Introduction

Why did we want to attempt this

It didn't take long after we recovered from our 60 day trip in Woodland Caribou Park for us to start thinking about a trip north of the park.

Our experiences in Woodland Caribou around the pictograph sites and the great wilderness feel to the place led us to think that there had to be more to see just over the hill.

The planning took two years

Try as we might we couldn't find any route descriptions or trip logs that covered the area.

Again, we wanted to do a circle trip beginning and ending at a road access point to keep the cost of the trip under control so we fired up our copy of Fugawi and began looking at possible routes.

We also wanted to travel some historic trading routes so we consulted the Hudsons Bay archieves to get an idea of where trading posts were and we plotted the sites as well as the locations of the First Nations communities on our maps.

An idea began to emerge ... could we connect the First Nations communities by water? ... and how would we plan the route? ... where would we resupply? ... where was possible help if we needed it?.

We had the equipment and the experience ... we could keep ourselves well fed ... but how long would this trip take? ... and what route might we design?