Category: Nááts’ihch’oh

I got to check out a new area of the park this fall: the Howard’s Pass Access Road (or HPAR for short). We were supposed to do this trip in August but couldn’t get in on our charter flight due to the weather. So this time, we flew to Fort Simpson and drove all the way around – this is the only part of the Park that is accessible by road.

The drive around was quite scenic, especially after we got off the main road and started heading up the Nahanni Range Road towards Tungsten.

While in the Park, we flew around in a helicopter to a number of remote camera sites while enjoying the fall colours.

We stayed in Tungsten on our last night and caught a charter flight the next morning from the airstrip there. Tungsten is an old mining townsite (mining for tungsten, of course) that was operational from the ’60s to the ’80s, peaking at over 500 residents in 1979. The mine has been closed and reopened several times over the past decades, and is currently run by a skeleton crew of six men. Tungsten has a delightful ghost town feel to it, and is situated in a valley surrounded by gorgeous towering mountains – it’s fantastic.

Oh and also there’s a really nice hot spring there.

We had a lovely flight back to Tulita.

We did a quick daytrip to Túoch’ee Tué (O’Grady Lake) to bring community members into the park. This lake is a bit of an anomaly in the Park, because it isn’t in the South Nahanni River watershed – instead, it flows North into the Natla-Keele river system. Only the South shore of the lake is in the Park (it was included in the boundary for access reasons). This was my first visit to this lake.

Ridge hike panoramas:

We made some repairs to the old outfitter’s cabin, including replacing the leaking roof.

We also built a new outhouse.

We made a brief stop at Grizzly Bear Lake on the way back.