, that would be just a game changer, right? Yeah, cuz you could just stand up in the middle in the morning while everyone's drinking coffee, listening to music and turn and steer and everything. Like this thing would be like we could probably
155:01
Speaker A
make it down the rapids no problem if we had something like that. And it'd be good for moose calling too, right?
155:06
Speaker A
Cuz you could be oring along. You don't have to with electric motor running out of battery or taking out a crop. So that's a that's a learning for me.
155:18
Speaker A
Yeah. All in um I'm feeling good that uh with with the outcome of this. Sad that I didn't get an animal, but at the end of the day, that's not necessarily the only thing hunting is about. Uh to me,
155:33
Speaker A
it's much more. And [music] probably because I passed up that shot on the first bull, I got all these other learning opportunities [music] down the road that we wouldn't have gotten if I if id shot that one. And you
155:45
Speaker A
know, maybe long run I'll get more healthy moose meat for my family um long term because of what I learned there. So I think it was a smart decision.
155:54
Speaker A
Anyways, I'm really looking forward to getting back home to see uh Tori and the kids and uh start planning for the next adventure.
156:05
Speaker A
After hurting my knee on the Grand Canyon in June, the first trip I'd canled was a moose hunt I'd booked for October.
156:15
Speaker A
Deep in the interior of Newfoundland, I knew I'd be putting a lot of miles on my boots and through rough country, too, especially if I had to pack out a moose.
156:24
Speaker A
So, I thought it just wasn't going to happen on a bad knee. Brian had already invited me to do the Yukon River hunt and we applied for a special guiding license. To be honest, I didn't think we were going to get it, but then we did.
156:38
Speaker A
Talking to Ryan, I said, "I don't know if I can do this on my knee, but he assured me there'd be no long packouts." [music] Then, by the time we got to midepptember, my knee had recovered enough to go, and that's why I'd said
156:50
Speaker A
yes. Planning the Wolf River trip to [music] double up on adventures while spending time in the Yukon. It was while I was in White [music] Horse prepping for my Yukon moose hunt that the Newfoundland outfitter I'd been working
157:03
Speaker A
with called me up and told me he had a couple October dates. I said perfect, looking forward to it, but I was thinking he meant for the following year. That turned out to be a significant oversight. The day I got
157:18
Speaker A
home from the Yukon, I got a text from Jamie, my buddy who'd be guiding me out in Newfoundland. It said, "Looking forward to seeing you next week." "Next week," I thought. I called the outfitter and figured out quickly what I'd done. I
157:33
Speaker A
looked at my wife and she said, "Just go." So, I went, knee, still not 100%, but doing much better. And [music] the next thing I knew, I was flying into the interior of Newfoundland on a helicopter, headed for a remote [music]
157:49
Speaker A
moose camp. Here we go. [music] [music] Hey Jamie, how you doing buddy? Hey buddy.
158:10
Speaker A
I made it. Good to see you. How you been? Good buddy. Good. Good. Well, we made it into camp. This is Cellwestern Outfitters Caribou Lake camp here. Beautiful lake, mountains all around and uh definitely looks like moose country and more or less we're
158:30
Speaker A
just getting settled in today. And then Jamie and I are going to be hunting this surrounding country for the week.
158:35
Speaker A
Definitely looks very moosey. Hoping that my knee holds up. I heard it back when I did the Grand Canyon and really haven't been able to uh do much hiking or much leg exercises despite all the adventures I've done. But it's feeling
158:47
Speaker A
pretty good. So hopefully it can take the weight of a moose, which we might have to pack out a significant distance.
158:55
Speaker A
Here we are on the boat. We got a beautiful morning here. An interior Newfoundland and uh we're going moose hunting. Got my buddy Jamie, Newfoundland guide extraordinaire.
159:08
Speaker A
Couple other hunters here. And uh we're getting dropped off at a a spot. We should have about a 5minute boat ride.
159:15
Speaker A
And we're going to start putting some miles on our boots, doing some calling, see if we can't have any luck today.
159:30
Speaker A
All right, guys. Good luck. Eh, good luck. [sighs] We're going to skirt this ridge line.
159:37
Speaker A
Keep the noise down to a max. So, it's beautiful day. There's no wind and goose could hear us a mile away. So up on a couple ridges, call see what we can get.
159:47
Speaker A
Come out, work our way on up the bottom rocky pond, see what's going on. Right on. Jamie and I head up on top of this snaking escer. And we walk along this eser for I don't know, probably close to
159:59
Speaker A
a mile and set up. [music] Beautiful morning. We're just uh walking along an escer here.
160:23
Speaker A
Very, very beautiful country. Little ponds all over the place. And uh nice sunrise. Looks like we're going to have a good day weatherwise. This is the last week anyone's been hunting out of this lodge. So, we got to go a bit deeper to
160:36
Speaker A
get into some better hunting, which means more opportunity, but a a much further pack out. I say it's worth it, though.
160:48
Speaker A
They're battling over mates and stuff like that, and it's just about the best time to hunt because you can attract a bull by mimicking a cow call.
161:10
Speaker A
We hiked a ways after getting dropped off in the boat and uh we just posted up in a spot that we think might have some moose around. We're just doing some calling.
161:23
Speaker A
Jamie's more experienced by far than me. And uh he's just kind of reminding me you really got to get the the sound out there. Project.
161:31
Speaker A
You want to hear it echo. Try to get something that might be far away to come in. So, good thing to remember.
161:44
Speaker A
Sure enough, before too long, we see some moose. Two moose. Come into the call, buddies looking right at us.
162:02
Speaker A
Yeah, two of them there. See them? Oh, yeah. [music] Oh, no. That's a Yeah, that is. And he's coming.
162:17
Speaker A
Ah, we already see a young bull just on the ridge over here. We've been glassing for maybe maybe 20 minutes at the most. And uh can't get a good size on him. He looks like a good moose to me.
162:38
Speaker A
Good eating. Good. Very good eating. Very good. Not too tough like the bigger ones. So, if we can get him in, I think I'm going to get I think I'm going to take him. What do you think, Jamie?
162:51
Speaker A
It's your choice. It's your hunt. But in the fridge is better than none. Yeah, if he comes.
162:59
Speaker A
So, he's got a cow with him. So, we're looking at two moose right now. He's got a cow with him. So, it's very hard to get them to break away from that cow to come to our cow calls. So, we don't know
163:10
Speaker A
if he's going to come this way regardless. 377. Yeah, that's too far, I think, for me, buddy. Unless that's a I had a table.
163:24
Speaker A
Yeah, he's a little too far. He's almost 400 yd away. So, [snorts] he's looking there. He's still looking.
163:30
Speaker A
He's staring right at us. I give that a real good call just to see what happens. Remember, this is always a learn experience for guide, too.
163:41
Speaker A
[laughter] [screaming] There he is. I see him moving through these trees. He's gone. How close?
164:05
Speaker A
So he's he's right in these trees close to us. Yeah, I see him move behind it. Okay, he's going right to left now.
164:15
Speaker A
[groaning] He's He's just broke out over here. You should be able to pick him up through scope. That sun is not, is it?
164:48
Speaker A
I feel pretty exposed here. I got to be still. If the opportunity is here, I think he should take it. At the end of the day, the meat is going to be better. That's what my wife That's why my wife lets me
165:02
Speaker A
come do this stuff. is absolutely going to be pissed if it's chewy. A ruddy big ruddy bull.
165:12
Speaker A
Yeah, there he is. Take shot whenever you feel like you got a good one.
165:34
Speaker A
Got him. Hit him again, Jim. Hit him right through the trees if you got out of sight. Adam, did he fall?
165:45
Speaker A
Yeah. You hear that? I heard something. Yeah, I It sound like he went down. Young bull. Good eating, buddy. Good eating.
166:17
Speaker A
On the base of that tree there. That's where I saw him go down. Anyway, there.
166:22
Speaker A
Look. See him move behind the tree in there. Oh, watch out, Jim, cuz he might jump up. I don't know how good you got up. Just put your scope up. Look at the base there. You saw him move for sure. I
166:33
Speaker A
saw him move. Yes, sir. Then, as we approach, I saw some motion and I went to put another shot into it and it's actually a dud. My bullet was a dud. So, I racked another round and I shot it
166:44
Speaker A
from about 50 yards through the neck and, you know, it was done straight away. You believe this right here? I got it. Primer. You got to be kidding me.
166:54
Speaker A
Yeah. Send that back. Get free bucks. Can you? Oh, I would. It's about 70 bucks or more for the box.
167:02
Speaker A
See, that's my last shot, by the way. I don't have any more on me.
167:05
Speaker A
Well, [music] should I go get another one? I think you did them. You think so? Yeah.
167:09
Speaker A
Yeah. We'll have to do the Viking kill of the [laughter] big animal by the time you get close to it. It is huge. And this is a small moose. Just to give you an idea of the size of these animals, they can get
167:21
Speaker A
really big. You know what, Jamie? I'm very happy with this moose. I I already moose hunted for a week in the Yukon. Passed up a shot on a bull like that. Had a lot of hunting experience.
167:31
Speaker A
Yeah. And at the end of the day, you know, it's not going to be as hard as a packout.
167:35
Speaker A
You don't have to rip your leg apart. Exactly. Yeah. Got a moose, buddy. We did it. That happened pretty quick. Eh, fitters, boys.
167:45
Speaker A
That's right. Guides here. Yeah. Good guides. Good clients. Good. Good clients. Good guides. [laughter] Just a lot of fun.
167:53
Speaker A
Oh yeah, that was a great hunt, man. There I don't think there's such a thing as a small moose that's not even, you know, like this is a lot of meat on this thing. [music] Whenever I harvest something, I like to just say a quick uh
168:08
Speaker A
few words and just thank the animal and then kind of tell it why I killed it and and just what I'm going to do with it.
168:15
Speaker A
And in this case, I'm going to use the the hide. I'm going to make a really cool uh soft leather skin and uh [music] going to feed it to my family. Good healthy food for my family. So, all
168:26
Speaker A
right. Well, uh now we get to work. Jamie's a lot faster at quartering the animals than I am, but you know, I take a back strap off, take a tenderloin off.
168:36
Speaker A
I decide that we're going to skin this whole thing. So, Jamie and I skin the whole thing out. I'm going to take the hide home and I'm going to make um I'm going to tan it into nice leather as
168:45
Speaker A
well. That is going to be delicious. We got one Newfanland moose backstrap. Medium rare please.
168:57
Speaker A
The only thing is we tagged out on the first day, but you know, I do have also a bear tag. And um so this moose I'm still going to have some freezer space cuz it's not a massive moose. So, we
169:09
Speaker A
might uh get out and um kind of explore the country a bit and uh potentially get a bear as well and get, you know, quite a bit more meat on a bear, too. And uh the hide as well. I'm going to I'm going
169:21
Speaker A
to save the hide on this one. It's not going to be too big for me to tan. If you watched my other video there, that brain tanned a very nice buck skin and uh it's a labor of love, but uh the
169:32
Speaker A
results are very satisfying. So, yeah, next part is uh a lot of work. We're going to pack this thing back to the boat and uh travel back to camp with it.
169:41
Speaker A
And uh you know, we're going to head out into the country tomorrow. So, the the [music] fun is far from over.
170:07
Speaker A
So on our way back for [music] the second load, I saw up in front of Jamie a caribou right on the trail and it sort of, you know, tucked behind some bushes and it was right downwind of us and I
170:17
Speaker A
thought, well, it's probably going to spook before uh we get close to it. Well, sure enough, we got close to it and [music] it was right there. And instead of walking the opposite way, it walked right up to me. And to be honest
170:27
Speaker A
with you, I was a little nervous. This thing was close to me, [music] under 15 yd away from me. Kind of stopped and looked at me for a bit and decided to trod off the other way. And then I
170:35
Speaker A
watched it heading down the esker and up another hill. And just an absolutely [music] gorgeous sight. What an incredible day that was. Uh hunting like that, being successful, calling in [music] a bull, seeing the caribou, traveling on the lake by boat. Just
170:50
Speaker A
very, very special. Yes. Two trips. Did it. And there it was. My trip felt like [music] it was almost over. And I'm like, that was an amazing chopper ride and hang out and then hunt.
171:38
Speaker A
Come fall, I stuck closer to home. I tackled the challenging job of reaching a remote cabin by ATV for [music] the first time in order to close it up for the winter.
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Speaker A
I'm doing it. I got out deer hunting along a [music] stretch of remote river we accessed by freigher canoe.
172:23
Speaker A
[music] [music] then. The snow came and the lakes froze up. And my first winter trip this year was [music] a small one, but a meaningful one. A boy. Okay. Pull me.
172:59
Speaker A
Pull. Walk. [groaning] Okay. Okay. You try to pull. You try to pull me. I had a boy. Pull harder.
173:08
Speaker A
I headed out with my four-year-old son, Hudson, to teach him some survival skills and have some fun. [screaming] Yeah.
173:18
Speaker A
We tked into a stand of red pine with only basic gear and tow. And we started shoveling snow into a large pile here.
173:27
Speaker A
Why? I think this is a good place to make a campsite. We're going to make a big pile and then we're going to tunnel into it.
173:37
Speaker A
Look how big this could be. Oh wow, that's huge. You need more snow. Just push your handle.
173:45
Speaker A
The plan. Build a quinzy a snow cave. It needs to be that big. Way bigger.
173:56
Speaker A
Okay. Getting somewhere with this pile. And you're being really helpful, honey. Can we take a second?
174:14
Speaker A
There you go. Oh, sorry. We piled it up, let it sit, and then dug out the inside of it.
174:24
Speaker A
All right, buddy. I think that's good. What do you think? Yep. Is that how Nor is going to get in?
174:29
Speaker A
We're all going to get in through here. That tiny thing. Yeah. This door. It's going to be a big cave on the inside.
174:36
Speaker A
Uh-huh. I I'll show you some. So, I'm sticking these sticks in. And then that way when I'm on the inside digging when my fingers hit the sticks on about that thick the walls cuz the snow is pretty light
174:47
Speaker A
when we So because you'll get that. Okay. Now your job is all the snow that I throw out here and get rid of it.
175:01
Speaker A
How? I'll just put it back in the woods and put it on either side of the door.
175:07
Speaker A
Let's see. [panting] Don't put it on top. Put it to the side. I I'm not I'm just put in the back. Watch.
175:55
Speaker A
Okay. I think we're done, bud. You want to go check it out? It's so good in there, bud. It's a perfect size. We could have built it bigger if we had time, but we didn't.
176:15
Speaker A
But we built it just the right size. A little smaller is warmer usually. Why?
176:21
Speaker A
Because there's less space to heat. Okay. Go in there. Tell me if there's a lot of space in there.
176:32
Speaker A
What do you think? Good. I'll get you velcro, too. I'll get I got you velcro.
176:42
Speaker A
Thanks, bud. Is that cool or what? Yes. It's so cool. A little too cool.
176:48
Speaker A
Too cool. Yes. All right. Well, let's get set up so we can sleep in there.
176:53
Speaker A
Oh, daddy. We did it. We built it. What impressed me most was Hudson. He shoveled snow. He hauled firewood on the toboggan. He worked. And that's pretty rare for a 4-year-old.
177:17
Speaker A
All right. Good job, bud. That was awesome. Dude, you're such a tank. [laughter] You're so strong. That was wicked. Look at all that wood, bud. We line the floor with a buffalo high.
177:36
Speaker A
Dinner that night was moose sausages and bananic cooked over the fire. That tiny one.
177:45
Speaker A
Uhhuh. That's mine. Okay. [sighs] Big bite. Dinosaur bite. Come on. Mhm. Right. Is that good? Yeah.
178:00
Speaker A
That's really good. So, we're making bananic here. I actually brought it for breakfast, but Honey really wanted to try it. So, it's just basically flour, a little bit of butter as a fat, water, baking powder, a little bit of salt,
178:18
Speaker A
and poop. No, there's no poop in it. I'm I'm saying that as mix it. Just going to cook it on the end of a stick.
178:26
Speaker A
Cool. Okay. You ready? Yeah. You put that around. That's right. I didn't know that.
178:38
Speaker A
You like it? Yeah. Okay. Now, can you take over? Take over here, Dad. Okay. That's tiny fire.
178:52
Speaker A
Okay, there we go. Look at that. Banic hooked on a stick. How's that? [sighs] Good.
179:08
Speaker A
M. That is yummy. You take my boots off. Yeah. Okay. Let's get your sleeping bag out.
179:23
Speaker A
What are your thoughts on our shelter? On our snow shelter. Awesome. Awesome. We are snuggled in here. I got Huie uh and double sleeping bags and a wolf fur.
179:34
Speaker A
Two sleeping bags. One, two, two sleeping bags. One's good to - 18. One's good to minus 30. And this wolf belt. Well, it's good to minus infinity, I guess. Come on, North. Come on.
179:51
Speaker A
Good boy. Good boy. Lie down. Lie down. North. Lie down. Lie down. North. Lie down.
180:01
Speaker A
The temperature dropped to about -25 that night, but inside the Quinzy, we were warm.
180:08
Speaker A
[snorts] Is it a nice day out there? Also, you got snow. [sighs] A lot of snow out here. We slept in a snow fort, bud.
180:24
Speaker A
Yeah, it was cool. That was cool. The next morning, the moisture in the snow had frozen up and the walls of the Quinzy held both of our weight as we climbed on top of it.
180:35
Speaker A
Dad, wait. Whoa. Wait for me. Thank you. Like this. Hey. Well, that gives you an idea how strong these things are. You know, once you dig up all that snow and the moisture trapped into the snow freezes up in the
181:02
Speaker A
walls. I mean, the walls aren't even particularly thick, and it held my weight and Huddy's weight, and didn't even budge.
181:11
Speaker A
Wa! We then headed out for a little ice fishing before packing up and heading home.
181:24
Speaker A
From there, I jumped on the Scadoo and pointed towards Ontario's Hallebertton Forest. In Hallebertton, I'd winter camp and meet up with my buddy Steve to do some ice fishing. I was chasing a trout [music] trifecta, hoping to catch the
181:39
Speaker A
native Hallebertton gold lake trout, as well as [music] rainbow trout and brook trout. But I didn't know that when we headed out, I actually had a chance at a grand slam. [music] Oh yeah, Jim is on again. And I think he's got a
181:54
Speaker A
good fish here. It's huge, bud. It was about noon when I pulled into the Hallebertton Forest base camp. Snow was coming down hard and it was unseasonably warm, right around [music] freezing. The kind of day where it's hard not to sweat
182:10
Speaker A
when you're dressed for winter. Okay, so just unloaded my sled here. We're at the Hallebertton Forest with my buddy Steve.
182:17
Speaker A
He is a trout fishing guide extraordinaire, so I think I'm in good hands. I got my dog North here and I'm going to be winter camping in my hot tent and we're going to be slamming some trout. We're hopefully going to be able
182:27
Speaker A
to get into some specs, some rainbow, and some Lakers. We'll see. Time's a little pressed uh today. So, hopefully get some fish on the ice. We're going to hit the trails and get out there and start slamming some trout.
182:49
Speaker A
After jigging with no action, a set line finally went off. Oh, there he is. He's on. Go get him. Go get him.
182:56
Speaker A
Where's my I ran for the rod and slipped, likely losing the fish in the process.
183:04
Speaker A
Jim's on the jacker. Lost it. No. Oh, he kicked it. Yeah. Oh, buddy. So, uh, all of a sudden, we saw the jawjacker going crazy and I came in and accidentally slid out and fell. And I think that might have affected my
183:19
Speaker A
ability to get the fish. But there's fish here and that's exciting. We jigged a bit longer and [music] then moved down the lake where we cut a large rectangle in the ice with an ice saw to set up a popup shelter over it. The plan
183:44
Speaker A
was to come back and try sight fishing, something I'd never done through the ice before.
183:52
Speaker A
I'm sitting there watching you sky. What a good boy. Yeah, because I was like, whoa, look at that.
183:58
Speaker A
Okay, the best thing to do is to take the far side is to push one side down.
184:04
Speaker A
There we go. And then push from the other side and just put it right under the hole. We're trying to get it straight. Jimbo, if you get that corner, can you turn it?
184:12
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah, buddy. There we are. Now straight. [groaning] We just freaking get rid of that.
184:18
Speaker A
See you later. Look at that. Nice trick. that kind of center dish. And look at this wide screen, man. HD freaking spec fishing buddy.
184:39
Speaker A
With little light left, we jumped on the sleds and rode hard to the lake where I planned to camp. Steve's a local and even guides fishing trips in the area.
184:47
Speaker A
So when it came down to the question to stay or go, I trusted his judgment.
185:17
Speaker A
Okay, well this is our new spot. We have minutes before dark and we're going to see if we can't get lucky. We're fishing the uh legendary Halley gold lake trout.
185:29
Speaker A
It's uh endemic. It's not a stock species and it's a beautiful native strain of lake trout that is golden in color. For those of you at home have never heard of it, it's a it's an endemic species, but it's a glacial
185:41
Speaker A
relic. They got left behind with the glazers. Oh, okay. They're beautiful. Yeah, buddy. Right off the hook.
185:48
Speaker A
We battled deep slush and drilled a few holes. But on the first drop of my lure, I landed a nice eating size lake trout.
185:55
Speaker A
A unique native strain known as the Hallebertton Gold. So, there we go. Hi Gold baby. Came, saw, conquered.
186:05
Speaker A
Incredible. Look at those fins. Aren't they beautiful? They're absolutely gorgeous. What a beautiful fish. It's the only place in the world where this trout exists.
186:12
Speaker A
And you know what? I think this is my first Harley gold. Beautiful, man. There's the uh the gold colored fins.
186:19
Speaker A
Big fork tail. You can tell for sure it's a Laker. I kept it for dinner and we rode off to camp.
186:38
Speaker A
It was almost pitch black by the time we arrived at my campsite, but Steve stuck around to help me set up my canvas wall tent.
186:47
Speaker A
Gotcha. I got to change my angle. Yeah, go for it. I thank Steve for his help and watch him ride off into the night headed for home.
187:02
Speaker A
That night in my tent, I cooked up a surf and turf of moose steak, fresh trout, and broccoli on the wood stove.
187:16
Speaker A
Then I turned in for a well earned rest. By morning, temperatures had dropped from just above freezing to minus 255 C.
187:41
Speaker A
Before long, Steve rode back into camp. There he is. Now I got to try to reverse out of here. But my snowmobile would come here, buddy. Yeah, your track is frozen.
187:56
Speaker A
The slush from the day before had frozen solid in the track. We should have thought of to remove it.
188:03
Speaker A
We chipped ice, rocked the machine, and eventually freed it up. Yeah, you did it.
188:13
Speaker A
Thanks to the Scandic's power, we were rolling and headed out for day two. We rode for about 45 minutes to reach a remote brook trout lake.
188:39
Speaker A
The weather had completely turned and such a fluctuation in weather isn't [music] usually great for the bite.
188:47
Speaker A
Let's [music] [music] get that. Fast fast uh scan. Okay, we're not going here. There he is.
189:16
Speaker A
Oh no. No. It broke. No. Oh, I lost the fish early. I don't know. I I see the the hook on the side.
189:26
Speaker A
Something to fall back. There it is. There it is. Yeah. Yes. Little one. Little one.
189:34
Speaker A
First speck of the day. First speck of the day. We're a little small, but you know.
189:39
Speaker A
Should we throw it back? Could be an eater. I think we should keep it.
189:42
Speaker A
All right, let's eat it, then. I just absolutely love these small ones personally. They're so they're such good eating. Yeah.
189:47
Speaker A
All right. Not long after things got interesting. Oh yeah, there's a good one. Come on. Yes.
190:01
Speaker A
He's peeling it out. Jigging a Williams W20 spoon. I hooked into a big fish.
190:08
Speaker A
Take your time. Just get his head in there and I'll help you. Using sixlb tests. I was a little outgunned and the fish ran out my drag every time I got it near the hole.
190:16
Speaker A
Dude, that is a pank tank. [laughter] That is a tank. He's biting him. I don't have color yet. There's a leader. There's a leader.
190:37
Speaker A
He's a good size. He's a good trout, man. Oh, I try to get his head through here.
190:48
Speaker A
Once I even brought it up backwards and its tail was sticking out, but we just didn't want to grab it out of fear we'd lose it.
190:55
Speaker A
You let me know if you need a hand. There he is. There's his tail.
190:57
Speaker A
Oh, you got it backwards though. It's a lake, eh? You know what? I wonder if that's an old stock splake.
191:04
Speaker A
Maybe. Dude, looks like maybe a splake. No one's caught a splake in this lake, as far as I know, in years. So, I could see the fish was likely a splake, a brook trout and lake trout hybrid that
191:16
Speaker A
wasn't even supposed to be in this lake. And it was a big one, too.
191:20
Speaker A
Hear that drag? How smooth that is? [music] Yeah. And he took all that line.
191:39
Speaker A
Did you I saw actually we saw his tail. Yeah. Was it for Yeah. It looked like a splake kind of to me but Okay.
191:53
Speaker A
Oh, [screaming] it was a leader again. He got it. He got you on the ice. What the [ __ ] It wasn't even touching the ice.
192:04
Speaker A
Oh, god damn it. Oh, that's a heartbreaker, buddy. That's a heartbreaker. That was a monster.
192:13
Speaker A
Unfortunately, after a battle royale, the fish won, which was devastating. Actually, are you kidding me?
192:20
Speaker A
Are you kidding me? That was a big big trout, dude. Oh, I'm so sorry, brother.
192:27
Speaker A
Well, absolute heartbreaker. Uh just lost an absolute tank there. It was running out my drag and everything and what a battle royale and we had the tail right up but didn't get the head through. Yeah. I don't know. I don't
192:42
Speaker A
know why the the line even broke. Oh, that's a heartbreaker. What happened there, dude?
192:48
Speaker A
I'm not sure. At the time, I thought the line had snagged on something under the ice, like a stick or a rock.
192:54
Speaker A
All I can think of is that because it's shallow here. Yeah, there's a stick down there. But it wasn't until that night when I was reviewing my underwater footage in my tent that I realized the fish had wrapped the line around the
193:06
Speaker A
underwater GoPro selfie stick itself and snapped it clean off. Devastating. Oh yeah. Yeah, buddy.
193:16
Speaker A
Nice one. You got him. Yeah. Jim is out again. And I think he's got a good fish here.
193:21
Speaker A
It's huge, bud. I don't know what the hell it is, but it's big. Yeah, dude. Like unless I'm stuck on a log or something.
193:30
Speaker A
That's what that looks like. I might be stuck on a log. Dude, it might No, it's a fish.
193:34
Speaker A
That is a fish, man. I just saw him bow. Hold on. Is that a fish?
193:41
Speaker A
Did that big splake follow you over, Jimbo? Is that a fish, dude? That looks like a log to me.
193:51
Speaker A
You caught a whole What the hell, dude? You caught a whole rock. [laughter] Then we finally returned to the big sight fishing hole, but the water clarity was terrible.
194:05
Speaker A
Steve had done a sight fishing thing a couple weeks back in the same spot, and the visibility had been great. Whatever caused the change in the water clarity, we don't know.
194:17
Speaker A
With no luck there, we headed back to camp. Steve stayed for dinner and we cooked up a proper feast over the fire.
194:28
Speaker A
We started with the trout as an appetizer and it was delicious. All that stuff, you know.
194:34
Speaker A
Here you go, buddy. You want that? Yeah, dude. Hook brother up. This is a pretty good appetizer, eh?
194:40
Speaker A
Right. Could use about four times more of this, though. Yeah. That was followed with venison tomahawk steaks that Steve harvested and butchered himself.
194:51
Speaker A
[music] Oh, I've been thinking about these all day, buddy. Nailed it. And then we cooked up some chunky moose steaks.
195:01
Speaker A
Wow, it was delicious. What's this cut? Do you know where this came from? Uh um like the ham back ham.
195:08
Speaker A
Uh round. Uh yeah, the round. All right, brother. See you in the morning. Yeah.
195:13
Speaker A
Then Steve headed home and North and I settled in for the night. Soon Steve was back and we had one goal left, the trifecta. All I needed was a rainbow trout. [music] We rode into a beautiful rainbow trout
195:36
Speaker A
lake and set up in a [music] small bay. All right, here we are. Next spot.
195:47
Speaker A
We're going for the trout factor, the trifecta, which is uh lake trout, brook trout, and rainbows. We'll see what we can do here.
195:56
Speaker A
It didn't take long. Oh, you get a hit. Yeah. There we go. There we go. Small rainbow hit the ice and I done it.
196:06
Speaker A
Yeah. Yeah. The trout factor. Yes. That was going to be buddy, huh? Absolutely. How are you going to eat that one?
196:17
Speaker A
What a beauty. Yes. My first ever ice fishing trifecta. Not uh an absolute tank, but a very nice eating size. And look at the colors on that thing. That's coming home.
196:31
Speaker A
The clouds cleared, the wind died, and even though it was cold, I could feel the sun's warmth. It had become a perfect winter day. Back at camp, I said goodbye to Steve and packed up quickly so I could get home to the family.
197:03
Speaker A
Heat. Heat. [music] Come on. Come on. Come on. Good boy. Back in 2017, my brother Ted and I won season 4 of Alone. But it had been a while since I'd taken on any raw survival trips. I usually keep these
198:07
Speaker A
skills sharp as backup in case something goes sideways on one of my bigger adventures. With how much I've been traveling by snowmobile, I started thinking, snowmobiles break sometimes.
198:18
Speaker A
What would happen if mine did? miles out in the deep cold. So, I decided to find out a simulated breakdown. Just me alone in the bush.
198:34
Speaker A
Well, there could be worse places to break down. At least I'm not in the middle of the lake. And I have a survival kit on me. First thing I'm going to do, though, is uh get a fire going and get a shelter built.
198:46
Speaker A
With the wind howling across the lake, I headed back into the bush, searching for shelter. Somewhere flat, protected, and out of the wind is what I was looking for.
198:57
Speaker A
As the light drained from the sky, I finally found a spot. And with very little time left, I had my work to do.
199:31
Speaker A
Even though this was planned, I was still a little nervous. I knew I didn't have much light left. I grabbed the small survival kit. I brought snare wire, paracord, a ferro rod, fishing line, and a couple of lures pretty much
199:44
Speaker A
rounded it out. I had one small pot, a sleeping bag, basic cutting tools, and two cups of bananic mix as an emergency ration.
200:04
Speaker A
With limited time and energy, I decided my effort [music] was better spent building a thick bow bed to insulate me from the frozen ground rather than worrying too much about fully roofing the shelter.
200:17
Speaker A
Well, this is where I'm sleeping for several nights. Pretty good, though. I'm glad I did the extra work to build up that [music] uh bed. I have like a thin foam ground pad, but it's not enough even close. So, but I'm going to go back
200:32
Speaker A
to my snowmobile and uh bring over the rest of my stuff, get a fire going, get warm.
200:40
Speaker A
That's my clothes, sleeping bag, ground pad. I did bring a sleeping bag and some extra clothes. Uh if this was like if my Scadoo had actually broken down, I might not have a spare pair of clothes. And my
200:52
Speaker A
base layers are wet, so I'd have to dry myself out over the fire for a long time in order not to have hypothermia. But this is basically what I have here to survive off of is that kit.
201:15
Speaker A
I chose a remote lake in the tomogamy region, far enough that I couldn't just bail out to a cabin or truck if things got uncomfortable. So, I wanted to challenge myself, not just to practice survival skills, but to see how I'd
201:28
Speaker A
actually respond if everything went wrong. Well, now I have to do uh something that does not bring me joy out here in the cold.
202:18
Speaker A
And that is swap out my base layer. I'm not going to swap out my feet base layer or my legs.
202:26
Speaker A
But if you have an extra base layer, better have three for backup. And you have a good axe and saw and a way to make a fire, you can go and sweat right through. And just as long as you
202:41
Speaker A
can switch your base layer and spend a couple hours drying your clothes around the fire every night, you'll be good to go. So people saying don't sweat in winter. It's true, but it's more like if you're in the Arctic and you sweat, you
202:54
Speaker A
die cuz you can't make a fire. Nice dry base layer. This will help me sleep so much warmer.
203:09
Speaker A
Ah, I was on. Oh. Oh, I just knocked like 1,000 lbs of snow off my hat into the inside of my new dry base there. Blew it.
203:27
Speaker A
So, this is my Colombia Labyrinth Loop hooded jacket. And uh I really like to layer up when I'm doing this. So, I have a puffer, I have this jacket, I have a down vest, and I have my anorak. And
203:41
Speaker A
under that, I have a sweater and uh a base layer. So, that's that's good to like minus 40, but you feel a bit like the Michelin man. So, when I'm moving around, I just wear my anorak and like a
203:54
Speaker A
sweater under. And when [music] it gets to be this time of night, I start layering up again again a bit more cuz uh the temperature is really dropping right now. Um, so I might actually just sleep in this. I'm not sure. [snorts]
204:12
Speaker A
One of the things I'm always amazed with when I do these things is how dehydrated I get. I can already feel my feet getting kind of spasmy.
204:23
Speaker A
Well, hopefully the wind doesn't pick up. If it does, it'll blow all the heat out of my sleeping bag.
204:32
Speaker A
and they're going to get very cold because this shelter doesn't have any way to block the wind and anything you can do to block the wind makes a huge difference.
204:44
Speaker A
But if it doesn't stay windy, if it doesn't get windy, I think I'll be okay.
204:48
Speaker A
I got a decent thickness of boughs here. I don't have an inflatable ground pad, but I mean, who's carrying one of those around with them all the time? So, [sighs and gasps] um hopefully I'll be okay and that cold
205:05
Speaker A
doesn't get up from the ground. But I think so far so good. I'm not feeling particularly hungry. It's got to be uh oh jeez, for sure minus 20 right now.
205:21
Speaker A
[music] [music] It snowed quite a bit last night. I had a pretty warm sleep. I just let the fire die out. And um my lean to definitely blocked some of the snow, which is good because if that snow fell on my sleeping
205:45
Speaker A
bag, my body heat would have warmed up that snow and it would have melted while I was sleeping. Um, I might just head out there and try to fish this morning without like lighting the fire or anything. Just get some warmer clothes
205:59
Speaker A
on and go and see if I can catch a fish. [music] Without an augur, getting through the [music] ice was going to be tough. But I had a trick up my sleeve. I cut a stout pole, sharpened one end, and carved a
206:26
Speaker A
deep groove into the butt. [music] I then wedged my fixed blade knife into the groove and lashed it tightly with paracord. I chose a knife that has a very narrow handle. I slid the handle into the groove and lashed it shut. And
206:42
Speaker A
that is how I'm hoping to get through the ice here today to catch a fish.
206:56
Speaker A
I chose a spot I figured would be around 30 ft deep, which is a good depth for ice fishing lake trout. The chisel worked better than I expected. It was still hard work though, but thanks to the deep insulating layer of snow, the
207:09
Speaker A
ice wasn't as thick as I thought it would be. [snorts] This is what I have to fish with here.
207:17
Speaker A
It's a tube jig. It's got a weighted hook in it, jig head, a small spoon, and a large spoon. All I have is this stick and this line here. This is a Berkeley trailine 20 lb fluorocarbon.
207:41
Speaker A
I tied on a lure and dropped my line. I was happy to see it was the right depth range for lake trout and relieved I didn't need to chip another hole.
207:57
Speaker A
Well, we got a pretty heavy snow falling right now. The weather couldn't make up its mind.
208:07
Speaker A
Sun, clouds, snow, wind, calm, then sun again. Rapidly changing barometric pressure isn't ideal for fishing, but quitting wasn't an option either.
208:25
Speaker A
Eventually, I moved further up the lake near the base of a Narrows where I suspected [music] there might be some current.
208:38
Speaker A
[music] After chiseling through the ice again, I fished for hours. Yeah, it's [music] just after noon right now. Morning bite windows over. I don't know what the weather's going to do.
208:56
Speaker A
Looks like some pretty scary looking weather moving in here, but we have sun over here. So, I don't know. We might get some heavy snow. Tough to say, but I should probably cut my losses here with fishing and head back to the shelter.
209:10
Speaker A
[music] Maybe eat some of the food I did bring and go look for rabbit sign and come back and fish in the evening. I'll give it another 15 20 here though.
209:27
Speaker A
Oh yeah. Oh. Oh. Yeah. Woo. [cheering] At the 11th hour. Oh, man. And my hook just came out of it too.
209:48
Speaker A
Yes. Woo. Well, I am glad I never gave up. That's pretty close to uh calling it quits.
210:00
Speaker A
That's pretty good. chiseled through the ice with a pole with a knife on it and just caught this with what I could find in my survival kit. That is a good amount of food. That's probably jeez probably at least 3 lb.
210:33
Speaker A
[music] So, uh, I decided that, uh, I'm going to eat my lake trout now. Give myself, um, a little bit more energy. I haven't eaten anything since, you know, before I even started riding out to this general area yesterday on my sled. So, I've
210:53
Speaker A
been, you know, I've gone jeez, let's see, probably about 34 hours without a bite to eat. The only way to cook a fish like this is to boil it. So, I don't have any seasoning. And believe it or
211:05
Speaker A
not, when you're this hungry, it doesn't taste bad. Just boiled fish stew and you don't lose any of the nutrients. [music] So, that's how I'm going to cook this thing. I'm basically just going to cut it up and boil it in chunks and just eat
211:17
Speaker A
[music] those chunks and drink all the water. After this, it'll be cedar tea, which is delicious.
211:26
Speaker A
And it's loaded full of vitamin C. So that's how you can uh prevent getting scurvy is by making tea out of cedar needles. Ted and I drank a lot of that every day on alone and I'll cook the head and everything.
211:48
Speaker A
The head all fall apart and I'll eat the brains and the cheek and uh it'll add nutrients to the broth as well.
212:13
Speaker A
A lot of fat in the water actually, which is great. Look at that. Freaking delicious. That's really good.
212:28
Speaker A
Eat all the skin. Look at this. Huge chunks of meat coming right off it.
212:35
Speaker A
When I was not alone, I found the taste for like fish brains and stuff.
212:44
Speaker A
Let's try this broth. fishy. I saved a little trout for later, strapped on my snowshoes, and headed into the bush with snare wire in hand, hoping to find some rabbit sign.
213:11
Speaker A
The winter woods were beautiful and I covered a lot of ground in a wide loop.
213:16
Speaker A
Beautiful walk through the woods. Only thing is there's no rabbit sign anywhere. Sometimes when clumps of snow fall off the trees and lands on the ground, it can look like uh rabbit prints, but it's not. So, I'm looking
213:29
Speaker A
for like some established trails. And unfortunately, I've already walked really far. Um, good thing about the winter is that you can just follow your footprints back as long as they don't get blown over, snowed over.
213:41
Speaker A
You know, it's it's good to have snares out because they're working for you when you're not. Whereas fishing, I need to sit there and actively jig. But in this area, there's a food source that takes relatively small amount of energy um
213:56
Speaker A
right off my campsite. So, I don't know if really walking this far to look for rabbit signs makes sense, but I've made it this far and I'm going to continue going for it. You never know. Might be just around the next corner.
214:13
Speaker A
[music] [sighs] We got something here. They're old, but they look like rabbit prints. Well, this is the best lead I have yet. The bay is right there. I can see it. I kind of wanted to bust out into the opening there and see the
214:29
Speaker A
beautiful sunset, but looks like we have some rabbit prints here. So, I think the best bet right now is to follow.
214:37
Speaker A
Definitely old, though. [music] I saw some prints, but it turned out to be a Martin.
214:52
Speaker A
Anyways, maybe I should head back. Call this a bust. I really wanted to try snaring some rabbits out here, man. But I guess that's how she goes.
215:15
Speaker A
[music] [music] [music] I've just been drinking straight lake water. Just from the icehole that's out a ways.
216:12
Speaker A
It's a winter. Highly doubt I'm going to get jardia. Dump all this panic powder mix in here.
216:24
Speaker A
So, this is basically baking powder, little salt, and flour. [music] [music] and we'll call it a a good golden brown.
216:51
Speaker A
I just finished cooking the banic and I went to get up just to throw some more wood on the fire and I had a crazy bad leg spasm.
217:02
Speaker A
I just got some cedar tea on the fire. I'm going to uh drink all that and just basically try to hydrate myself before going to bed because um those spasms. Oh my god. I like you're you're writhing in
217:14
Speaker A
pain. Like screaming in pain. I just have to like try to meditate for it to pass which is not easy. Well, I think I'm going to call it a night though.
217:24
Speaker A
Finish up the cedar tea and uh fall asleep. snowed last night quite a bit. Looks cold out there.
217:42
Speaker A
I woke up to snow dumping on my face, so I tucked deeper into my shelter. And uh yeah, fortunately the bow roof I put on yesterday made all the difference. And I'm not covered in snow. I'm quite protected, so that's good.
217:58
Speaker A
Um, [clears throat] I probably should have gotten up a while ago, but I've just lied here all snuggly like.
218:07
Speaker A
[groaning] So, I'm going to head out there. See if I can catch something. Well, here's the hole I chiseled yesterday.
218:27
Speaker A
Wow. Must have been cold last night. [sighs] Oh man, it's got to be below minus 20 out this morning. Like easily I was feeling the cold coming through my sleeping bag and my hands had just been freezing all
218:57
Speaker A
morning. drinking right from the source. [snorts] [panting] Walking over to an old Scadoo trail, I found some old ice fishing holes that had frozen over. I decided to chisel here because I knew the ice would be thinner and easier for me to get
219:37
Speaker A
through. Well, I set this on like this. If I see it down, [music] that means there's a fish on there.
220:25
Speaker A
That took a lot of energy. Well, I've been out here for 3 hours and 15 minutes. Have not even gotten a bite.
220:50
Speaker A
Oh, I'm so hungry. It's a not a nice feeling. Well, I think that just about does it for me here.
221:04
Speaker A
Maybe I'll come back and try a little later, but pretty discouraging. This is a fairly realistic sort of broken down in the middle of nowhere scenario.
221:19
Speaker A
Really what I would do, I'd maybe have to spend one night in the bush and then I'd probably walk out unless I was so far that there was no point.
221:34
Speaker A
But if you're so far away that there's no point, you got to do this and wait for someone to get you. Nowadays, having some sort of satellite communication device, um, you know, even a radio or whatever, it's definitely the way to go.
221:49
Speaker A
Well, hopefully this gives me the energy to cut wood cuz that's important. [music] Hello, cedar tree. Do you mind if I take a couple of your needles to make a sweet delicious vitamin C rich tea? Oh, they're leaves.
222:38
Speaker A
They're not needles. Well, I apologize. That's crazy. These these are I always thought they were needles.
222:45
Speaker A
Thank you. Never know what you can learn from a cedar tree in the wilder.
222:59
Speaker A
[music] Honestly, the hydration has been my biggest challenge. Like, my piss is just like dark freaking yellow. I don't understand. I thought I've been drinking enough. Um, and I had such a bad spasm from dehydration last night that I
223:24
Speaker A
actually pulled a muscle like just a minor pull, but I can tell, which is I don't think ever happened to me before.
223:35
Speaker A
Cedar teeth. [music] Tomorrow morning I'm basically going to head out of here. So I think you know it's been a successful trip. I managed to build a shelter, keep fire going, get some food. Sometimes it's just luck of
224:12
Speaker A
the draw, like not seeing any rabbits, not catching more fish, and having to go hungry. But definitely I would have been able to survive out here. I just got a satellite text from Tori um saying that uh yesterday evening it was -27.
224:28
Speaker A
Uh this morning when I woke up it was - 31. So I'm dealing with some pretty cold temperatures. Not the uh the depths of the polar vortex that we had about a week ago, but very very cold temperatures. So, I'm doing okay out
224:43
Speaker A
here. That's it for me. Very chilly chilly sleep for me last night. Oh man, I don't think I really slept actually. Just cold getting [music] through. I don't know if my sleeping bag's damp or if it was like
225:09
Speaker A
minus 40 out, but I barely slept. Hopefully my snowmobile starts. Well, my machine started, which was awesome. And uh as soon as it turned on, the temperature came up -27 on the dash.
225:34
Speaker A
Uh which means, you know, probably about -35 last night. Uh anyways, um yeah, that's I'm getting out of here. [laughter] [music] Not long after surviving my survival stint at minus40, I was on the move again. And this time, I was heading
226:12
Speaker A
north with my brother Ted. Before long, we were snowmmoiling across the same lake my cabin sits on. But we weren't headed for the cabin this time. We were going back to the same chain of lakes Ted and I had canoeed into the spring
226:26
Speaker A
before. Only now the country was buried under snow and ice. Ted, stop. Stop. Stop go stop.
226:33
Speaker A
With our hot tent and gear and tow, the plan was to spend a week in the bush, riding old portage trails, exploring trout lakes, and seeing what this place looked like in winter. Hopefully with a few nice trout [music] pulled through
226:46
Speaker A
the ice along the way. We made it. Well, this is the lake we are trying to get to, and it's not pitch black, but we got to go find a campsite.
226:57
Speaker A
We've actually been here canoeing before into this lake, so we think we have a decent idea where a spot is. We made steady progress until the final bank riding up onto our campsite. I stopped a little short at the top, and Ted had to
227:12
Speaker A
stop midhill behind me and buried his sled in deep snow. I didn't realize you were stopping there. I don't know why. You told me you were going to.
227:22
Speaker A
Well, I I always said I was going to pull up to the right, so I thought you going to pull up to the left of me.
227:26
Speaker A
Yeah, I should have pulled up there. Yeah, all good, buddy. Camp went up in the dark.
227:45
Speaker A
Nice. All right. So once these legs are on Yes. Oh, okay. course I guess that way.
228:45
Speaker A
Good morning. Didn't get to bed till 1:30 in the morning because after we got set up, we got a fire going in the wood stove. We realized that this new stove wasn't burnt off enough. When you get a
228:56
Speaker A
new wood stove, you have to light a fire in them outdoors and just burn off the coating that they put on the outside of the stove uh because it really smells.
229:04
Speaker A
It's like a nasty oil burning smell. You do not want to breathe that in.
229:13
Speaker A
So, yeah, just trying to burn off the stove here. Uh, getting the machine started up, getting my one toboggan loaded with all the like survival gear and fishing gear we're going to need when we're away from camp. Ted's buzzing
229:26
Speaker A
up a little more wood, and then we're out of here. We rode to a nearby part of the lake where we'd had luck on a canoe trip there in the spring.
229:41
Speaker A
She's just a little kid with an old. After a while, we tried another spot.
229:58
Speaker A
What's around the corner? More fishing around there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Maybe we go try in the narrows.
230:05
Speaker A
I mean, maybe they're out at 60, though. Maybe they're not in this shallow right now. You know what I think it is? I'm going to tell you exactly what it is.
230:13
Speaker A
Why nothing's biting. Yesterday, blue skies, high pressure. Today, boom, low pressure. Every time you get a switch in barometric pressure like that, the bite shuts down for a bit and it's way harder. Uh, I think now what we're going
230:27
Speaker A
to do in this white out snowstorm is we're going to go look for some firewood and then we're going to try fishing uh closer to camp. But yeah, we're a little disappointed here on our first day. You know, no luck. So, yeah, pretty
230:39
Speaker A
concerning and disappointing. Hopefully, we haven't come all this way uh to catch nothing but uh cold, you know.
230:50
Speaker A
Heat. Heat. North. He is pretty awesome, man. He's such a good dog. North, are you a good boy?
231:32
Speaker A
By late afternoon, we headed back towards camp. Well, maybe we should call it. Yeah, let's call it.
231:39
Speaker A
Unfortunately, might have gotten some bites, though. That's promising. Would you want to do this together?
232:08
Speaker A
Pretty cool. Well, that is all she wrote for today. Uh Ted and I just hung out, chatted a bit. Now I got my bed laid out and uh we're looking to get up and uh fish hard tomorrow. Tomorrow we are going for
232:30
Speaker A
brook trout or speckled trout. Anyways, going to turn in and uh saw some logs.
233:14
Speaker A
So, we're doing a little exploring here, trying to get into what we think is a good brook trout lake. And we don't know if there's going to be a trail broken into there or not. Um, I have a print
233:25
Speaker A
map, but I'm just using this uh GPS map app on my phone as well.
233:47
Speaker A
It snowed [music] quite a bit last night clearly and it warmed up and the slush is bad. I'm actually towing a pretty heavy sled because I brought the pop-up shelter and a bunch of gear. So, I'm having to pin it through like deep slush
233:59
Speaker A
here on this lake. And we've come to the end where we were hoping there'd be a trail broke into this little uh secret brook trout lake we're trying to get into, but it looks like there's nothing here. I see maybe one old sled track
234:12
Speaker A
that might have attempted. Uh and then we got some sketchy conditions with a swamp and potentially some current out here. So yeah, I'm thinking maybe this is a nogo and we'll try to get in via another lake through the bush. So
234:25
Speaker A
essentially I'm just going to turn around. Looks like there's a creek coming in there.
234:47
Speaker A
Okay, 10. Watch out. What the? My sled, my toboggan's pushing me. Well, things are going good on this other trail, but we're coming down a steep downhill and North was running beside Ted's sled, and Ted looked over at North for a second, went off the
235:03
Speaker A
trail into a soft patch and gently crashed into a tree. So, he's stuck pretty good there. Uh, all is well except his ski is bent up like 90° there. So, we're a little worried about that. Uh, but I think we could winch it
235:21
Speaker A
out with my machine. So, here is the winch now that I've mounted to the back.
235:27
Speaker A
And then Ted has tied off the machine to the front. And he's tied that off to the tree. And that way, uh, when I go to winch Ted out, it won't pull my machine. My machine will be tied off to the tree.
235:48
Speaker A
So, do I do it to the bumper or can you do it to the hitch? I don't think so. Eh, all my fault going in the stone snap out.
236:02
Speaker A
Yeah, maybe off the trail. Yeah. Sorry, buddy. Somebody's fault. witch. Do you want to leave it connected and drive forward a smidge?
236:55
Speaker A
All right, and we're out. Thank God for the winch. That would have been a much crappier process without it.
237:04
Speaker A
Well, it's looking like this mission is a bit of a bust and we're starting to feel anxiety because like we haven't caught any fish yet and we've been out here for quite some time now. But we're actually kind of having a blast other
237:13
Speaker A
than that. Uh we're really worked up a sweat today though because of getting unstuck and walking up and down that hill. It's just very uncomfortable sweating so much. Um, it looks like this mission is a bust and we can't get into
237:25
Speaker A
this little secret back brook trout lake um without, you know, just taking multiple days and getting stuck a thousand times. So, now we're on the fence. Where do we go? Like, you know, do we go back and try our spots from
237:40
Speaker A
yesterday or do we try somewhere closer to camp and uh or do we take a long rip to another brookie lake? I don't know.
237:47
Speaker A
But uh what do you say? You know, I feel it could all work out perfectly. We'll be like, you know what? If we didn't do that and this hadn't happened, we wouldn't have caught the world record, right? But that being said, as of now,
238:03
Speaker A
there is an area of fish on the ice for old Jim and Ted. Go to Upper M.
238:15
Speaker A
Perfect, bud. 18 ft deep here. That one will be perfect. Oh, got one. Yeah.
238:33
Speaker A
Yeah. Ted's on the board. Oh, I lost it. You lost it? I lost it.
238:41
Speaker A
Oh, no. What happened? No Jim. Well, Ted just lost one right at the hole.
238:52
Speaker A
[panting] So, there's fish here. Here we go, baby. Yeah, baby. [laughter] Woo. Nice size.
239:19
Speaker A
Great eating size. All right, that is a nice fish. That might be a little shore lunch. Hey, isn't that beautiful? So, that is a splake or a speckled [music] lake because it's a hybrid between a speckled trout and a
239:33
Speaker A
lake trout. Awesome. That island there would be good. See that hill coming down. After a bit more fishing, that's when my rod got ripped straight down the hole. I just lost my entire rod down the hole. I was about to move and I saw the whole
239:59
Speaker A
the thing pulled and I had this little bracket holding my rod. Ted, show me the bracket. And the whole fish pul the fish pulled the whole rod down the hole. God damn it. We should have been paying attention. We were blabbing. Lost a rod.
240:12
Speaker A
Fortunately, it was the shittiest rod we had. Unreal. Well, I'm going to try to freeze this in now after what happened. And I have a one that's a little more lowlying. We're about to move. And now I'm just like
240:26
Speaker A
maybe we should not move. We tried one more spot on that lake with no luck before moving through a chain of beaver ponds.
240:53
Speaker A
What's the weather supposed to be like tomorrow? Feel like pretty warm, dude. Overcast still. I don't know.
241:03
Speaker A
Yep. Yep. Ted's got one. Take your time. Take your time. Don't reel against your drag. No. Let it run. Let it run out.
241:13
Speaker A
Oh, it's big. Yes, Ted. Yes, Ted's fighting one. Come in close and try to together the hole here.
241:35
Speaker A
Yes, [laughter] buddy. It's a beauty. Beauty. Yeah. Look at that. That's a great fish, baby.
241:46
Speaker A
Laker. Last second of the day. Yes. [laughter] All right. Came back. This is where we started fishing yesterday. So, you know, gave it another shot.
242:01
Speaker A
Amazing. Laker, baby. Laker. Laker. All right, Ted. Cheers, buddy. Cheers. Sunny times. Nice last minute lake trout.
242:46
Speaker A
Cheers. Cheers, man. Definitely. They definitely put on try some fresh [music] splake. Falls right off.
243:18
Speaker A
Precooked chicken fajitas with onion and red peppers. I'm just going to put it into the water. Let the water heat up.
243:52
Speaker A
Damn it. Little spill. Little spill. So Ted and I are on another mission here. And uh we are coming through an area where there's a lot of current.
244:26
Speaker A
We've been here by canoe again. And um looks like somebody else has made it through here. So hopefully they have more knowledge of the area than us and we can follow their trail. What do you think, North? You fired up? Anyways, we
244:37
Speaker A
got to go get on some fish. See how I went off the trail there at the beginning? The snow's not deep, but you just have to like pin it.
245:08
Speaker A
Oh. Hey, Ted. Stop. Ted, stop. Stop. Stop. Hey, come help. [music] I was going to walk there. I don't want to park there.
245:33
Speaker A
Ready? One. One two three. One, two, three. Okay. You don't want to go out here, though.
245:51
Speaker A
Yeah. Reverse to where I am and go up. Why? Because it's an easier abrupt turn. This is going to keep trying to burst over there. This is going to keep trying to roll you.
246:02
Speaker A
Buddy, just help me move this. Well, uh, there was a really tight turn up this hill to avoid some open water and rolled my machine. So, Ted came in to help me get it fixed.
246:22
Speaker A
One more. Shoot. Heat. Heat. [music] Well, here we go. We made it. Yes. This is this beautiful big lake just [music] island studded everywhere and bit of a mission with me tipping my machine there. um trying to do too tight of a
247:15
Speaker A
corner and uh but we got out of that pretty quick and we just rode through some beautiful country just canyons [music] and a rushing current few sketchy ice areas we had to kind of skirt and we got here and we're looking
247:29
Speaker A
forward to [music] getting some lines in the water and seeing what we could catch. But Ted crashed his drone. Um so he's all bummed out [music] because that's like you know it's a ride to get here and we want to hit that morning
247:40
Speaker A
bite window. Now he's got to go searching [music] for his drone in the woods. The poor guy.
247:48
Speaker A
Battery 0%. Oh man, I thought I had 75% battery yesterday. Looks like it's over here.
248:16
Speaker A
Ted found his drone. She's like, I'm like right on top of it and it's right there in the snow just like dude. So when you hit the noise thing and I was at the sled, I swear I heard a
248:26
Speaker A
beep. I thought it was coming from your remote over here. It's not very loud. It's just like And it was it was like has snow in the mic.
248:33
Speaker A
So it's like Yeah. So I heard that beep. I should have known. Heat. Heat.
249:01
Speaker A
Here we go. Here we go. Yes. Laker. Lake trout. Leave it. Nice one. Nice little laker here. But I'm going to let this guy swim.
249:46
Speaker A
Back he goes. Too small. And it those are uh native species too. Eh. Yeah.
249:57
Speaker A
How was nothing hitting? Hard to believe that none of these minnows are getting any bites, eh?
250:50
Speaker A
All right. Is it burnt? I don't know. Oh, it's always a guess when you cook it from frozen in tin foil. I don't know if I've ever done this.
251:00
Speaker A
Fire out, that's for sure. Yeah, that's looking pretty good, Ted. It's perfect. Look at that. Nice job, Ted.
251:12
Speaker A
That's epic. Pretty tender, eh? It's like cooked like absolutely perfectly. Mhm. Look at that.
251:27
Speaker A
When you cook trout whole like this in tin foil, you're basically baking it and you wait for nothing.
252:09
Speaker A
Oh, here we go, buddy. Take your time. Yeah, it's a nice one. That's a good keep, eh?
252:28
Speaker A
Nice one. Yes. Awesome. Fish. Fish on. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. All right. There we go. Okay. There's a nice little guy.
253:19
Speaker A
Oh yeah. Yes buddy. Woo. Jig him out of there with the big William spoon.
253:41
Speaker A
Look at that guy. Drop that back down the hole. And then that puts scent as it slowly sinks all through the water column.
254:04
Speaker A
After slower days, that steady action felt earned. Well, the sun just came up and we have a beautiful sunrise out there. Red sky morning sailor take warning. Not sure what to make of it, but it sure is beautiful.
255:11
Speaker A
[screaming] Well, I was waiting for Ted and I stopped by some uh holes not too far from camp. Stopped right in deep slush and couldn't get going cuz I'm pulling the uh tobogen there. We had to take a
255:30
Speaker A
extra couple minutes for Ted to pull me out. One. Okay. Two. Three. Yeah. Yeah, we made it into the lake. Found the trail.
256:28
Speaker A
That's like 8 ft deep there. Isn't that crazy? Right. Oh. Oh, snag. Stuck on a branch down here.
256:48
Speaker A
Oh, yes. Well, it looks like that's all she wrote for this like really far rip. I had some uh local knowledge that uh people have caught in some tanks in this lake. But uh yeah, um sometimes I guess the stars
257:06
Speaker A
just don't align. Usually I do better with trout fishing and uh I guess a lot of it can just be chocked up to luck.
257:13
Speaker A
But uh the bite slowed right down here at midday. So anyways, we're going to uh load up and uh ride back to um another lake that's a couple lakes down from where we're camped. See if we can fish
257:26
Speaker A
there and and hit it when the bite starts picking back up. [music] [music] Heat.
257:53
Speaker A
[music] [music] Heat. [music] Well, we're burning daylight here. No bites. Uh so we're going to move on.
258:40
Speaker A
Couldn't be a better day. This is like we're getting into [music] the glory days of winter here. Late February, early March, and this feels like that kind of day for sure.
258:55
Speaker A
[music] Just got bites. Yeah. Oh, lake trout. Laker. Glad I got one. There we go. Laker.
259:42
Speaker A
Okay, it's our new spot. This is our last chance for the trip to catch something. So, probably not going to fish tomorrow morning. Probably just peel out of here. So, let's see if we can't get one on the ice.
260:07
Speaker A
Well, let's get out of here. All right. Sometimes you do everything reasonably well and it just doesn't happen.
260:27
Speaker A
[music] [music] During that trip with Ted, we'd scouted a key trail, one I knew was going to be a major piece [music] of what was coming next. And what was coming next was a big one.
260:53
Speaker A
This winter, my [music] family and I set out on an ambitious journey to travel 500 km by snowmobile [music] from our front door in Magnettoan, Ontario, all the way to our remote [music] cabin in Northern Ontario's Al country.
261:10
Speaker A
But the adventure wasn't [music] easy. Along the way, we dealt with long days, rough trails, changing weather, trailside repairs, and even a medical scare. [music] Through it all, we were driven by one goal, to link our home and our cabin by
261:26
Speaker A
snowmobile and experience the land between them from a completely [music] different perspective. This is the story of our adventure.
261:42
Speaker A
Well, here we go, baby. We are about to jump off on a 16-day trip, the whole family. We got everything loaded onto our two toboggins that we're going to need for this 500 km journey right from our house here in Magneettoon, Ontario,
261:58
Speaker A
all the way to our remote off-grid cabin [music] in northern Ontario's Al region, which is northwest of Elliot Lake. So, we have 500 km. We're going to do it in 7 days. We're going to be sleeping in rustic [music] cabins nestled into the
262:13
Speaker A
back country along the way and winter camping with our hot tent and wood stove. And then we're going to stay at our cabin for about 8 days on top of that. So, we have an epic adventure.
262:23
Speaker A
Planning that went into this trip was substantial. Tori and I had a custom kid carrier [music] built for Wesley, which we just put on.
262:30
Speaker A
There you go. I could fit my whole backpack probably in there. It's perfect. Feeling a little nervous bringing the kids out here, but I think it should be an absolute blast. And I can't wait to start moving. There he is.
262:42
Speaker A
Here we go. By noon, we were finally on our way. It was still cold, but a beautiful day, and it felt good to be moving. But we had a long way to go and we're still feeling a little nervous.
263:08
Speaker A
Well, big beautiful lake road here on a long winding narrow bush trail that actually Tori and I have never ridden before. And after we pass this lake, we're actually heading into a pretty remote area for a good portion of the
263:22
Speaker A
trip. We're behind schedule, but the last stretch is lake riding. Um, we're not ex We don't exactly have a ton of light. Hey, Tor.
263:32
Speaker A
Well, it's only 3:30. Soon, the tight bush trail wo us through the forest, taking us into a remote area with little development. [music] Which way do we go? That way or that way?
264:09
Speaker A
600 to 509 to 510. 600. [music] Okay. Navigating. [music] We pushed on until we reached the luring area where we navigated across a large frozen lake to find our first cabin [music] with relative ease.
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Speaker A
[music] Well, let's go check this place out. Is already checking it out for us, making sure it's all good.
264:40
Speaker A
Here we go. Well, we made it to our first cabin and in pretty good time, too, which feels great. We've got a nice fire going in the wood stove. Full kitchen, electricity. Um, so we're doing pretty good actually. We're I'm pretty
264:53
Speaker A
proud of ourselves. Next, we're going to have a nice meal and just enjoy hanging out in this beautiful spot. Cozy and warm, we enjoyed a delicious meal prepared by Tori.
265:05
Speaker A
That night, Tori noticed that Wesley's stomach around his G ttube looked infected. He just finished a cycle of antibiotics because of it [music] and it had looked fine before we left. Now we were a little worried it hadn't fully
265:20
Speaker A
healed. After breakfast, the daily chore of packing up, hauling bags to the tobogen, [music] and meticulously loading and strapping everything down for another long day of travel began.
265:41
Speaker A
Wesley's infection looked worse, though he didn't seem to be in any discomfort yet. Snug as a bug.
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Speaker A
So, while Tori had reception, she took a moment to email his doctor. Soon, Tori and I said goodbye to the cozy cabin and headed towards the French River.
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Speaker A
The trail took us through a long stretch of bush and across a large [music] desolate lake.
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Speaker A
[music] After crossing the lake, we stopped for lunch. Look at that. Fire that into you, bud. I uh prepared a bunch of meals. I prepared all of our meals before this. You know, some yummy yummy meals. But the problem
266:40
Speaker A
is I am about 8 weeks pregnant and in the peak morning sickness. [music] Uh I'm feeling pretty nauseous majority of the time. So while they eat burritos, I'm going to eat boiled egg, clementine [music] and maybe a pepper. See if I can stomach
267:00
Speaker A
that. We tried to shake the worry of Wesley's infection. while keeping focused [music] on the trail ahead. Well, we are taking a little break here at the side of the trail. Um Wesley's getting some food.
267:11
Speaker A
Huiey's getting some hot chocolate. We still have what 65 km to go today. Yeah.
267:17
Speaker A
Yeah. So, we or more. 30, I guess. Yeah. So, we've done 30. So, we're about a third of the way there, but the trails are pretty good. Next part, we're going to be on what's, you know, more or less
267:26
Speaker A
a road in the summer. So, we should be able to go a little bit faster. He's doing good out here, buns. Don't be so stressed out.
267:34
Speaker A
[gasps] Yeah. See, he's doing good, buddy. The route wound under the highway and along a narrow, beautiful stretch of trail.
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Speaker A
When Tori got reception again, the doctor confirmed Wesley needed another cycle of antibiotics. Amanda speaking.
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Speaker A
Hello. Could I um just get your fax number for a prescription? Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so the fax number. Are you ready?
268:25
Speaker A
Yes. Luckily, the prescription could be sent to a pharmacy not far from our destination that night.
268:33
Speaker A
And this might be a ridiculous question. Do you guys deliver prescriptions? We do. We'd have to set something up for that, but yeah, we do.
268:42
Speaker A
Okay. Well, Wesley had an abscess in his G ttube and he got a round of antibiotics and it cleared right up, but now it started coming back. So Tori noticed it this morning and was able to talk to his
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Speaker A
contact at Sick Kids that said, "Oh yeah, sometimes you need two rounds of antibiotics." So we were able to get reception and rendevu with Sick Kids and a a a small pharmacy in a town where we're going to be staying close to that
269:09
Speaker A
can potentially deliver it to our Airbnb. We crossed the Pickarole River Bridge, followed by a bridge over a branch of the French River, a spot we had paddled under as a family before.
269:42
Speaker A
More here. No, we have to stop here. Stop and we're home. You are here.
269:53
Speaker A
Right there, bud. How much longer, Tori? Are we going to make it to the drugstore?
269:58
Speaker A
I hope so. We have to. So, let's go. All right. Oh thanks honey. Slowly, the forest thinned into farmland, and we cut across a road onto a trail that led to Alban, a small town where the pharmacy was located. The
270:24
Speaker A
pharmacy, however, was along a two-lane highway that was just bare ashall and was unsafe to travel with our snowmobiles and toboggin.
270:33
Speaker A
Hello. Um, I called earlier in regards to uh an a prescription for an antibiotic for my son, Wesley.
270:41
Speaker A
Okay, we [music] were just trying to figure out how we would get the prescription just because we are snowmmoiling and we don't have a vehicle. Um, but we are staying in Albin tonight and we were hoping we could potentially get it
270:52
Speaker A
delivered. Oh, no. No, our delivery guy already came and gone. Okay. Okay. So, we'll have to figure out how to get up there.
271:02
Speaker A
Well, it's looking like we're going to have to drive a ways out of our way on roads to try to get uh Wesley's medicine, but maybe it'll work out. So hopefully we don't overheat.
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Speaker A
But fortunately, just as time was running out, our Airbnb host happened to drive by and recognized it. She gave Tori a ride to the pharmacy while I turned the machines and tobogans around.
271:26
Speaker A
Well, that was crazy. Couldn't really film it cuz it all happened so fast. But the host, the Airbnb cabin we have tonight recognized us and gave Tori a list. We got Wesley's medicine and all is well. So now we're going to ride the
271:40
Speaker A
trails, jump on a road. Should be at our cabin in about 10 minutes. Here we go.
271:44
Speaker A
What are the odds? She's just driving by while we're sitting here waiting. Like not while I'm already on the way or after we left or you know what I mean?
271:51
Speaker A
Like with the medicine in hand, all was well and we were back on track.
271:57
Speaker A
By the end of the day, we traveled 95 km in about 5 hours, which was roughly the average time we needed to travel each day of the trip.
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Speaker A
That night, our accommodations weren't a traditional cabin, but a [music] rustic timber A-frame with spectacular views of the French River. Well, we made it. Bit of a harrowing day in the end. We're looking right out over the French River.
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Speaker A
[music] A little bit of snow falling and a super cool A-frame here to call our home for the night. Look at this. It's north.
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Speaker A
Amazing. Well, we're here. We did it. We settled in and I enjoyed a moose steak for dinner and later jumped in the hot tub with Huie to reflect on the day.
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Speaker A
Look. Good job. How beautiful is it? Oh, wow. Oh my god, that's so beautiful, buddy.
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Speaker A
The following day, we would need to push onward and make it all the way to the Sbury area, ready for whatever challenges the trail would throw at us next.
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Speaker A
Waking up in the loft of the A-frame was amazing. You're immediately greeted with a beautiful view, we made time for bacon and eggs, and I enjoyed my coffee while looking out over the French River.
273:30
Speaker A
Relieved that it was clear that Wesley's infection was already improving. As usual, we packed up and before too long, we said goodbye to the A-frame. We're back on the trail.
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Speaker A
The day was snowy and beautiful, but it quickly became clear that progress would be slower than expected. expected.
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Speaker A
We're here. What lake are we on? Trout Lake. [sighs] 24 km. What? We've only gone 24 km today.
274:36
Speaker A
How is that possible? I guess maybe we're stopping too much. I don't know. I was like, we're making such great time. We're going so fast. How is that even possible? We've only made it 24 km.
274:46
Speaker A
I don't know. It doesn't make any sense. No, it doesn't. We haven't been stopping that much.
274:51
Speaker A
It's got to be wrong. It's not. It's doing the math for us. I'm upset about it.
274:57
Speaker A
We got to stop stopping. We got to stop. We just have to go. We got to go.
275:02
Speaker A
Traveling in low gear with the heavy loads and making fairly frequent stops to make sure the kids were happy meant we were moving slower than we'd hoped.
275:15
Speaker A
Got to give Wesley his antibiotics. And well, that's a bit of a pit stop. We would have liked to have made it further today, but uh we had to get Wesley's medicine and get some food in us. So,
275:32
Speaker A
pushing on a long distance, we began nearing Sudbury and started seeing more homes and roads.
275:42
Speaker A
Our cabin for the night was on Long Lake near Kivy Park, part of Greater Sudbury, but with a cottage country-like feel.
276:00
Speaker A
A snowy day in Sudbury. Being in a town that night had its perks. We ordered pizza, watched a movie, and enjoyed a relaxing evening together. Despite another relatively long day of travel, everything had gone pretty smoothly this day. Unfortunately,
276:20
Speaker A
that wouldn't always be the case in the days to come. So, yeah, uh this is this is a this is not an easy adventure with the kids or even without the kids, but we're doing it. And yesterday I feel like we really
276:36
Speaker A
came together and sort of like rallied as a family and worked as a team and and pushed through. Yeah. Family.
276:44
Speaker A
Really adorable in there. Feeling regenerated and refreshed and ready to just get out there and give her. So, it's going to be another good day.
276:53
Speaker A
Give her. Headed towards the Espanola area. We [music] had another long day ahead. Tori packed up inside and got the kids ready while I handled the machines outside, turning everything around, rehitching the tobogans and loading gear. [music] Getting back to the trail turned out to
277:11
Speaker A
be a bit of a gong show. The road [music] was bare ashalt and the machines pulling heavy tobogans couldn't really turn onto it properly. Cars had to stop on the road and my dog jumped out. But we got back to the trail which was a lot
277:27
Speaker A
of effort even though it was just a short distance away. Soon we crossed a populated stretch of Long Lake and were back in remote country.
277:39
Speaker A
The trail became more challenging with some steep sections. At one point I rounded a corner and found a very steep hill ahead. I managed to get up, but when I went back to help Tori, she was stuck near the top.
278:06
Speaker A
It's a really steep hill and when I hit the gas, my skis just fly right up.
278:13
Speaker A
I can't go any further. As she tried to reposition and reverse, the weight of the toboggan started pulling her sled backwards and pulled her all the way down the hill until the toboggan jack knifed off the trailer and her machine
278:25
Speaker A
nearly tipped. It's still under. I can't switch it. Are you hurt? Are you hurt?
278:35
Speaker A
No, I'm not hurt. It's okay. Stop. Okay, we're going to need to detach the toboggan.
278:45
Speaker A
Okay, this might have broken. Oh, didn't break. Sweet. This hill scares the [ __ ] out of me.
278:53
Speaker A
Yeah, you got to you got to boom and just [ __ ] get it with speed, you know.
278:57
Speaker A
I'm mostly scared cuz Wesley's on the back though. Yeah, I know. Next time I'll stop and do it for you. We rided the machine, detached the toboggan, and hauled it back onto the trail by hand.
279:11
Speaker A
Then we got the sled unstuck. A couple riders that had passed us during the debacle actually waited at the top of the hill with Hudson and North just in case, which was very nice.
279:28
Speaker A
Just uh my kid and my dog. Hey, my kid and my dog are at the top of the hill.
279:33
Speaker A
Okay. So, if you rip off, are you good? All right. Ready? Well, I'm going to give her and uh North are at the top there. Tori carried Wesley up the hill while I hooked the toboggan back up and took another run at
279:50
Speaker A
it. Well, all is well. that ends well. But that got a little sketchy and uh to be honest with you, I probably should have foreseen that happening, but Tori thought, well, she'd let the machine roll back a bit. So, it was a little bit
280:16
Speaker A
of a scary moment, but everybody's okay. That was terrifying. I hope there's not another hill. I'm going to knock [snorts] on this tree.
280:26
Speaker A
[sighs] [music] [music] Later that day, we pulled out onto the massive expanse of Lake Pinache and stopped for lunch. [music] I'd always wanted to see this lake, which is along the north side of Kani Provincial Park, and it did not
280:58
Speaker A
disappoint. Pizza. It's a pizza party out here in the lake. [music] [music] A local with the camp on the lake passed us and stopped to chat for a bit while we ate.
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Speaker A
[music] That night, we reached our cabin, which sat right on the water at a lodge. We had views across the lake toward a line of cliffs.
281:47
Speaker A
Being the offse, we [music] had the whole place to ourselves, and there was even a hot tub. By that point on the adventure, we felt like we needed a break. So, we decided we'd [music] stay there for two nights before continuing
281:59
Speaker A
on. Okay, we are having oatmeal this morning to speed things up. Uh, it's a beautiful day. We're sitting around minus 25 here.
282:16
Speaker A
Not long after getting up, we checked the weather forecast and what we saw was concerning. A stretch of warm weather was coming with heavy rain to boot.
282:27
Speaker A
[music] Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday. We have a week [music] of 9 days of temperatures above freezing.
282:37
Speaker A
Our whole journey relied on good ice conditions. And thawing temperatures can naturally weaken ice, especially near shorelines and around moving water. So Tori and I went over the maps and came up with a new plan.
282:53
Speaker A
Maybe we just go straight to our cabin today and ditch camping. Yeah, like maybe we just do a really big push day today.
283:02
Speaker A
There's bad weather coming and the weather's warming up too much and our lake might not be [music] safe. So, we might have to ride all the way to our cabin tonight. Is that okay?
283:11
Speaker A
Instead of camping, we push [music] hard and try to ride all the way from the Espanola area to our cabin northeast [music] of Elliot Lake in one day.
283:20
Speaker A
It's just like today is really cold. So, like I feel like of any day to go for the narrows, right?
283:27
Speaker A
[music] Fortunately, the day itself was beautiful and the temperature rose to about -5. Through the morning, we made good time.
284:13
Speaker A
We stopped for lunch at a spot with a great view, and we're really enjoying the ride. But later in the afternoon, things got a little more complicated.
284:24
Speaker A
Heat. Heat. [music] What? We went the wrong [music] way. Well, we just realized that we took a wrong turn coming across a lake. It was really confusing [music] cuz like the trail went through, I don't know, some sort of
285:05
Speaker A
trailer park that's closed for the season like where there's road access in the summer and I just went the wrong way. Sorry, hun. Well, we took a wrong turn. We saw a sign saying straight to Elliot Lake, but there's multiple ways
285:18
Speaker A
to get to Elliot Lake. [music] We want to go a totally different way. So, [sighs and gasps] right when we thought we were doing great, we have to [music] turn around. Plus, going over like a wooden bridge, the right front carbite
285:30
Speaker A
on my right ski bent like this, and I don't know if I can bend it back, so I can't turn or go nearly as fast. Going to try to fix it. And we're going to try to turn around.
285:43
Speaker A
Jacking up the sled, I saw the front of one of my car bites had broken [music] clean off and was bent badly.
285:50
Speaker A
I did my best to straighten it out using my multi-tool, which helped. Then we detached the toboggins and turned everything around to backtrack to where we missed the turn.
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Speaker A
By then, it was getting pretty late, and we knew any more mistakes would mean we wouldn't reach the cabin before dark.
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Speaker A
[music] I checked the carbide on my ski [music] and tried to turn it. I'm not going to be able to ride as fast.
286:28
Speaker A
Nothing much I can do about that. I I straightened it out so it's a bit better, but it's probably going to break off all the way soon.
286:39
Speaker A
We rode on and passed [music] through Elliot Lake with the sun getting lower in the sky, but we didn't have time to slow down and we kept pushing.
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Speaker A
This is the turn this way. But here we go, baby. Final push. I picked up the narrow portage trail leading to our lake and followed it through the woods.
287:06
Speaker A
When we reached the next lake, the sun was setting, but the ice looked good.
287:11
Speaker A
Not too much slush. Yeah. [screaming] Yes, honey. We made it. We pushed across the lake through a final portage trail and soon we were riding along the cliffs and through the narrows of our home lake.
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Speaker A
[music] [music] We pulled up to the cabin just before dark. [music] [music] [music] It had been a long day and Huie was getting pretty tired by the end, but everyone rallied and we pulled it off.
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Speaker A
[singing] We made it to our cabin, guys. Good job, family. [music] We made it. We rode 150k today from South Espanola all the way through Elliot Lake, all the way through here. We got to go get the propane going, get the lights on, get a
288:48
Speaker A
fire going, get shoveled out. But we are here. All right. [laughter] Now we have to do a ton more work to get inside the cabin.
288:58
Speaker A
We do. [sighs] After shoveling the porch, turning on the propane, and getting a fire going, the cabin quickly warm.
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Speaker A
Wesley, the fire's starting, buddy. Okay. The kids were happy, and before long, we were all settled in. It felt really good to be home. [sighs] Well, I think of all the cabins that we've been to on this journey
289:29
Speaker A
that this one is my favorite. The night before, Tori had ridden through some slush and got stuck in a snow bank in front of the cabin.
289:47
Speaker A
Overnight, it all froze solid and I needed to winch her snowmobile out using my machine.
289:56
Speaker A
After that, I swapped out the belt on my Scadoo scanding. Just a bit of routine maintenance after many hundreds of kilometers of heavy use. Well, that was a lot of work, but I'm ready. Ready to go on a mission. Um, I got to bomb all
290:13
Speaker A
the way to the boat launch, get some stuff from the truck, and um, find firewood along the way. Um, nobody wants to come with me today. Huddy said he wants to have an indoor day, if you can believe that. Um, so I'm going by
290:28
Speaker A
myself, but maybe it'll go faster. In the days before the trip, I'd driven my truck and trailer to the closest road access point to our cabin and took the bus home. This way we could return home via the road system once our adventure
290:43
Speaker A
[music] was over. I followed a route across a different lake and along some portage trails. I did this partially to make sure this route was passable [music] as it avoids a stretch of narrows that can develop open water when
290:57
Speaker A
the weather warms up. And with the warm weather on the horizon, I thought it may be a necessity. Well, that was good. I successfully uh made it through the bypass route. Pretty tight trail. still be doable with a heavy load, but tricky.
291:11
Speaker A
At the truck, I picked up our generator [music] and my big chainsaw that had left it.
291:20
Speaker A
On the way back, I stopped at a friend's property to cut some wood and found some nice standing dead ash trees. So, yeah, decent enough spot. A lot of popler, some birch, and so the other stuff I'm working with here is some kind of
291:33
Speaker A
hardwood. I don't know, maybe a black ash or something like that. ash. Hardwood has smooth bumps in it. And in the winter when the leaves are off the tree, it can be hard to tell whether it's dead or alive. So way to tell is
291:44
Speaker A
the bark is split and falling off of it. And that's kind of what you have to go with. Or it's totally off the tree. But often times when it's totally off the tree, it means that uh it's punky. And
291:55
Speaker A
you know, you don't want to take anything big either. Um that's that's very old cuz that's good animal habitat.
292:02
Speaker A
Anyways, I got a full load here. Hopefully I can get out of here with all this weight.
292:13
Speaker A
[music] We're nearly out of firewood at the cabin as I hadn't been able to find [music] any dry wood to buy locally this winter.
292:23
Speaker A
Before long, I was back at the cabin with a good load of wood. [music] [music] I stacked some near the porch and Hudson helped haul a few loads inside before for the two of us headed out after lunch
293:03
Speaker A
to do a little fishing. Good job, dude. Well, I got all that wood buzzed up and a bunch brought inside. Huddy was a big help, which was awesome. Me and Huddy are going to go out in the lake and do
293:15
Speaker A
some ice fishing. And then Tori is going to come meet us up in a little bit with Wesley. Uh we're going to explore a stretch of huge cliffs where the lake gets extremely deep. It's over 400 ft deep here. You ready, Huddy? [sighs]
293:28
Speaker A
Huie's ready. I wanted to try a new spot. So, we traveled a fairways down the lake shore.
293:37
Speaker A
Along the way, I noticed a set of large wolf tracks heading in the same direction we were going.
293:44
Speaker A
Wolf prints, honey. Huge wolf prints. Look at that. Follow them. Well, I was just riding along looking for a place to fish and we saw these wolf prints from a big big wolf. They go straight. That's like a wolf.
294:03
Speaker A
Before long, more tracks join them. Right where all the wolf prints are. Look at all of them. These are all wolf prints.
294:17
Speaker A
No, I wonder. North is aware of the wolves. I can just tell by how he's acting. North picked up the scent right away. And when we stopped, he jumped off the sled for a long serious sniff.
294:38
Speaker A
Putty and I set up to fish, [sighs] but the action was pretty slow. Look at it's a beautiful day and we're fishing. [music] It's fun. Without minnows, it was a little harder to keep Hudson interested.
294:59
Speaker A
Oh, look. That warm sun's coming out. Isn't that nice? Okay. You want to move to a new spot?
295:05
Speaker A
No, I want to go home. But this sure was a beautiful spot. [music] I looked off in the distance to see a large ridge line with a beautiful frozen waterfall. Pine forest stretched onto the horizon in every direction and
295:21
Speaker A
[music] I knew I had this whole massive portion of the lake all to myself.
295:27
Speaker A
Okay, today we're having a nice short song going fish is here. Mommy's and mommy and daddy's going mommy and is going to come and sing. We're going to get this together.
295:47
Speaker A
Well, the day got very beautiful. Sun came out, wind just died right down. Just beautiful cliffs in the distance, but no bites and we're not marking any fish either. So, um, we're going to move and check out another spot. Hopefully
296:00
Speaker A
Tori makes it [music] out here to meet up with us. We rode a ways to a new spot and before long, Hudson curled up for a nap on the sled.
296:14
Speaker A
Later that evening, I tried one more fishing spot before dark, but still came up empty.
296:33
Speaker A
Seems like this year, every time I fish, there's been some drastic temperature fluctuation. Like [clears throat] it was above freezing and then boom, drops to minus 255. Then it's - 255 for 2 days, then boom, it's 5° C today. Like no wonder
296:49
Speaker A
nothing's biting. I was jigging a large spoon in one hole while another line was baited with a minnow and sat about 15 ft away. The line was on a spool resting on the dash of my snowmobile. And the line was
297:07
Speaker A
tethered to the handlebars with an elastic. So I got my line in at the right depth. Elastic to the steering wheel on my Scadoo and the spool on the dash.
297:25
Speaker A
After fishing for a while, the spool suddenly dropped off the dash. When I grabbed the line and gave it a tug, I could feel a solid fish on the other end.
297:42
Speaker A
Here we go. We got one. Feels like a pretty good one on the set line, too.
297:55
Speaker A
[sighs] Come on, baby. Come on. Yeah. Woo. A beauty. Look at that. All right. That is a hell of a fish.
298:14
Speaker A
Look at those beauty yellow fins, too. That is a sign of a healthy ecosystem, cuz it shows the fish is eating aquatic uh crustations.
298:27
Speaker A
All right. What a nice fish. This one's a keeper. Yeah. So, uh, the spool, I caught it with the elastic setup and the spool on the dashboard of the Scadoo and all of a sudden the spool just fell off and I tugged on the line
298:43
Speaker A
and boom, sure enough, there's the laker on. Love it. Huddy and I had an adventure planned, hoping to fish three different lakes for three different [music] species of fish that day.
299:12
Speaker A
Much of the route followed a narrow portage trail through the bush. And even though the Scandic still had a broken scratcher, I took it because it's good on gas and easy to feather the throttle on tight trails.
299:25
Speaker A
The ride was slow going. The trail went down and back up a steep cut creek valley and then up a steep hill and the snow was soft from the warmer weather.
299:38
Speaker A
A few times I had to get off and pull the machine back onto the trail by hand because it wouldn't turn so well.
299:46
Speaker A
[clears throat] Oh, careful. Don't drop anything. We tried for brook trout there and had a bite but couldn't hook up.
300:14
Speaker A
Oh, we got a fish coming in. Honey, look. Shh. Look. Oh, it just left. It's right here. See the squiggly line is?
300:26
Speaker A
Yeah, that's me jigging. The sonar was marking fish, but after more than an hour, we decided to move on. So, what do you think the best plan is, buddy? I think we could fish for pike and then catch the go where you catch like
300:43
Speaker A
where I caught the biggest lakey yesterday. Yeah. Okay. So, first we're going to pick catch for pike and then we're going to catch the biggest lakey.
300:52
Speaker A
Okay. So, that means we're going to leave this lake then. Yeah. We're going to catch some pike and we're going to go where daddy caught a lakey. So, let's get this together with [music] it.
301:21
Speaker A
[music] [music] [music] Next, we tried another lake for pike. Setting up near a little waterfall, Hudson napped for a bit.
301:47
Speaker A
And not long after he woke up, I finally had a solid bite. Hello, Bob. [music] Oh. Oh, here we go. Oh, I lost it.
301:59
Speaker A
Oh no. I set the hook and stood up to fight it, but the fish shook free after only a [music] few seconds.
302:07
Speaker A
Make sure all the minnows are on. [music] Eventually, we headed back towards our own lake to try for lake trout again.
302:24
Speaker A
How good was that lakey this morning, eh? We fished the same spot where I'd caught the trout the night before, [music] and right at the end, I started getting bites and marking fish, but once more, we couldn't hook up. We come close to
302:38
Speaker A
catching three different species that day and ended up with nothing. But somehow it was still easily one of my favorite days of fishing. Hudson was completely engaged the whole time, learning new things and soaking it all in.
302:54
Speaker A
When we got back to the cabin, he couldn't wait to tell Tori about all the day's adventures.
303:08
Speaker A
Day 11. This was the day the rain was supposed to arrive. In the morning, I put the sled covers over the machines, buzzed up some firewood with a chainsaw, and even set a couple fishing lines close to camp. Thinking we might pick up
303:27
Speaker A
a pike, Tori came out and helped split some wood. And as a light drizzle started falling, we decided to [music] check the weather again.
303:36
Speaker A
Well, uh, things have changed. There was weather on the horizon and we were going to wait it out and decided to extend our trip here.
303:44
Speaker A
So basically tomorrow it's going to be + 11. It's not going below freezing again until Tuesday.
303:50
Speaker A
Plus 40 mm of rain. Oh my god. Let's get out of here. Yeah. Like that feels risky to me. Um it's the shoreline that and it's not getting cold at night. It was supposed to stay cold at night. With
304:04
Speaker A
that kind of warmth, we knew ice conditions in some areas could change quickly. We knew the narrows would likely be unsafe. Shorelines near creeks would be sketchy. So, we made the call to pivot again and get out what we still
304:17
Speaker A
could. Okay, they were going home and my mom and dad are worried about the weather.
304:29
Speaker A
We packed up as the drizzle fell. Kimble. By the time the dishes were done, propane shut off, shutters closed, and everything loaded, we'd packed the whole place up in about 2 hours. Pretty good timing for us.
304:48
Speaker A
We would have loved a few more days at the cabin, but we were grateful for the time we did have there. As winter was winding down in my neck of the woods, I [music] traveled north, a long way
304:59
Speaker A
north, all the way to Labrador. Waiting for me there was my friend Jamie. We'd hunted moose [music] together that fall in Newfoundland and we were excited to hang out again and take on a big Scadoo trip. Jaime's home
305:14
Speaker A
is Lanclair, [music] Labrador, and that's where our journey began. The morning after I rolled in, we were loading to Bogggins. Jaime's friend Cody was along for the ride, too.
305:31
Speaker A
Well, we are all loaded up here. Everything's strapped down and we got a good push to make it today. About 150 clicks to a little trappers cabin.
305:40
Speaker A
[music] Uh so yeah, we're about to roll out of here. Beautiful day. Really excited about this one.
305:46
Speaker A
Then pushed off into it. The country we rode through was unlike anywhere [music] I'd been. Stark, beautiful, windswept, tiger forest and open tundra [music] stretching to the horizon in every direction. Mountains rolled [music] out like waves a long way
306:10
Speaker A
from the woodlands of northern Ontario I'm used to. Heading down a long hill and into a valley, we passed a pair of crosses that were spread out from each other a ways.
306:30
Speaker A
They belonged to two brothers who'd perished out there in the winter of 1962. One had fallen ill while out caribou hunting. The other went for help and was eaten by his own starving dogs. A grim reminder of what this land is capable
306:45
Speaker A
of. We stopped at Jaime's trapper cabin for lunch. The travel was good and the day was beautiful.
306:58
Speaker A
Well, little pit stop for lunch here at Jamie's cabin. Really beautiful country we're riding through here. The wind picked up pretty good, but uh yeah, nice spot. Oh, yeah. Oh, wow. This is huge, dude. Let's get a little tour here. A
307:13
Speaker A
little tour of Jamie's cabin here. Feels pretty authentic, I think, is the word. It's clean even. Wow.
307:20
Speaker A
What? Yeah. Sure. Well, that was a great little lunch spot here. Beautiful cabin Jamie's got. Give me a little bit of a tour and have a sandwich and uh just told me a few of the stories about the the country around
307:34
Speaker A
here. And you know, it wasn't very long ago, just back in the 70s when Jamie was born. Um you know, people were traveling by dog team, caribou hunting out of the land. And uh there's just giant trout all over here, clean water. Um, and you
307:49
Speaker A
know, we're not even terribly far from Lanclair, so it's just uh amazing to have this in your back door. Anyways, we're going to keep going. Um, we got a ways to travel yet today uh to get to another cabin, but a good little pit
308:00
Speaker A
stop for lunch. After lunch, we pushed on the country shifting all around us out of the open into the wooded country, jumping back and forth across the wilderness border between Quebec and Labrador.
308:17
Speaker A
We soon picked up a remote power line in Labrador and started riding it. The plan was to follow it for a stretch, then cut off into the bush to work our way up river and through the bush into the lake
308:29
Speaker A
we're aiming for. Well, we're following a power line here for a bit. Um, it's something that you learn in the survival books if you're lost in the woods, uh, not to necessarily follow a power line because, you know, in Labrador, northern
308:42
Speaker A
Quebec, these things go through the middle of absolutely nowhere, total wilderness areas. They're coming from far-flung dams, hundreds of kilometers away. And, uh, people make the mistake, "Oh, I'm out of power line. I'm saved.
308:54
Speaker A
I'm back to civilization." But, uh, you know, it it is not the case. Maybe here, you know, you might ski see a Scadoo if you're lucky in the winter in some areas, but uh yeah, we're we're Don't let the power lines fool you. We're in a
309:08
Speaker A
in a remote area here for sure. There were a lot of unknowns, and we knew we'd likely have to cut some trail, but that was a [music] problem for later in the trip.
309:24
Speaker A
For tonight, we make camp at another trapper's cabin. A friend to Jaimes who let us stay [music] for the night.
309:36
Speaker A
Stay tuned for the full version of this adventure, [music] which I'll share in the fall.
309:44
Speaker A
[music] [music] A year ago, when I started planning all these adventures out, I knew it was going to be a busy one. [music] But it was probably more intense than I'd realize.
310:06
Speaker A
From the rim of the Grand Canyon to the headwaters of the Natla. [music] From a Quinzy with my four-year-old to a leanto at 40 below. From the Yukon [music] to Newfoundland in Labrador. 13 trips, 12 months, and some of the most varied
310:20
Speaker A
country I'd ever covered in a single year. What I keep coming back to [music] looking at all of it now is how different each trip felt and how much they all share.
310:32
Speaker A
[music] The fear of staring down a class 4 rapid while all alone. The quiet of waking up in the bush before anyone else.
310:43
Speaker A
The weight [music] of a long day ending in a cozy cabin with people who love you. Different experiences, same [music] thread. That pull I can't shake. The reason any of this happens. What I've learned doing this for over [music] 20
310:58
Speaker A
years is that it doesn't get easier. It gets clear. Clear about what matters. [music] Clear about how short the time is. Clear about who you want next to you when the going gets hard [music] and when it gets good.
311:15
Speaker A
But I'm not quite done with [music] this year yet. Three of us deep in one of the wildest stretches of country left on this continent with a long way still to go. I'll have the full story, the [music] whole 700 km expedition and a
311:29
Speaker A
film coming this fall. For now, 30 65 days in the wild. Thanks for coming along.
311:39
Speaker A
[music] [music]
Topics:wilderness adventureJim BairdGrand Canyon raftingnorthwest territoriesYukon rivertrout fishingremote wildernesssnowmobile expeditionfamily off-gridoutdoor survival

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