Nahanni 2011
One of the many joys of camping in the summer is the ability to travel through the many lake and river systems available to us. With our youngest campers going for a one night trip on Gull Lake, older campers can be gone for weeks on end with little more than canoes, clothes, and food. The pinnacle of Kilcoo canoe tripping is certainly the Nahanni River trip. I’ve been lucky enough to experience this amazing trip twice, once as a camper and once as a staff member.
The South Nahanni River is a UNESCO world heritage site with some of the most awe inspiring scenery in the world. The river is truly spectacular, it meanders through the Ragged Range, the terrain seems as though the Rocky Mountains packed up and moved north. The Nahanni includes a waterfall that drops more than twice the height of Niagara Falls as well as some of the best white water canoeing in North America, not to mention a Canadian answer to the Grand Canyon, with walls almost a kilometre high!
This year, Russ Gray and I took a group of 11 campers up to the North West Territories for the trip; we met at camp all together for the first time on June 28th, and by the 28th of July, upon our return it was hard to imagine not having always been a group. Over the trip we had shared stories and jokes, struggles and triumphs, and we all grew together. It’s not a stretch to say that all of our campers became stronger leaders, stronger trippers, and stronger people.
Chris Hammill