In 2026, we paddled the Nation Lakes Canoe Route - upstream and downstream! Saves money on the shuttle, but does make it more strenuous. See our trip journal on Viv's site.
A quick summary from Viv's blog
- The longest river section took us 6 hours to upstream. We imagined that all the animals were laughing at us – “look at these idiots going the wrong way!”
- Surprisingly, the hardest day was not an upstreaming day, but rather one with unforgiving headwind which made us paddle at less than 2km a hour!
- As far as the local outfitter knows, we’re the first to have yoyo-ed this route
- The full trip was 10 days, and day 9 was the first day we didn’t get headwind!
- It was awesome!
Dragging our canoe through willows to circumvent a log jam