OT 52 day canoe trip in Yukon

I've done that entire trip, but in a much wussier way. We drove/camped from Yellowknife, NWT across the new Liard Hwy, then up the Alaska Hwy, through the Klondike, then up the Dempster to their termination point, Inuvik.
I'm surprised they didn't have any bears on film, while camping in the Yukon it was nearly a daily occurrence to see them. We left one campsite very quickly after hiking down to the river to fish, & coming across grizzly tracks that were still filling with water.
Back when I flew bush pilot we used to haul expeditions like that to drop off points of various rivers, Nahanni, Back, & Thelon being common. They were rich in history of early explorers, the Back river beinbg named after Capt Back, who walked overland from Great Slave Lake, then paddled to the Arctic Ocean in search of the ill fated Franklin Expedition of 1845.
These people seemed well equipped, the canoes appeared to be 16' Trappers, tough as nails, but fairly light. We used to load 3 canoes , nested with gear along one side of a twin otter on floats, then flip the 6 single seats down on the other side for the trippers. The people who were tough, & had proper leadership and/or training did OK. Some of the city folk, or European tourists had no idea of the hardhsips or challenges ahead, & some ended in disaster, with loss of life. You could easily be 500 miles from the nearest road or cabin and what might be a minor mistake further south could cost a life.
I never forgot the crew from New York State who seemed ill prepared,(they had lots of expensive brand new gear, but didn't really know how to use some of it, brand new LL Bean hiking boots are always a bad sign). An old grizzled bush pilot asked if they wanted to borrow a shotgun & portable HF radio, in case they got into trouble with grizzlies. They proceeded to give him a lecture along the lines of they had camped in Minnesota wilderness, & had read all the literature regarding bears, & employed safe campsite practices. Old Len listened quietly to this, then remarked, "you know, those bears, they aint read none of them books"
Six days into the trip a very expensive rescue mission was undertaken to extricate them from the Thelon River, (basically in the geographic center of Canada) They had to abandon thousands of $$ worth of new gear, suffered some serious injuries.

How much wind do you think it would take to fly a hull on the contraption they rigged? Sure beat paddling agains a current, good for them, that looked like a tough trip.

Edited by Edchris177 on Apr 19, 2011 - 05:36 PM.

I wondered why there was no bears also. I only remember seeing one moose in the video. Every time they were wrestling around or trying to see who could jump the farthest, I was thinking, it's a long way to a hospital.

I did a week canoe trip on the french river in Ontario. I had a make shift sail as well. i used paddles for masts. It was a two mast ship :biggthumpup: