The Alexander Mackenzie Trail | Part 1

In the fall of 1792, Alexander McKenzie and his team of nine men were searching for a route to the Pacific Ocean. They were traveling by canoe and when they faced impassable obstacles in the Fraser River, they gave up their route for an overland one, where they were guided by the local natives over 400 kilometers. The trail began just above the mouth of the Blackwater River, where it drains into the mighty Fraser, where we are right now. The trail is heavily overgrown, muddy, long, with numerous water crossings. Without modern day explorers such as ourselves, it could soon be lost to nature. Brought to you in part by Epic Adventure Outfitters. Morning Kim, how's it going? What's up everybody, good morning. Hope you're having a great week. As you can see, we are already out on the road. We are on our way to the famous Alexander McKenzie Trail. Something I've been pretty excited about. I've been planning for a while with my friend Kim. So we're camped just outside of 100 mile right now. Spent the first night in this nice little meadow, getting everything ready to go. We've got about a four hour drive to get to the start of the trailhead, which is just outside of Prince George, and then things are going to get fun. The drive to Prince George was lengthy but scenic, and it wasn't long before I met up with the rest of the guys coming on the trip. Well, we're off to the Alexander McKenzie Trail. We've got about 70k of gravel travel, and then we'll hit the trail and head into Kluskoil Lake. It's going to take us about probably four hours, depending on tree cutting. Hopefully not too much, and then we'll be chilling at the lake and having a good time. In many parts of BC, there are back roads that interconnect communities, like dirt highways. This one takes us to the Alexander All right guys, here we are. We're getting started on the Alexander McKenzie Grease Trail. So the original trail, you can see it over here, is more of a hiking trail. We're following a road that goes along it, and various trails along the way, because this part is not drivable. But this is awesome. I feel like a kid at Christmas. I've been wanting to do this trail for a long time. The Titown Crossing is our gateway to getting on the trail. It's an easy but fun way to get warmed up for what's about to come. This second crossing was a bit deeper, but no problem for these rakes. I think we're officially on the trail now. Two water crossings in. Pretty fun. We having a good time boys? I'm good so far. Already first trees, eh? So this is kind of what the Alexander McKenzie Trail is famous for. Lots of trees that you have to cut through. We started making our way deeper into the trail, and it was clear we were headed into the wild. The scenery constantly changes on this trail from one section to the next, keeping things interesting. Doing pretty good on the trail so far. We're stopping here at this nice grassy field to make some lunch, have a break. Been wheeling pretty good for a couple of hours. This trail is beautiful. It's so much fun. I can't stop smiling. I love it. As we progressed, you can start to see why this trail is so challenging at times. We're pretty lucky in that a lot of the trees along the trail have been cut already, so we're not doing a lot of cutting. But you can just tell by looking around at all the fallen trees how crazy it is in here. It's still pretty slow going. We're moving, you know, maybe five kilometers an hour because a lot of the trees that are cut are still very close to the sides of the road, so we got to squeeze through real slow. We're making slow progress now, but I think we're more than halfway to camp, so that's good. Somehow, in all the chaos of logs and muck, being on this trail, surrounded by history, is peaceful. For now, anyway. All right, guys. We've arrived at our home for the next couple of days. Kluskoil Lake. It's been fun on the Alexander Mackenzie Trail so far. We're going to get camp all set up and then we're probably going to eat some food. We're going to catch some fish and have a campfire. It's going to be good times. So we found a boat in the middle of the forest. I don't think it's anyone's boat. It looks abandoned. There's these old cabins here. I heard this used to be an American fly-in fishing resort. Anyway, we're going to go fishing. We carried this boat to the lake, got it in the water. It's got a hole in it, but it floats. Check this out. Yeah. Yeah. Going fishing. All aboard the SS Kluskoil. The Kluskoil. It's a good thing I can swim. Here we go. To shore. No fish. A pretty good boat. A good vessel. She's solid, except for the seat with the holes in it. But we're going to catch us some fish. What's up, guys? Day two of our trip. We had a pretty good camp night here last night. Taking a hike down this trail. I think I know where I am. Kim and Chad went to go do some fishing, trying to catch us some trout so that we can eat some fresh fish. So I'm just going to check out this fishing hole, which is apparently quite beautiful. Check out all this moss. First cast, got a fish. Kim's getting him off the rock. Ready to go, buddy. Yeah. Right on. Got my first fish today. My first reef fish, actually. Yeah, we were pretty fortunate today to be out there catching all these fish. We're going to have a great feast tonight. We woke up for the third day of our trip to Sunshine. Refreshed from the day of rest and ready to tackle what might come next. We are pulling out of Kluskoil Lake and heading back onto the McKenzie. Still running parallel to the lake through a tight tree trail, lots of logs sticking out like spears, which is fun in this long truck and having to be careful of flexing into anything. We should be getting back on the main trail here fairly quickly, heading towards the Pan Phillips river crossing. So basically the situation today has been not a whole lot of progress. We're moving through this burnt out forest and we've caught up to another group in front of us who's been cutting fallen trees and it's very slow going. There's fallen trees every 25 meters or so and it's pretty relentless. As we approach the Pan Phillips crossing, we had to cut through several large trees to even find the entrance. No one has crossed here this year and possibly much longer. With the successful trail crossing under our belts, it was time for the final push to finish this section of the trail. From here to the road was an endless onslaught of fallen trees and swamps. At some points it was hard to tell if we were still even on the trail. This marked the end of this first part of our journey but we still had several days ahead of us as we'd scout new trails and make our way to the beach where Alexander McKenzie landed by canoe. That's coming up next week on part two so make sure you hit the subscribe button you're not going to want to miss what we're doing next. My name's Sean and this is the story till now.