16 days solo camping in the Northwest Territories wilderness - E.2 - The Keele

After navigating the raging whitewater of the Natla River, I find myself on the Keel, a wild and untamed river of the Mackenzie Mountain Wilderness. This is the heart of my 575 kilometer long solo adventure. It's where the mountains stand tall and the river twists through ancient landscapes. Out here, every bend reveals something new. Remnants of old indigenous Dene campsites, silent witness to stories long past. I pause, explore and imagine the lives once lived on these shores. The land itself is alive and I explore a recent landslide reshaping the terrain, a reminder of nature's relentless power. I follow the river through narrow braided channels where currents pull tight and waterfalls pour off riverside cliffs. Wildlife is abundant, moose quietly wading along the banks, curious caribou gaze far off in the distance and wolf prints scatter the gravel bars. Out here, you quickly become aware of how small and fragile you are in this vast wilderness. And in the quiet moments, I find simple treasures, wild strawberries, sweet and fleeting, a taste of the wild land. Waterfalls cascade into the river, their roar echoing through the mountains. The scenery is breathtaking, rugged cliffs, northern boreal forests, a wilderness untouched by time. Navigating these braided channels demands focus and patience, a dance with the river's unpredictable power. Solo paddling isn't just about miles, it's about immersing yourself in the land that pushes your skills and your spirit. Ahead lies the mighty Mackenzie River, the great artery of this land. I've come this far exploring a world of ancient stories and wild beauty, a land that's alive and waiting for discovery. Out here, it's just me in the wilderness, a journey of solitude, discovery and respect for the land's enduring power. That's what adventure is, stepping into the unknown where every moment writes a chapter in the story of the wild. We have a beautiful, beautiful day today here on day six. Good to be on the water and we're just about to head through a section of braided river. Looks pretty fast flowing, so that's awesome. It appears the keel is proving to be more spirited than anticipated. Oh, a bear. Hopefully I don't dump here and wash up right in front of it for dinner. Oh, there's a ledge. Yeah, I see. That's what I just avoided there. Almost bombed over a ledge while I was trying to film a bear. Well, looks like we have some real tricky water here. I tried to cheat this by taking a shallow braid, but the river bends back that way, so I might have actually made it worse for myself. And then down there, it looks like some big waves. But it looks like I can run it along the base of the wall. Some big waves down there. Oh yeah, I might want to avoid those actually looking at them now. And then here's the part that I was a little worried about there with those crazy currents and all the waves up against the wall. Really cool. There's a big standalone pointy rock here at the base of this canyon wall with a beautiful little creek pouring in beside it. Isn't that cool? Wow. Not much eddy to catch here though. Not any. Yeah, see if the water was lower, this would be like a proper eddy back here. Worth a couple casts. There's a tributary coming in right on the other side of this crazy pyramid rock, but not much water to make any difference in the clarity of the river just downstream. But figured I should pull over and take a couple casts just in case, you know. Took a few casts. Really cool spot with this rock, but no fish, so I just pulled over to take a look at a sign that I saw, and it's a sign marking the beginning of traditional territory of Indigenous people. And the wording on it was pretty cool. As long as the sun travels from east to west, as long as the river flows from south to north, you know, Treaty 11 shall stand true. That's what a lot of the, unfortunately, treaties that unfortunately got broken in Canada, but a lot of them in the States had that kind of wording. As long as the sun shall rise, as long as the grass shall grow, as long as the rivers flow. And it just goes to show a common interconnecting thread between Indigenous people from those regions, and kind of reflects their connection to land and their perception of time as being different than, you know, the construct of man. We have calendars and dates, and we call this place is North America, and this place is South America, and this place is the state of whatever, or the province of whatever. And we sort of forget that none of those things really existed, and those are just invisible lines drawn by humans. Not much to work with here. Clear water, but there's basically no back eddy, and it's very shallow. Been doing okay today. Still have a solid 30 kilometers to go to bang off 40k today. It'll actually be more like 43k when I do it. It's probably pushing about three in the afternoon, so I'll be getting into camp relatively late, but nothing terrible. I probably shouldn't take much more time to fish here considering this spot sucks! Mother Nature's quite a lady. You're the one I need. Saw a northbound flock of geese against the sky of Navy blue. These are some of the things both my heart and spirit need. Blood, flesh, and blood needs flesh and blood. You're the one I need. Just saw a cow loose. Just happened to be in front of some old discarded aviation fuel barrel, but not the most picturesque foreground, but that was pretty cool. Doing good here. Just on a portion where the river takes a huge bend like this and back like pretty much an s-bend. The currents and rapids don't look too too bad though which is nice. Looks like there's a cave coming up here. That worked. Front carried over some big standing waves but missed the big irregular wave train and look at this calm little park. Epic little hidden beach here. That'd be a nice spot to camp. Cool. Gonna be paddling late into the night. Just looking at my map there. Only done like 25 kilometers so far today. Once I make it to uh Nidhay Creek where I'm hoping there's a decent spot to camp, I'll have done about 45 kilometers today. Very cool rock formations from erosion and snow runoff and glacial activity about 200,000 years ago is when the last glacial period was. Well I don't see anywhere to camp here and it's pretty late in the evening but I do see what looks like a nice eddy. I'm gonna walk up there and take a few I'm happy with one fish though. Maybe I'll have to get into one of the side dishes I brought to fill out that meal but it's gonna be tasty. And unfortunately I would camp here but there's just not really a good spot in this boulder field. So beautiful beautiful spot with this clear water and I don't know maybe I just spooked all the fish and there's maybe a few more in the eddies down that way. We'll see. Oh got one. Ha. So many dinks though. Look at all these little small ones. I managed to bang off just under 50 clicks today and um I think I'm gonna be able to pull it off. If I could just keep doing what I did today I'll make it and uh barring any headwinds. I bushcrafted this um utensil as well. Advanced bushcraft maneuver. Honey baked beans are good. The other side got a little burnt but this side's perfect. Chilly morning this morning. It was really warm yesterday so I'm surprised the temperature just dropped. I think it's just because uh just the way the mountains are here in the valley the sun you know was off of me early relatively early in the evening and now it's just about to poke up over the mountain so I don't know if you can see my breath but hopefully uh it'll warm up a bit. Solar panel up. Charging. Well the sun has come up over the mountains. The air smells phenomenal. Some breezes of air because there's so many wildflowers blooming. It smells like air freshener but only good like just a wildflower smelling wind. Right now it smells like so fresh and wonderful. It's like so oxygen rich. I feel like I need to breeze half as much. Yes. Now is the part of my morning where I don't have to do anything when I'm drinking my coffee although I do tend to not enjoy it as much because I feel the anxiety of all the things I should be doing but today I'm gonna look for sheep. What the heck is that? There's three very square boulders I guess. I'm camped right here so I basically have 402 kilometers to go. This is the Equi River here. It's right before here where the rapids are. The Cannell Trail crosses the Equi River so last time I was at the Equi River was probably 2009 or 2010 when I did an ATV adventure on the Cannell Trail with Field and Stream Magazine. The Cannell Trail is the trail that technically it started, they started building it during World War II in Norman Wells and went through traditional Dene mountain passes all the way essentially to a refinery in Whitehorse Yukon so that's kind of cool that I'm in that country again and honestly if my knee was feeling a little better I might hike up to the Cannell Trail and remember bombing across it in an ATV some 15 years ago. So it looks like the first rapids right at this tight pinch here and I could jump out on this mountains and that's just because it's been melting but also just because I'm coming down in elevation so it's not as cold on the mountaintops as where the trip began. This is pretty nice, class zero, just a long swift, doesn't matter if you're like going sideways, look I'm not even paddling I'm just keeping the canoe straight for the most part and I'm just whizzing along through this stretch. This is awesome guys, just awesome. Well we are approaching what is very likely the most challenging rapid on the Keel River. The current screams around a blind corner and the river goes into a very tight pinch so apparently there's some whirlpools and tricky current. So I'm gonna pull over here and walk down this gravel bar and scout it out. There is a sneak route that you can take but that goes through some whirlpools so I don't know how much of a sneak it is or you could run a big wave train. So I don't know which one I'm gonna do but whoa yeah it looks pretty good from here. So there it is, there's the wave train and there's a big hard swirling back eddy and some boils over here so you know you could tip just paddling through here, I probably wouldn't but it's pretty tricky because that current is swirling back in. it all. Went side to side, I didn't know whether high brace or low brace but it turns out I didn't need to do either. Well the next rapid is just a little ways down from here, just before the mouth of the Equan River and I touched on it a little bit this morning but the Cannell Trail crosses the Equan. Now there's no bridge or anything so if you're on foot or horseback you need to just ford the river and I actually attempted the Cannell Trail by ATV. It's only been done by a very small number of people in ATV. We made it to the Twitja and back which is a ways past the Equan. We had a very high water year and I remember riding an ATV across the Equan and getting swept quite a distance down river as I was riding and I made it out okay but it is the most remote trail in the world and there's old wartime relics still you know in the bush, rusting old trucks and all kinds of stuff and they built that trail to get the sweet crude from Norman Wells to a refinery that was then built in Whitehorse and then up the Alaska Highway which was also built in World War II and into Alaska to defend against the possibility of a Japanese attack on Alaska. along and on a day like today it just oh it just speaks to your soul. It's just like absolute paradise glorious out here but I found my thoughts drifting to the canoe trips I've done with the kids and just like how awesome those are. I don't want to compare one or the other because I can kind of tackle more challenging whitewater rivers when I'm by myself or with my brother or friend or buddies or whatever but I'm just thinking about how wicked our trips have been as a family. The French River, the Stikine River, the Teslon and Yukon Rivers and all the other shorter trips but those big you know week-long plus river trips at times you know they're super challenging with the kids but there's just something so awesome about being out there in a canoe traveling with your whole family fishing and camping out in different spots. I don't know what it is but it's just so awesome being out there with them. This is I think my favorite stretch of the river so far. Wow super jagged mountain top over there. Well here's the Twitja and it is anything but clear. Super muddy and brown. Apparently there's sheep in this country and they're known to come down to the river around here too. Well just cruising down river, current's good. Something caught my eye. Looks like a caribou rat. Find some cool stuff out here sometimes. Look at that. Cool find. I just left it closer to the bank so maybe another canoe party would see it and check it out or maybe someone wants to take it home with them. I want to show you something I found. Pile of rocks here. Looks like an entranceway. A big loop like that back around to here. Maybe like an old cache of some sort. Of course it would get washed away at high water so I don't know but this was definitely placed here. It wouldn't really be pancakes without my very own homemade maple syrup. I don't know. I think it's like better to do pancakes for dinner when you're camping. Not all the time but when you when you're trying to get away in the mornings and make your distance. It's pretty easy but takes a bit longer in the morning and you want to get on the water so why not get on the water day before. I don't know what challenges will arise or what story will unfold along the way. One thing is this nice weather can only last for so long which might mean that it all goes to hell when I get to the Mackenzie when I really need good weather so I'm gonna knock on wood. Hopefully that's not the case. This is another one of those rocks that looked like it had a fire built up against it. Fire burns can stay on rocks for a very very very very very long time. Pushing off day eight on the Keel River. Here we come. That's a nice current right off the hop. 50k baby here we come. Beautiful tributary here with decent volume. That is delicious. So I filled up my other two water bottles and then I can just pour them in the squeeze filter but I could pull off a good front parry. Yeah some tricky currents here where uh a bunch of the braids of the river all collide with each other as the river takes a big bend. Big whirlpool and boil there. Another one there. Okay well I'm just coming up to a place called Nayinlin Brook and I can see there's a good amount of flow coming up so I think I'm gonna pull over check it out maybe take a couple of casts. The last one labeled Brook was good. There was fish there so I don't know what the difference really between a brook and a creek is but around here it seems to mean there's fish at brooks and creeks there's not. Oh yeah yes there's got to be fish here. This looks awesome. Not super super clear but hopefully clear enough. Three different inflows. Well I'm definitely gonna pull over here, scarf some lunch and take a couple casty see what we can come up with. Well beautiful spot except uh not if you're a fish apparently I see something kind of cool over here. Whoa wow that is pretty cool. Waterfall just pouring right in here. Oh this is crazy wind right now. It's really weird when you're paddling into a headwind while going down river it's like the wind wants to move you one way and the river wants to move you the other way and it's just very hard to have control. I saw three big ravens play in the wind swooping and diving and then as I passed them one was sitting on a tree and pulled up almost like be careful. I don't like this. I do not like this at all. Well the wind is coming right at me. It's died down for a bit but then it'll pick up. Behind me looks like way more sketchy and it's pouring rain over there but I feel like that's blowing that way and I see some like blue skies you know the way the wind's coming from so maybe I'll get a bit of rain and it'll just blow over but who knows. Clouds don't seem to be moving a ton despite the blasting wind right down here. Well the storm clouds in front of me have mostly dissipated. Behind me looks terrifying and the wind died off for sure. I put a large boulder on my bow and tied it down too but I think hopefully I'm through it and that that'll be the worst of it for now anyways. Okay so no sooner did I put that boulder on my bow that I had to pull over and whip it off because the wind completely changed directions and is now a tailwind so being stern heavy is actually good. The storm in front of me dissipated but then now this storm behind me is catching up on me and there's some loud thunderclaps. Basically right now I'm trying to outrun that storm. Well I think it's working. I think I've outrun the storm. I started to get some dribbles on me rain. I've paddled really hard for a while and now there's no gray skies above me. Maybe it's coming this way though. Well I think this is going to be home for the night. so like cheesy pasta just like get a dump of vodka cheese in there. Tastes like lasagna. I think the highlight for me today is probably that one waterfall coming in over the cliff that was cascading above. That was really cool. The north guys. The north. What could be more fulfilling for your soul? Well I'm going to bed. All right day nine. We are on the water baby. Beauty day to bang off 50k. Well I'm going through a big section of braided river and I just decided to slip down a little side channel. Hopefully it doesn't end in shallow water or sweepers but it's definitely a shorter distance and it's kind of fun. Feels like a totally different river. This is a wolf print. Every time you see a wolf print start feeling it. Feels cool because feels almost like you're touching the animals. Crazy patch of wild strawberries here. Wild strawberries are small but they pack way more flavor than the big store-bought ones. Yeah and here's the main river right here. Look at that. That's a serious landslide though. And I feel like the mountains although still beautiful aren't as tall as they were a while back. I'm not seeing any snow in them and I'm seeing trees growing right up to their tops on a lot of them too. So I think we're out of the you know highest portion of the Mackenzie mountains here as we get closer and closer to the Mackenzie river. I have another eight clicks to go to be at 250 and it's only three. Whoa big lightning strike. Yeah it's only three in the afternoon. So I guess the current just was ripping fast today. Maybe I was paddling harder. I don't know but I think just strong current all day really getting me there in a hurry. Yikes. Well I think I've put the worst of that storm behind me. Still coming down a bit. I've got to find a half decent spot to camp in the next couple of miles. I just passed a waterfall pouring in through a crevice in this cliff beside me. Probably rushing because of the rain. This is home for the night. It's a natural spring. A sulfur spring but unfortunately it's not a hot spring. I mean it definitely feels warmer than the river but it's not even a warm spring. So really just gonna smell like sulfur around camp here and there. Not really the best but still never really seen anything quite like this before. It's kind of cool. Well I think I did solid 55k today. 250 kilometers to go. If you want to take a guided trip on just the keel not counting the Natla they take 12 days. So over double the amount of time that I'm doing it in. That's okay though. The fire was a smidge hot for the pizzerias but got a little extra crispy. Try to get a bit of an earlier start tomorrow. Seems like I don't really have to. I've been waking up at like 6 30. Between 6 and 7 you know. One day I slept in till 8 I think but other than that the latest I've been up is 7. Usually about 6 30. Well it is about 7 in the morning. Bit of a slower start this morning because it was hammering rain and just blasting heavy winds. I got all my stuff in the tent packed up and like placed outside. So I'm gonna go get some water on to boil and start getting the tent down but seems to have died off a bit but like this whole part of the tent was compressing like this into here. It started probably around 4 in the morning and I just like lay there awake hoping the tent wasn't gonna break. It was pretty intense. Looks like the river came up a good bit and that's why I drug my boat what seemed like an excessive distance. I learned that the hard way when me and Tori had a canoe blow away into a side creek and then wash into the river at night when we were hit with like an insane once in a lifetime windstorm. Yeah I think it's safe to say that the water came up the gravel bar a solid 20 feet or more last night. Crazy how much darker and murkier the river is after that rain. Reminds me of the lower stretches of the Grand Canyon. Passing an old burn here. There's something kind of a little eerie about an old burn. The fallen over burnt trees but there's also something kind of beautiful about it. All the fireweed, these vibrant flowers pop up and fireweed is actually edible for humans and it's a favorite food of moose too. Anyways we'll go check out this burn. Yeah the burn goes way up over that hill but look at Mr. Patch right here. There you can see this creek coming in and then you can see where the sulfur spring enters right there and how everything downstream of that sulfur spring is white. I better get going and head back to the boat. Yeah you can really see the burn carries on along here and goes way back over the next mountain. Some of these burns can be massive. They just let them go. We're out of, we're well out of the timber and logging country here. Unless they you know start to get close to a community they just let them burn because they're just in such remote areas and forest fires are actually part of the biodiversity of the northern boreal forest where we are. I've got to say pretty cool start to the day seeing a moose and checking out that old burn and finding another sulfur spring. Pretty good. I wonder what the rest of the day will have in store. Maybe a little sun that would be cool. So I passed kilometer 200. That puts me 25k from the Mackenzie River. Look at this big 90 degree bend in the river here. The wind's coming this way so as soon as I rounded around here and hit that wind it just blew me. I'm tucked into the back of this island right here trying to find shelter and I can't continue down river until this wind breaks. Well after climbing out of the boat and checking it out a bit, the wind here is just crazy. Like I don't even know if I could set up the tent here but I see a spot just like 50 meters down that way where there's a bunch of big trees that are kind of blocking it so I think I'm going to just track the boat over there and try to set up behind those trees and it won't be like just in the brunt of the wind here. Well you see how cloudy that is. Hopefully the sediment in this part of the river isn't too fine that it won't settle but I'm just going to leave them there as I set up the tent and it should be clear I don't know in a couple hours or less. The wind block is working wonders here. I waited a bit to set this up hoping the wind will die down. It looks like it has. Sun's come out. Yeah nice to be out of the wind here just right over there. It's still quite windy but I've got these trees blocking me. Anyways yeah I was kind of forced to camp here because of the wind and I really couldn't go on down river and I couldn't go back up river and I thought well I'd just let the water settle and all the sediment would come out of it so I don't have any clear water. No clear water creek to take water from. You know that had worked earlier on in the trip. Well not a lot is happening with the water. I filled it up like pretty much when I got here and it's slowly settling. Sometimes the sediment is so fine it doesn't even settle but after that rain yesterday and after a bunch of silt laden creeks have poured into the into the keel the water is very silt laden so that means I'm eating pepperettes for dinner but I did notice one other thing. Okay this whole area around here is sandy soil loaded with wild strawberries and I'm gonna start picking them. Oh plump one. Not a bad little haul. Oh man this tastes like this is like a dessert. I think that's it for me. Hopefully that water settles by the morning and I won't be making coffee with near mud. Mackenzie River is the second largest river in North America next to the Mississippi and it was named after explorer Alexander Mackenzie. Another ginger. We're good at this stuff. What can I say?