Home  |Arctic River Trips | Kunwak-Kazan River Images

We wanted to paddle the big lakes and see what that was like and we found out. They are big and scary. Even when those lakes where down, it was spooky being on them because they could change in a heartbeat. The Kazan Drainage was the home to many of the Inuit People and we found reminders of their time on the land everywhere we got off the water. We also traveled through the area that Knuud Rasmusen traveled through in his Fifth Thule Expedition during the years 1923 to 1925. When he passed through this area, he met and spent time with family groups living on the land every few days. Now they were all gone but we where in the same places that he visited almost 90 years ago. The trip was hard but very interesting. We paddled any time we could be on the water and sometimes paddled through the night and the next day. We like to paddle at night. It was cold but very compelling, moon out, sun out, cold black water and the animals came out. It was a magical time. We scratched our way down the river and across the big lakes and got to our ride home. It was a very good trip.

This old Convair was our ride from Winnipeg and was probably built in the fifties. They were powered by two  3800 HP Allisons that I'm sure weren't easy on Jet Fuel, but they are big and strong and very reliable.

Bob, our airplane guy has Lodges and fishing camps all over the north. This is his Lodge at Mosquito Lake where he stored our canoe. It had been patched up from a bear attack last winter. There  were a bunch of holes chewed through the bow.

Another view of Bob's Mosquito Lake Lodge. It was very nice considering where we were. We had a nice snack there before we loaded up the canoe and headed to his north Dubawnt camp. We dropped off supplies at Dubawnt Lake, picked up one of his employees and headed east to the Kunwak River.

This was the view from my first class accommodations in steerage. We had our gear, their gear and a hundred gallons of Av Gas in the back of that Otter.

The boys landed in the first place big enough to get into with the Otter, untied our canoe and threw our gear at us as we stood thigh deep near shore. As soon as we had all of our gear they fired up the Otter and promptly stuck it on rock. That's one of the boys in the river trying to rock the four thousand pound airplane off the little reef without damaging the floats. 7/14/06

They eventually rocked  the Otter off the bottom, taxied to the end of the wide spot and took off. Once airborne, they turned around and gave us the traditional buzz job before turning west and back to their camp. 7/14/06

This was our first view of our shallow, rocky little river. We were looking at forty miles of bad road.

The upper Kunwak was wet and boggy. We often has to get quite a long way from the river before we could find a place that was dry enough for a camp. 7/16/06

This small lake was still frozen. We paddled through a few snow showers but they didn't last long. Overall, this was a pretty cold trip. We didn't have many warm days. I wore my jacket almost all of the time. 7/15

It wasn't long before we were blown off the river. I am standing on the edge of the ridge that was about 75 feet above the water. We stopped when we couldn't make any headway and waited for the wind to go down. 7/16

There was an old Inuit camp on the top of the ridge. There were tent rings and food and tool caches all around the area. It was an nice flat open area in the wind and out of the bugs. These camps were always in open breezy areas that would keep the bugs to a minimum.

We walked by another herd of musk oxen. They didn't pay any attention to us. There were a lot of musk oxen and caribou along the Kunwak and the Kazan Rivers. 7/16

More of the same herd. Sometimes it was hard to stop taking pictures.

We continued to see small herds of caribou all the way to Kazan Falls. The would usually ignore us.

7/18

The big lakes  were very pretty. There was never any problem finding a place to stop and camp.

7/18

Flowers grew in the rocks by the water in most of the places that we stopped. 7/19

Another view of a very big lake with a little weather blowing through. There were a lot of thunder showers and a few snow showers. 7/19

More tent rings. We came across tent rings and tool and food caches in most of the places that we got off the water. These rivers had been well traveled.

Another nice lake trout. This will make a good dinner. 7/20

It's hard not to take pictures of fish. The rivers were easy to fish in. Fish at the eddy line, or fish near the rock, or fish at the bottom of the rapid, or just throw the lure into the lake. There were almost always fish there.

As we got near the big lake we heard a clacking sound. It was a pair of storks jabbering to each other on the ridge line. The only other stork that I had seen was on a birth announcement.

We stopped to rest and found ourselves in another old camp. There were about a half a dozen tent

rings spread around on the point.

The wind was down and the lake was flat, but we stayed close to shore anyway. The wind could

come up in a heartbeat and we didn't want to get caught out on the lake.

In many places you couldn't see across these lakes. This one stayed flat all day. Quite a change after

being blown off the water for days on end. 7/21

We traveled through classic, flat and rolling tundra. It was often rather featureless but very pleasant.

Another big lake, Princess Mary, flatter than a pancake and able to leap up and devour you in a flash. I don't know what was worse, paddling the flat water waiting for it to explode in a froth, or paddling when they were up and rolling. 7/21

Small thunderstorms blew around us during most of the trip making open water crossings a challenge. 7/22

Here's Paul standing next to a plywood hunters shack. Not a very appealing way to spend a season.

7/21

No matter how much sun screen I use and how careful I am I always get sunburned. I dismantled

part of my sunglasses and made an emergency nose protector. 7/23

We're still on Princess Mary lake. Our next big lake is Thirty Mile Lake.

This is Princess Mary Lake. These big lakes can be very pretty. Here's a place that we couldn't see across.

Another view of the big lake. Flatter than a pancake. You don't see that very often.

We camped nearby and when I went down to the lake to fish a small herd of caribou swam to shore and walked through our camp. 7/24

The river was fairly wide here but the caribou pretty much go were they want, and they pretty much

ignored us.

As you can see, Paul is wearing all of his clothes. We had some rather cold weather for the middle

 of the summer. 7/27

More tent rings and food and tool caches. They were almost everywhere we stopped.

And more of the same. As we got closer to Thirty Mile Lake, we encountered more and more signs

of the former Inuit habitation.

We also started seeing more caribou as we got closer to Thirty Mile Lake.

They were very bold and curious and would generally walk right by us with barely a glance.

And finally Thirty Mile Lake. It seemed like Ninety Mile Lake to me. We worked really hard to get

down that lake. It was windy and cold the whole way and very hard paddling. 7/23

We got out of the Kunwak and onto Thirty Mile Lake and were stopped cold. We clawed our way

to an island right where the Kunwak and Kazan dump into the lake and spent three days there, and not because we wanted to. It was blowing so hard we couldn't get off of it back on the lake. 7/24

There were also numerous herds of musk oxen near and around the lake and they didn't seem very

bothered by us either.

As we scratched our way down the lake, we encountered dozens of inuksuit. They were always

visible on the ridge line.

Here's a nice look right down the lake. As I said, it seemed like Ninety Mile Lake.

We got off the lake to rest and when we climbed a small ridge, we found this iconic inuksuk. I've seen this pattern before. Those are big, heavy rocks and would have taken a couple of people to erect.

We had thunderstorms swirl around us all the way down the lake. They didn't produce a lot of lightening but they did drop a lot of moisture.

Both shores of Thirty Mile Lake were lined with inuksuit. There were very few places that we got off the lake and didn't find any. We could see this one a long way off. It was right on the ridge line.

As we got closer to Kazan Falls, we saw more and more of the big stone messengers.

The fishing was pretty easy and we could get fish almost at will. This was our target; three to five pound lake trout. I'll clean that fish there and we'll have it for dinner when we stop.

The weather gave us a memorable farewell as we reached the end of the long lake.

We're finally off Thirty Mile Lake. Paul is standing next to the entry rapids where all the water in the drainage flows through the lake's outlet. We portaged around this set.

Another view of the entry rapids. Lots of fish here.

About five miles from Kazan Falls, we came across a very large area of inuksuit. There were more than a dozen and a half constructions, some of which were massive and could be seen from a long ways away.

There are over a dozen inuksuit in this image. They were built on the exposed bedrock and they were of all shapes and configurations.

Some of the inuksuit were huge. These two were over six feet tall and must have weighed a half ton each, plus the little cap on one of them.

This is looking down river toward the Falls. This was a very prominent site.

Here's another view of a few of the constructions.

We ran into the Widji girls near the Falls. They had been behind and had been slowed by the wind as we had.

Here's one of the girls showing off the results of the fishing lesson we provided. They had a nice fish dinner the last night of their trip.

Paul and I left our names in the paddlers travel log which was kept in an ammo can in the rock cairn.

The girls got a luxury ride to Baker Lake in a turbine powered Otter. They got picked up on and esker not far from the Falls.

The next morning our ride came and we headed home.

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