Seven Campfires to the Nahanni

The fame of the river Nahanni is today spread throughout the world and it draws many adventurous souls. The author first heard this name a long time ago, still in his birth country of Czech Republic. Yet, in variation to practically all the visitors who are brought to this river’s banks by expensive and noisy floatplanes, he chose a different approach: the one that people used to travel during the times of Indigenous Peoples’ migrations, discovery explorations and trade throughout Canada; during the era when large birch bark canoes propelled by the paddles of voyageurs transported loads of fur across the almost full width of the continent; during the time when only water bodies and the portage trails connecting them served as arteries, veins and capillaries of travel through Canada from the Atlantic to the Pacific. After he immigrated to Canada in 1968, obtained a doctorate in Nuclear Physics from the University of Alberta and raised a family in Edmonton, a window of opportunity for the author’s dream expedition finally opened. He wished to reach the beginnings of the South Nahanni River overland, using his own muscle power to transport the canoe and the outfit for a six-week wilderness voyage to the point of launch into the river beckoning him as the only honest way that, in his conscience, harmonized with the spirit and name of the Nahanni. A long portage trek crossing the mountains of the Continental Divide from Yukon to the Northwest Territories of Canada was to connect a chain of rivers, creeks and lakes. It meant carrying all the gear along game trails, through mountain passes and swamps in the valley bottoms. It meant lining the boats upstream, paddling in them wherever possible up and down the current — all that topped by “Calvaries” with an overturned canoe on the shoulders. Teaming up with his friend and colleague Peter from Vancouver, his girlfriend Milena and cheered on by intimate-contact-seeking crowds of persistent mosquitoes, they successfully accomplished the goal in the summer of 1997.

The Canol Road in Yukon, which they used to get close to the Nahanni trek, would later become a gateway to them for more adventures in the beautiful wildland that they had come to call Canol Country.