Maps, maps, maps ...

A journey like this requires a lot of maps! We have a complete set of 1:50,000 scale topographic maps for the route. There are 39 of them in all. We also have a set of 1:250,000 scale topographic maps for an overview and to provide some redundancy in case we lose some of the other maps. There are 6 of these, and they will be stored separately from the detailed maps. So, 45 maps at $12 each, plus shipping, cost us well over $550. Then the hard work began, trimming whitespace boundaries and redundant key information, and transferring important navigational information from the trimmed areas to the maps themselves. That task alone took a few days! The magnetic declination and annual change data for these maps is just crazy. The problem is that we are very close to the magnetic north pole, so magnetic compasses behave erratically and the declination varies drastically from one side of the map to the other, and is changing by almost a degree per year in some places, based on a 35 year old survey! Better take a GPS along too!

On the water we will carry just the maps we need for the day in a waterproof chart case on the spray deck. The other maps will be stored all together (in two separate batches) in chart cases inside the canoe, inside our big dry bags. For added protection, each paper map is also treated, on both sides, with Mapseal waterproofing agent. Doing the waterproofing is another full day of work, and we ended up with a house full of drying maps.

Finally, with all the maps prepared and waterproofed its time to look at the whole route again in more detail. Unfortunately, our house is only big enough to lay out the maps for half the route at a time. Here is a picture of the maps for the second half of the trip. After carefully measuring the river miles, we've had to update the distance for the whole journey to 950 km. The mileage is split roughly 50%-50% between rivers and lakes, so this could take a while, especially if its windy (which I hear it is most of the time). I think we better pack an extra week of food!

Beasts of Burden

Portaging is the art of carrying a canoe and gear around a section of river you don't want to run. There are several portages on the Hanbury river section of our route where the river drops over waterfalls or goes through gorges with unrunnable rapids. Altogether, there are 7 or 8 of these, with the longest, around Dickson Canyon, being about 3 miles. Portaging is hard work, and there may be no way to do it with style or comfort. However, we have put some thought and effort into improving our chances. First, we have all our gear stowed in a small number of large waterproof dry bags, which are not too large or heavy to carry. Inside these bags everything is stored in smaller dry bags, so we have double protection from the elements. The bags can be strapped onto an external pack frame using harnesses we designed and sewed ourselves. Using an external pack frame allows the weight to be distributed comfortably on the hips, with little weight on the shoulders. These frames make a huge difference in comfort over longer distances and are well worth the minimal cost of space and weight.

We have three large gear bags which stow cleanly and easily in the canoe. They occupy all the space below the gunwales/spray deck and provide good support for the canoe frame as well as good floatation. The portage pack frames lie on top of the bags and the whole load is strapped down to the canoe frame's keel using a couple of loop straps. An additional smaller dry bag contains the things we need during the day and is easily accessible from the stern cockpit area. With all our gear stowed this way, the ends of the canoe can be left light and filled with floatation bags.

Each portage in the early part of our journey will require 3 passes with load - one with a big orange bag each, one with the blue bag, day bag and all the canoe gear, paddles, etc, and one with the canoe. With the walk back between each pass, that means traveling 5 times the portage distance, so a 3 mile portage becomes a 15 mile hike with load. This will not be easy, but we can do it. Later in the journey when we have consumed some of the food we should be able to portage in two passes with load, or three total. Unfortunately, nearly all the portaging is in the early part of our trip. We have been training for the portages by doing 2+ mile hilly hikes around our local nature park. We go most evenings and have gradually increased the load in our packs to the point where we are now doing it fairly comfortably with 50 lbs. The route has a 400 ft climb, so in terms of its elevation gain at least, its probably harder than what we will encounter on the Hanbury. The prospect of these portages is still a little daunting, but not nearly as daunting as it was before.

Yes, the canoe really packs into a bag!

The earlier pictures make the PakCanoe look just like a normal canoe. It doesn't look like it would fold up and pack in a bag. So, here are a few pictures of it being broken down. Without its spray deck the skin on frame construction is more easily seen.

Half an hour of undoing clips and disconnecting parts sees the canoe broken down into its basic components. Its actually not too difficult, but it would be difficult to do it much quicker than a half an hour (building or dismantling). You can see the new more robust seats we made on top of the pile.

Finally, it all goes into a bag. Well, two bags. Since the foam floors we made are a bit bulky, we pack them, together with the frame components in one bag (the black one) and the canoe skin and spray deck together in another bag (the white one). There is a 36" ruler resting on the white bag to give an idea of the size of the two packages. Each is fairly easy to portage, especially using the portage system we have devised, which will be discussed in the next post. Alternatively, the canoe can be portaged like a regular canoe using its removable portage yoke (not seen in any of the pictures).

Our PakCanoe 170

We just finished outfitting our new PakCanoe 170. Getting it expedition ready was quite a lot of work, and that has been taking up most of our time for the past few days. We had to design and make foam floor inserts for bow and stern, replace the bow and stern seats with a more robust design -- which we had to design, fit end float bags, and install our existing Northwater spray deck, which as luck would have it fits both our Esquif Canyon and our PakCanoe 170. We also had to make several modifications to the Northwater spray deck, so we put in quite a few hours on the sewing machine too.

We'll post a few details and pictures of the modifications we made, but first, here are a few pictures of the canoe all kitted out with its spray deck and our gear loaded inside.

Summer Plans

We should have started this blog long ago, but we've been too busy preparing for our trip! Hopefully, its better late than never.

We're hoping to leave our home in Portland, Oregon next week to start the long drive up to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. From there we will be flying with Dave Oleson
in his Bush Hawk C-GROH float plane, out to the headwaters of the Hanbury River. Campbell Lake, to be precise. This flight will be a round trip distance of roughly a 500 miles. The wonderful thing about charter flights is that you get to pay for the journey the plane makes even though you may not be in it for half the distance!

Our canoe journey will take us the entire length of the Hanbury river, to where it meets the Thelon River. We will then descend the Thelon river, traverse several very large lakes, and then descend the Thelon river some more, until we reach Baker Lake (Qamani'tuaq). Baker Lake is in Nunavut, 200 miles inland from Hudson Bay. This should be just far enough inland to keep hungry polar bears away! Baker Lake is home to eleven Inuit groups and is the only inland community in the Canadian Arctic.

We will fly out of Baker Lake at the end of our journey, and return to Yellowknife to pick up our car for the long drive home. The commercial flight at the end of our trip, and the long charter flight at the beginning, dictate that we will be using a Pakcanoe - a collapsible canoe that can be carried internally on a small plane, and as standard luggage on commercial flights. Much of the past week has been spent preparing our new Pakcanoe 170 for the rigors of this long expedition. We will post more about this later.

Our route cuts right through the center of the Thelon Wildlife Sancuary, which at over 20,000 square miles is one of the largest wildlife preserves in the world. Originally created to protect muskox populations, it is also home to the Beverly herd with up to a quarter of a million caribou, as well as arctic wolves, arctic fox, wolverines, grizzly bears, many species of birds.