Guiding Memories 4

Backpacking, Camping
Wednesday, April 15th, 2020

Navigating off-trail is an interesting exercise. It is much slower than backpacking on a trail. There are logs to hop over or crawl under, there are steep slopes, there are roots to trip over and willows to push through (all with heavy packs). Over time, you learn to pick easier routes, understanding the difference between meadows and swamps, north-facing and south-facing slopes, and when to dead-reckon your way and when to estimate. There’s always more to learn!

This series is during spring 2020, when all my trips are likely going to be cancelled for this next summer due to COVID-19.

Guiding Memories 3

Camping, Canoeing
Tuesday, April 14th, 2020

Here we are loading up canoes on the North Saskatchewan before leaving in the morning. Being efficient with having breakfast, doing dishes, packing up, and securing all the gear in the canoes is a challenge. There’s a delicate balance pushing people to get going and having a relaxing trip. By this time, the group was doing pretty well.

This series is during spring 2020, when all my trips are likely going to be cancelled for this next summer due to COVID-19.

Guiding Memories 2

Backpacking, Camping
Monday, April 13th, 2020

We were hiking in the clouds near Abraham Lake. If you ever get a chance to pick an off-trail route, pick the high route. It might require more energy to gain the elevation, but there are better views, it is more likely to be dry, there will be less vegetation to push through. For this trip we were teaching off-trail navigating, so every small group took a different path to our next campsite. Our path included a short ridgewalk, and it was spectacular. We had lunch at the top and the clouds were blowing past – sometimes we were in a cloud and sometimes we had a bit of a view.

This series is during spring 2020, when all my trips are likely going to be cancelled for this next summer due to COVID-19.

Guiding Plans and Memories

Camping, Canoeing
Sunday, April 12th, 2020

I had a summer planned. And it was a good plan. I was going to guide trips all summer – canoeing, backpacking, biking. I was super excited about this, especially as I haven’t had a lot of time to get out this past winter. Now spring is here and everything has changed. Will I have any trips? Will any of us have trips? It’s looking less likely all the time. So I’m remembering trips from last summer and hoping we can get out there again soon! This is first in a series of memories of guiding last summer.

Memory 1
Cooking supper on a cold and rainy night on the North Saskatchewan River close to the Bighorn Dam. This was kind of a miserable night after a hard day – a lot of people were cold and wet despite waterproof layers, we found a campsite just as it was getting dark, and all the firewood was soaked so it was a tough lesson in fire-lighting. Despite the challenging conditions, everyone pulled through and we had a great trip!

Tombstone Territorial Park

Camping, Landscape, Mountain, Travel, Tundra
Monday, February 17th, 2020

We have so many incredible places in Canada that it feels wrong to highlight a particular one – one that I don’t even know that well. It feels like giving the standard advice, when tourists are deciding where to go, of driving through Banff. There’s no denying it’s spectacular, but there’s an intimacy with the land that seems somehow less accessible in these in-your-face spectacular areas. It’s not the real Canada, it’s the instagram influencer of Canada. It’s hard to sell the smaller, flatter, swampy natural areas surrounded by agricultural land that dot the Alberta landscape. And maybe that’s for the best – if they got as much traffic as Banff, they would change significantly.

But the spectacular has the same appeal for me as it does for most people. I’ve wanted to visit Tombstone Territorial Park for years. It has all the in-your-face, mountainous beauty of Banff, plus the northern appeal of the tundra and a relatively low visitor count.

Early morning near the north end of the park.

But it is quite the drive to get there. From the “gateway to the north” in Edmonton, you still have to drive 29 hours north. That sounds long, and it feels even longer. And the trouble with this drive is that there are hundreds of tempting spots to get sidetracked. There are mountains, waterfalls, parks, coffeeshops, rockhunting spots, vistas, wildlife, hotsprings, and more, all calling you to check them out, spend just a bit of time, do just one little hike. But no, you have to keep driving. And driving. And driving. And once you’ve spent the 3 or 4 long days driving you’re finally there. And it is spectacular.

Tombstone is full of interesting textures from erosion, lichen, and tundra growth.

My only advice, if you do have the time to get all the way up here and back, is to make sure you have time to spend in the backcountry. Plan to hike for a few days at least. I got to spend 3 days here, and it was not enough. If you’re staying on the highway it is not a big park – you’re through in an hour. But the land is massive, and deserves to be explored on foot.

Looking towards the grey Ogilvie Mountains from the north end of the park.

If you are planning to travel here and you want any specific advice, feel free to comment or email me. I enjoy talking about trips and places, although I’m often away and I might be slow to respond. The Dempster “Highway” is a rough gravel road that has been known to cause flats (we survived with no casualties – until later in our trip). The gas stations are few and far between. There is no cell access anywhere. You can not get extra supplies if you forget them. You should be prepared for any emergencies. Now that all those warnings are out of the way, it’s not that bad. Don’t be scared to do it. There are usually other travelers around, and most are friendly and helpful should you need it.

The streams are mostly surrounded by tall willows. There are lots of spruce trees near the south end of the park, but very few in the north – even the willows get a bit smaller.

The leathery colors of fall blending into the monochrome of the coming winter.

Bad weather is the best weather.

The Best is the Enemy of the Good

Landscape, Mountain, Photo of the Day
Thursday, January 9th, 2020

This has resulted in very few blog posts for a very long time. So I’m going to try to post something as opposed to nothing, which hopefully is an improvement.

Evening in Kluane National Park – clouds are sometimes hard to shake.

The title quote is attributed to Voltaire.

Wilberforce: Describing the Impossible

Canoeing, Landscape, Tundra
Thursday, July 11th, 2019

Eric enjoying the view of the lower falls at Wilberforce.

Wilberforce Falls, near the end of the Hood River in Nunavut, is an experience – impossible to capture with pixels or describe with words. But I’ll still try. The river splits into two, flowing around a massive promontory of rock, plunging over 60m (200 feet) in two stages on both sides. The roar is so loud you have to yell to talk. Gusts of mist rise from the canyons below. Nesting peregrine falcons dive bombed us as we peered over the edges of cliffs to the water below. As with every spectacular experience, the time I had there was way too short.

The spot of blue is Annika peering over the cliff at one of the upper falls.

Posting pictures of this place (and many places) seems almost disrespectful. They are such a pale reflection of an actual experience. You see a pretty picture of water and rock and tundra. You don’t feel the bone-weary exhaustion of two weeks of canoe tripping. You don’t feel the anxiety of knowing the next day you will start to move all your canoes and gear across 12km of unknown tundra. You don’t feel the bittersweet feeling of leaving a river and the excitement of heading towards the arctic ocean. You don’t feel the frustration of never having enough time to appreciate the incredible places you’re breezing past.

The smaller side of the upper falls.

What am I trying to accomplish by taking photos of these places? Spreading the knowledge that there are incredible places shaped by incredible forces? Trying to get people to value and preserve wilderness? Encouraging others to have similar experiences? Bragging about my experiences? Trying to add something beautiful and wholesome to the fight for the soul of the internet?

I think understanding the value of wilderness is essential to the well-being and survival of humans. The value is in the beauty, in the feeding of the soul, in the ecosystem services it provides us, in the reminder that we are small, the knowledge that it was here long before us and will be here long after us, even in its own right to exist. Knowledge and understanding are so much deeper when they’re gained through experience instead of seeing photos or reading text online. This is why I also lead trips in the wilderness, despite the difficulty, risk, and expense. The difficulty, risk, and wilderness create a learning environment that teaches while it amazes. These experiences change lives.

Part of the canyon below the falls.

Bill Mason, the skilled canoeist, artist, and environmentalist, tried to paddle the canyon below the falls in the 1990s. He writes the incredible story in the book “First Descents: In Search of Wild Rivers”. Hopefully this google book link works for people – the story starts on page 81.

Muskox

Tundra, Wildlife
Sunday, July 7th, 2019

A large muskox on the banks of the Hood River, Nunavut

My first glimpse of a muskox was from a canoe on the Hood River. There was a herd of dark specks far away on the gentle slope of the riverbank near the Wright River confluence. We pulled over, went up on shore, and watched them for a while. They were very far away and I don’t know if they ever noticed us.

Some of the rest of the herd peering at the strange out-of-place creatures floating on the water.

The second time we saw them, we had pulled to the side of the river to check out a promising sandy bank with signs of wolves. At first it looked like the wolves hadn’t been there for a while – the signs were all old. And then, as we were taking one last look around, large white wolf exploded out of the ground just a few feet in front of us. It bounded away until it reached a ridge where it could look back at us and then it started howling. As it was running up the hill, we noticed a herd of muskox grazing on the same ridge. The muskox were keeping an eye on the wolf, but didn’t look too worried.

These first few photos are from the third time we saw them. We were canoeing through a technical part of the river with lots of rocks, waves, and fast water. They were watching us from high above on a gravel bank, but quite close. We found an eddy (a calmer section of water below something blocking the current) by the shore and watched them for a while from the canoes. The wind was blowing through their long hair and occasionally blowing away parts of their lighter-colored winter coats. Later on in the summer I’d find a lot of this this qiviut (muskox wool) snagged on birch and willow around MacKay Lake. It is one of the warmest, softest, and most expensive fibers you can get.

Throughout the summer I saw quite a few muskox, both lone bulls and herds. When a bull gets too uppity and challenges the leadership, they can get kicked out of a herd. We saw a few of these lone bulls roaming around. Once, near MacKay Lake, we were at a research site sampling birch shrubs when we saw something moving on the horizon. Worrying it was a grizzly, we got everyone’s attention and got into a group. We then watched as a bull muskox lumbered towards us. It disappeared into a gully so we got up on a large rock to get a better view. When it reappeared, it briefly stopped, looked at us, and then kept coming closer. It seemed curious, trying to figure out what we were. It came close enough that we could watch it’s nose dripping and hear it breathing. At this point it was close enough that we were getting a bit nervous, and one of us moved. That was enough for it to turn and run, long hair billowing majestically behind it. That was a ideal reaction – if they start rubbing their front leg against their face, then you know you’re in trouble.

The largest herd we saw was more than 20 muskoxen on the shores of MacKay Lake. That was also when I got to hear the most impressive animal noise I’ve ever heard. As we were floating closer in our canoes, the dominant bull let out what can only be described as a rumble that I could feel as much as hear.

In the 1800s, muskox were almost extinct. They had been hunted by whalers, fur traders, explorers, and Inuit until there were almost none left. They were a good source of meat and fur, and were easy to hunt. Their defensive reaction is to line up in front of their young and charge if anything attacks. While that’s a great defense against wolves, it is a very poor defense against rifles. In 1917, the government of Canada banned hunting muskox, and in 1927, created the Thelon Game Sanctuary to help muskox populations recover. Now muskox populations are rising fast while the caribou populations are plummeting.

In 1897, Charles “Buffalo” Jones, a rich American, took it upon himself to go up north and lasso some young muskox to take back down south and breed in captivity. He saw it as his God-given duty to “have dominion over every living thing”. He went up north, built a cabin by Great Slave Lake to spend the winter in, and the next year found a herd out on the tundra. Against the wishes of the local people, he lassoed four calves and started to lead them south. One morning he woke up to find the four calves with their throats slit, with the knife left next to them. His mistake was a classic one – barging in without any understanding or respect. He sort of got the message and left the muskox alone, only to head out to an island in the Bering Sea to try to establish a breeding farm for Silver Foxes. His full story is maddening, fascinating, impressive, and ridiculous. This is a quick version.

A Break in the Badlands

Badlands, Camping, Canoeing
Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019

Our tent on the banks of the Red Deer River.

After a full spring of leading canoe trips, photography, and classes, I got to take a break with Anna. We headed out to the Red Deer River and had the most relaxing canoe trip of our lives. We took three days to do a stretch of river that could have been done in one long day. To fill the days we wandered in and out of the badlands, mooed at the cows we drifted by, and tested out the packraft I built this past winter (found two slow leaks that I think I have patched now). Next week I’m off guiding again which will fill up most of the rest of the summer.

Just a quick note about prints: I know some of you have been looking for more northern lights prints. Tix on the Square sold out a while ago but they will have a new supply in a couple days!

Wildlife Photography Class

Classes, Wildlife
Wednesday, June 19th, 2019

Canoeing by a grizzly bear near Jolly Lake in the Northwest Territories. Check out the claws on this guy, which let him dig up plant roots and arctic ground squirrels.

On June 29th, I’ll be teaching a wildlife photography class at the Edmonton Valley Zoo. It will be a fun day full of learning, taking photos, and enjoying the animals at the zoo. Register at the city of Edmonton’s website:
https://movelearnplay.edmonton.ca/COE/public/booking/CourseDetails/647871. Hope to see you there!

If you have any questions, you can send me an email at joel.koop@gmail.com and I’d be happy to answer them (Although I will be gone from June 23rd to 27th on the Athabasca River, and I don’t know if I’ll have much cell service).