Northern Saskatchewan has a wide variety of canoeing experiences from paddling lake to lake in the Precambrian Shield to steering the rapids of a whitewater river. It has both mountainous canyons and Caribbean-like beaches. You can paddle through marsh land or past sand dunes. Paddling Northern Saskatchewan provides a descriptive overview of 80 different canoe routes, rivers, and canoeing areas to help you understand the experience of paddling in Northern Saskatchewan.
A guide to 15 true wilderness rivers in Northern Saskatchewan, including detailed route descriptions, maps, advice on rapids, hazards, campsites, special attractions, as well as the historical and wilderness value of each river.
Canoe across large lakes, up and down rivers and rapids; labour over portages and through a miasma of blackflies; bask in the golden evenings of the Subarctic. In this account of an 800-mile canoe trip – which begins at Reindeer Lake on the Manitoba/Saskatchewan border, continues into Nunavut past the treeline, and ends on Hudson Bay – Peter Kazaks conveys the experience of being in the north by describing the daily details that bring the trip to life. He captures the flavour of an extended wilderness canoe trip and reflects on living in unfettered wilderness. The reader will also grasp something of the serene beauty of the barren lands and begin to understand why its intoxicating nature keeps drawing some back. The first half of the trip, essentially from Reindeer Lake to Nueltin Lake, retraces P.G. Downes' voyage described in his classic Sleeping Island. Next the four men of this expedition, led by George Luste, entered the barren lands and followed the Thlewiaza River, the Kognak River, South Henik Lake and the Maguse River north and east to the shore of Hudson Bay. These lands, seldom visited, are close to a true wilderness – one of the few remaining ones.
This first volume of the guidebook series Northern British Columbia Canoe Trips describes in detail eight northern BC paddling routes over eleven rivers, and is designed to provide canoeists with all the information they require to plan a river trip appropriate to their skill level and special interests. Each route includes: a summary of the main attractions of the trip where to start and where to finish along the river trip length in days and kilometres required maps suggestions about when to go star ratings for difficulty and for historical and recreational value Northern British Columbia Canoe Trips: Volume One covers numerous routes never documented in any publication before, including the Taku, Jennings, Omineca and Gataga rivers, among others, as well as more well-known favourites such as Fort Nelson and the Dease. The book provides paddlers of all types with a variety of river trips to choose from based on comprehensive and comparative information, as well as detailed and specific navigational notes to aid them along their chosen route.
For the first time, government guides have been enhanced in this easy-to-use book that better allow all paddlers--from the beginner to the advanced--to plan their trips through the rivers and lakes of North-Central Saskatchewan.
A new edition of the best-selling guide, expanded with 10 more routes over 48 more pages. Ontario is blessed with some of the most scenic and enjoyable lakes and rivers in the world -- it truly is a paddler's paradise. Like the first edition of this book, this updated and expanded second edition is destined to become the classic guide to the very best canoeing the province has to offer. Top 60 Canoe Routes of Ontario includes 10 more of Kevin Callan's favorite canoe excursions. While some of these routes are well known to paddlers province-wide, such as the Bonnechere River, others are hidden secrets, like the ambitious and magical Woodland Caribou Park. The routes range from two-day paddles to week-long expeditions and are divided amongst nine regions: Southern Ontario, Cottage Country, Algonquin, Central Ontario, Eastern Ontario, Temagami, Ontario's Near North, Northern Ontario and Northwestern Ontario. Kevin gives paddlers all the information they need to complete each route, including accurate maps of all access points, portage lengths, important river features and campsites -- all embellished with historical notes and Kevin's trademark humor. He also includes a detailed "Before You Go" section in which he shares the expertise that has earned him the title of Canada's Happy Camper.
"The sun climbs over the pines. Over the spruces. Over Saganaga, Kabetogama, Nistowiak, Namew, Athabaska. And ten thousand other places with no names. The North Woods calls. The river pulls, the paddle whispers. I listen. And gradually...gradually the mist burns away."And so begins a journey - not only an exploration of rapids, lakes, and forests, but also an inner journey of discovery. Through poetic text and drawings, woven gracefully with quotes by John Muir, Walking Buffalo, Sigurd F. Olson, Henry David Thoreau, and others, Douglas Wood traces a journey by paddle and canoe that renews the spirit.
"Outstanding. Its combination of historical material, maps, photos, and travelogue brings the fur trade era alive. Seldom has the past and the present been brought together so successfully." -George Melnyk, University of Calgary "The reader is exposed to hundreds of points of interest, historical rock paintings, landmarks, campsites, local histories, and folklore...[the book] will tell any canoeist or adventurer almost all they need to know." -James Winkel, Saskatchewan History An invaluable resource for paddlers preparing to face the challenges of Canada's old fur trade highway, Canoeing the Churchill is also an exhilarating trek into the past for the "armchair voyageur." With routes for both beginners and experts, Canoeing the Churchill provides practical "on the water advice" for the entire 1,100 km route--from Methy Portage to Cumberland House. Canoeing the Churchill "will introduce the beauty of the north and its rich cultural heritage to readers from all parts of the world." -Keith Goulet, Cumberland House Cree Nation
The author of The Singing Wilderness and Listening Point begins this grand adventure: “There are few places left on the North American continent where men can still see the country as it was before Europeans came and know some of the challenges and freedoms of those who saw it first, but in the Canadian Northwest it can still be done. A thousand miles northwest of Lake Superior are great free rivers, lakes whose horizons disappear, countless unnamed waterways, and ridges and forested valleys still largely unknown.” Into this land of Crees, Chippewyans, Yellow Knives, and Dig Rib Indians had once come the voyageur, the Hudson Bay trader, and a succession of adventurers—gentlemen and otherwise—who used the mighty Churchill River as a major waterway from Hudson Bay to the Mackenzie. “It was the trail of these voyageurs we followed,” says the author, “a trail that led from the height of land where waters flow north to the Arctic and east to Hudson Bay, to Cumberland House five hundred miles away. Every portage, camp site, and rapids, every mile of this waterway of lakes and rivers was steeped in the drama of exploration and trade.” “We traveled as the voyageurs did by canoe, paddled the same lakes, ran the same rapids, and packed over their ancient portages. We knew the winds and storms, saw the same sky lines, and felt the awe and wonderment that was theirs at the enormous expanses and grandeur of a land that was once as strange and challenging to them as to us.” Mr. Olson has illuminated his own cruise with quotations from journals and diaries of such men as George Simpson, David Thompson, Alexander Henry, and Alexander Mackenzie—as well as a host of other explorers-traders whose voices speak from the old Moose Fort Journals of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Mr. Olson serves as the Bourgeois of the party of six—the boss who ran the trip, chose the routes, picked the camp sites. His companions and he relived for all readers of this book what life was then in the wilds of the Canadian Northwest. Mr. Olson combines his inimitable ability to evoke the beauties and wonders of the wilderness—its animals, birds, and its very spirit—with a dramatic talent for taking the reader along the route of the men who pioneered that wilderness. Francis Lee Jacques, whose genius to evoke the wilderness in pen and ink is unchallenged, has illuminated this book by his drawings, as he did The Singing Wilderness and Listening Point.
