After 38 days and 207km blasted with several major snow storms, extreme temps from a bone stabbing -42C (-51C windchill) to a soft 0 C , an 800foot upriver climb packing at minimum 40km of the route through deep frosty powder (returning for sled each time), breaking through ice, chopping my snowshoe with the axe and nearly losing the tent on a sudden Lac Wakuach wind squall I finally came to the tucked in the northern wilderness community of Schefferville, Quebec last Friday.
It’s a friendly, remote place driven by the iron ore mines but also surrounded with 100’s of kms vast fresh nature freedom from all angles. About here is the territory of the Nasakpi and Montagais native people. Here with great bush savvy and wisdom they still practice traditional ways of life and live close to the earth. If you love endless wilds at your fingertips this is a spot to see and be.
After a quick resupply I’m off again southeast to the homeland. Newfoundland and Labrador border is just 1km away. I will push on through the heart of the Big Land (Labrador) by snowshoe and toboggan as far as I can towards Newfoundland island before winter gives out.
It’s been a 7 and a half month ride crossing fully the interior of Northern Quebec – properly known as Nunavik. 1350km in Summer/Fall (with my dog Saku) and part of Winter (alone) with a patient freezeup wait camp in between. From Hudson Bay near Puvirnituq in the arctic northwest to here. From the Leaf River caribou herd, a wolf and a musk ox all coming at the tent to banquet meals of fish, ptarmigan, grouse, goose, duck, rabbit to navigating tundra, woods, mountain, arctic ocean, worlds highest tide to swan and geese migrations, big black bears and moose – I’ve nearly seen it all. And have filmed as much as I reasonably could given the often harsh conditions.
Still over 2000km of trackless wilderness remains to reach destination of southern Newfoundland. My Garmin inReach froze up during the intense cold snap so periodic GPS updates ceased. However, I just got it back in working order and they will resume moving onward.
Picture above taken Jan 3rd on huge Lac Otelnuk as the wind bites and mighty mother nature shows her rugged clean beauty in the form of the mountain island that rises from the icy plain over my shoulder. What a wonderful spot! What a fine country! Real, long distance, unbroken lands still exist up here in Northeast Canada. For certain the Labrador-Quebec Peninsula and Newfoundland has some of the last great wilderness left on this planet. I have yet to cross paths with a single person on the long ungroomed trail. Rarely have I come across a deep woods cabin or tilt.
Two high performing pieces of gear from the last leg of the journey: my 12 foot long toboggan and 16x30inch bear paws snowshoes handcrafted by Lure of the North Outfitters. Without either one I was getting nowhere. The toboggan snakes beautifully behind in my snowshoe track. Carefully designed and perfected over 100’s and 1000’s of years by indigenous people it is still one of the most effective ways to travel the forested heavy snow regions by foot with a large load. LOTN has kept tradition alive and makes them very well from quality high density plastic versus the resillent juniper tree which was what natives once used.
One failed piece of gear: The Klymit Static V Lite inflatable sleeping pad – the dual inflate/deflate flip valve is brutal and constantly leaked air from the beginning leaving me on my backup foam pad and cold frozen ground after an hour or two of sleep. Not ideal when it’s -42 Celsius and I let the titanium woodstove die out to save wood chopping energy. But shit happens and I survived. No matter how “good” the gear, time in nature requires some grit to truly enjoy it. I had a -40C rated sleeping bag but it is all but useless without insulation from beneath. Down the stretch I had to resort to the nature’s aromatic and cozy spruce-balsam bough couch. I have always been hesitant with inflatable pads and now I paid the price. I do not recommend The Static V Lite. For the next leg I will roll with thick foam and boughs only. The latter of which there are gazillions on the trillions of evergreens that litter the scarely populated north. I gather them from the few wooden pickets I cut to secure the tent each evening. Some boughs go under the woodstove to prevent snow melt beneath my bottomless 8×8 canvas tent. Each evening I hard pack loose snow into a platform for the tent. Within a hour or two I can walk on this solid platform without snowshoes in my moccasins to do camp chores like cutting wood and loading the sled the next morning.
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