“The word adventure has gotten overused. For me, when everything goes wrong, that’s when adventure starts” – Yvon Chouinard.
Scott Gilbertson describes very eloquently why most people no longer experience real adventures when they travel. We plan everything, and we know what we are getting into because we’ve researched all details of our trip on Tripadvisor and guidebooks, or have asked a travel agent to arrange all details of our trips. Yet we call our trips to faraway places an “adventure”.
180 Degrees South is a great movie that follows Jeff Johnson on a trip to Patagonia. Along the way, lots goes wrong, but it doesn’t matter; the trip is a a great adventure. Along the way we are introduced to Chouinard (founder of Patagonia) and Doug Tompkins (co-founder of the Northface), and the ways they use their fortunes to save the environment.
Check out this video of watching grizzlies in the northern Yukon. The footage was shot with a simple Flip camera – it only has a wide-angle lens, no zoom at all. You get amazingly close to the bears. This amazing experience is offered by Bear Cave Mountain Tours in Ni’iinlii Njik Territorial Park.
I was living right at the source of the Tatshenshini on Chilkat Pass when they were exploring at the Windy Craggy minesite; a DC3 with supplies would fly over my study area every single day for most of a year. Cancellation of the permit and creation of Tatshenshini-Alsek park was a huge victory for conservation groups, creating the world’s largest protected area (together with Kluane in the Yukon, Wrangell-St. Elias in mainland Alaska, and Glacier Bay in SE Alaska).
Nahanni River Adventures is one of my favourite operators in Canada’s north. I have always dreamt on going on one of Neil’s trips, especially his Tashenshini trip, since I used to live right at the source of the Tatshenshini on Chilkat Pass. The Edmonton Journal just published a great article on the origins of his company.
In the summer of 1984, at age, 23, Neil Hartling headed up to Nahanni National Park in the Northwest Territories from his home in Edmonton to experience and paddle a river that had haunted him since he was 15 years old. Two things happened that summer… read more…
Many people have heard of the Iditarod dogsled race (“Alaska, where men are men and women win the Iditarod”), but the lesser-known Yukon Quest, from Whitehorse to Fairbanks, Alaska, is actually quite a bit tougher, because of the terrain and the cold. The trail follows the historic Gold Rush and Mail Delivery routes from the turn of the 20th Century, leading from Whitehorse north to Dawson city, and then west across the Alaska border to Fairbanks.
November 11, 2010 11:00 | 
Subscribe
