Here we go….
After an all-nighter of last minute-packing, big hugs goodbye, and a dash to the airport with way to much gear, I landed in Vancouver, the first stop on my way to my month-long Kluane painting expedition.
There I met Brian Jones of Canada West Mountain School, who will be guiding me into the icy reaches of Kluanes’s ice fields, and reconnected with Adam Greenberg, who will be capturing this unfolding adventure on camera.
We then moved our combined mound of gear onto our Air North flight, and flew BC’s spectacular coastal mountain range under clear skies.
After a few months of non-stop preparation, it was finally starting to sink in that I was really going somewhere. Somewhere special.
Whitehorse came next, where we were picked up by Lloyd Freese, a retired parks Canada gentleman with 4 decades off service under his belt, most in Kluane National Park. Lloyd kindly drove us around town for some last minute errands, which includes signing our film permit at the Parks Canada office with Sean Sheardown, the parks superintendent. That was quickly followed by an in studio CBC radio interview, a meet up at Total North to pick up a satellite phone, and of course a stop for bear spray and bangers for the hiking, canoeing and rafting legs of the trip.
Leaving town we dropped in for a quick planning visit with David Dickson of Dickson Outfitters, to plan out a possible horse ride to kick off our Donjek Route hike.
Will that all done, we headed west on the spectacular drove to Kluane. Filming ensued, a stop at the Bakery on Haines Junction for a nice treat, and at last, after another hour on the road, we pulled into the Arctic Institute.
A dinner was waiting for us, as well as a spectacular calm sunset overlooking a calm Kluane Lake. An absolute perfectly relaxing ending to a what had been a mad last few weeks.
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