Category: Out on the Land

Sam, Colin, Tess and I paddled down Caribou Creek yesterday. The weather was beautiful and there were astonishingly few bugs! We probably hit this one at just the right time for weather and water levels. We paddled ~7km down the creek and then walked about 800m back to the Dempster. Despite the somewhat serious-looking rapids at the campground, the current became less intense after the bridge. There were a few shallow and rocky sections, which were fine in a packraft but a bit trickier in Tess’ folding kayak (but still doable). There were a decent number of downed trees along the route, but the chill current plus lots of good areas to pull out and portage made them fairly easy to navigate. The creek is muddy, so we accumulated mud every time we got in and out of our boats. We followed a cut line out from the creek, which made for an easy exit. It’s possible to paddle all the way out into Campbell Lake, but the exit would be a lot trickier and I suspect the creek would get slower/shrubbier/marshier, so I think we took the best exit point. We were out for about 6 hours, including driving and scouting.

I previously posted an article about the Great Canadian Reindeer Project, which is a pretty interesting piece of local history. While the ice road was still open, some buddies and I made a quick trip up to Reindeer Station, the former headquarters of the reindeer herd.

Reindeer Station is now used for culture camps, and it has quite a few new buildings, but I am partial to the old, broken down infrastructure.

There’s also an old, broken down Bombardier snowmobile (pronounced “bombadeer” up North), which might have looked something like the photo on the right in its heyday.

Overall, it was a nice spring outing.