Thelon game sanctuary

In muskox hunting was banned, yet poaching still threatened the remaining herds so in the government created a huge game sanctuary along the Thelon and Hanbury rivers northeast of Great Slave Lake map. The first warden was William Hoare, an experienced northerner who used to be a lay preacher at Aklavik. From there they began to patrol the Thelon Game Sanctuary. They chased all the Dene from the Sanctuary and told them that they would be sent to jail if they were caught hunting or trapping within the boundaries of this huge game reserve.

This was especially difficult to understand when they saw Hoare and Knox hunting in the Sanctuary when their supplies began to run low. Hoare and Knox only remained in the Thelon Game Sanctuary for two years.

The report Hoare prepared for the Government made special reference to the concerns of the Dene and their traditional hunting areas. Wolodymyr and I cooled our heels in the Maple Leaf Lounge. He had travelled from Toronto and we met up in Calgary. An amazing red sunset from our balcony in Yellowknife due to forest fires in the area.

Walking around Yellowknife on a Saturday morning. We still had some supplies to pick up and make sure we were all set with Air Tindi, the charter airline we were using, plus I had to get my hair cut really short, the way I like it, when I go into The Barrens.

Long hair can be problematic when you can't wash often and the bugs are really bad. I love the freedom of a brush cut! The architecture is already different in Yellowknife. Everything new is built with the long and cold winter in mind. Wolodymyr in our room on that Saturday afternoon. We were waiting for Roman and his daughter Sarah to fly in from Ottawa that night. Floating houses in the harbour by the island on the distance. Yellowknife is a really cool town, at least to visit. This was my first time in that model of plane and the first time I had ever used Air Tindi.

They were great and I highly recommend them. They were highly professional and very polite. The Cessna Baby Caravan is a great plane. It has almost as much range and carrying capacity as the Twin Otter. Plus it has this amazing wrap around windshield that gives the front seats phenomenal visibility. The floats were loaded with all of our small stuff in order to save space in the cabin.

Our pilot for the flight, Caleb, was making sure that everything was just right. We thought that we had a fair bit of gear, but we were told we had a lot of weight left to spare. We were able to find exactly where we wanted to drop down on the Clarke River, but we were having our doubts about water levels.

The Clarke does not have a lot of flow in the best of times, and summer had been very dry. We were trying to develop alternate plans which included simply landing at Warden's Grove on the Thelon. Caleb proved to be a very interesting, pleasant, and capable bush pilot who loved his craft. It was fun to fly with him.

A local forest fire burning. Most are started by lightning strikes and will often burn all summer. I had the opportunity to sit up front.

After discussing it at length with the pilot, Caleb, we decided to not even give the Clarke River a fly over. But Caleb had a great suggestion. Why not put in on the Hanbury, maybe 8 kilometres up from the Thelon? This shot is of the final approach after three go-arounds to see how deep the water was and if there were any roacks that would pose a problem.

We landed on the patch of water straight ahead and pulled up to shore in the right hand turn with the sand beyond. It was a perfect landing! It was bot ha good spot to land and an easy spot to unload the plane, all without getting our feet wet! Making sure that the canoes are secured tightly is the most important part of the loading.

The take off that left us alone for probably over kilometres. When the plane flies away and you are left with the silence and the solitude of The Barrens, it is a thing of pure beauty for me. It scares some people when they realize how alone they are, but for me, it jump starts my survival mode and makes me feel extremely alive. Our first camp site on the Hanbury River.

It was a nice spot, where we landed, the weather was fine. We decided to stay put and explore the area. Not only is there tons of sand along the rivers in the Barren Grounds, some of it takes strange shape and form, molded by the permafrost underneath. This almost looked like a burial mound.

Roman preparing a good bed of coals. We bought 4 huge steaks in Yellowknife that we roasted over the coals. I am amazed that none of us got a picture of them on the grill!

A sandstone cliff and outcropping on the Hanbury River. Note the hundreds of old swallow nests and some new ones. They have most probably been nesting here for thousands of years. We still looked very fresh that first day of paddling, on our way down to meet the Thelon River.

Slightly left of center in the photograph, you can make out the old warden's cabin in Warden's Grove, on the left side of the Thelon a couple of kilometers below the Hanbury. Its strange. I have been in this spot twice before and never saw the cabin from the river. This time around, it literally jumped out at me. Perhaps I had studied the maps closer this time and knew more precisely where to look.

Anyway, it was kind of weird but nice to be able to spot it and visit it. I had expected the cabin to be just rubble, but it is still mainly standing, with part of its roof collapsed.

Old saws and shovels were left behind. It looks like the Warden's Grove stand of trees yield large enough logs for such construction. Walking back to the river we found lots of very fresh birch Boletes mushrooms that Wolodymyr is seen carrying in his right hand. Very edible and tasty. We fried them to accompany several of our meals. Our second night out on the Barrens was on this very fine beach.

We had a wicked tail wind from the south all day. That gives you good speed but it is hard to control the canoe. The lake trout was not very big but just perfect for us. We fried it with fresh ginger. Interesting weather was all around us, nice but somewhat unsettled. I scampered up looking for a possible camp site. Nothing is set here. Every camp site is something you spot, you find, you figure out. At some places you can tell that others had the same idea.

But sometimes it is not obvious and not easy to find a decent spot and you have to settle. Fortunately, in August, you have many more options as the water levels are so much lower.

This was the site where we had gotten hammered by a bad thunderstorm the afternoon before. It was coming up behind us and we barely found this spot and put up our two tents before all hell broke loose. We ended up riding it out with all 4 of us in my tent. We estimated the winds at up to 90kph. I have never seen my Nunatak bend so much because of a wind.

It was not the best spot, but someone had used it before. The gravel was really loose so we used large rocks over the tent pegs for the storm. But it was a huge lesson to us. We had left our 2 canoe up on the beach but not tied, on the lee side of the spit of landed. They were completely sheltered from the wind. Had the winds been in a slightly different direction, the canoe would have been kilometres downstream.

So the rule is, no matter what the weather looks like or what the terrain is, always tie up your canoes overnight. Tie them to a tree, a bush, a rock, or a good peg, but tie them up. It does not take much for a wind to take them away. I really believe that a bug enclosure is a must. Its perfect for 4 people. You can eat in there, socialize, play card games or Scrabble, in the relative comfort away form the bugs. My zippers were starting to go, so we had to nurse it along for the rest of the trip.

It turned colder after the thunderstorm, and the wind shifted from the north, which was the general direction we were going. So a strong tail wind and a current turned into a strong head wind with a current.

In this shot, Sarah is taking a nap in the canoe while we waited to see if the winds would die down. This particular section of the river had the winds coming straight at us.

You can see the strength of the head winds by looking at the white caps in the middle of the river. So just before the bend in the river, where there was some shelter from the wind, we made camp. In the Barrens, you don't always have a choice. You have to respect nature and live by her rules.

You can fight it, but you will only beat yourself up and possibly hurt yourself. Although it was still cold, the wind had died down appreciably by morning so we were able to set out the next day. This is a very cool spot it is just a few kilometres downstream of Hornby Point.

We made camp here back in and the river water levels were higher. We had encountered strong winds here and cold weather back then. But I remember the fishing was excellent. Its like the predator fish have staked out their territories. In the eddy to the left of where the stream enters the river, sit the pike. To the right, where the current is stronger, sit the lake trout and both are waiting for grayling to make it downstream so they can feed.

I tested out this theory and was proven right. We did not want any pike, though. We wanted lake trout for dinner. It is a lot of fun casting into the current. I was using a 5 Blue Fox spinner on a 20lb test braided line, plenty strong enough. A beauty, at about pounds. I do not know exactly because we did not weigh it.

As you can see in the photo, I attached my chain to the trout and I then attached the chain to the rope loop at the back of the canoe, to keep the trout alive until dinner.

Wolodymyr took one look at the set up and warned me the chain was too weak, and the trout would break free. Sure enough, 30 seconds after tying him up he did a run and simply bent the metal hook in his mouth and he was gone. But as a testament to how good the fishing is at this spot, I caught another lake trout, just a bit smaller weighing at just under 10 pounds only a few minutes later. Lake trout in the Thelon look very similar to pike in the water because they are such a dark green colour.

Roman was in good spirits the entire trip. Once you get that much experience being out there, you start appreciating the trip in its entirety. You are less enthralled by each moment and more content with it as a whole.

Collecting firewood so that we could roast the lake trout fillets in foil in the coals. A nice place to camp, just up a river that was feeding the Thelon. We camped just around the corner to the left back in I am not an experienced fish dresser, but a large lake trout is not difficult to fillet. The lake trout yield two large fillets which we roasted in the coals separately. It was our best meal of the trip, I think ok, maybe second to the steaks.