Sometimes fnding a flat place to put your tent is a true test of your applied geometry skills… #nueltinlake #1000milesolo
Stonehenge sized boulders in the rapids above Nahilini Lake on the Upper Thlewiaza. No portaging was required so all was well. Reaching Nueltin Lake the next day was the fulfillment of a 20 year long dream. That lake, lying half in the forest and half in the tundra, is a magical place. #thlewiaza #1000milesolo #northernmanitoba #nueltinlake
I was introduced to P.G. Downes through my work with @bobhendersonoe —a retired McMaster outdoor education professor who has also introduced me to friluftsliv, Arne Naess, wild pedagogies and Pathways—the Ontario Journal of Outdoor Education (of which I am now happily the Managing Editor), published by @coeooutdoors. I had to get this book via an inter library loan since it’s almost impossible to find. I’m feeling a little devastated I’m going to have to give it back. You know how it is: when you find a book that feels like a piece of home. Sleeping Island (p. 1943) is rich with stories of the North told in Downes’ poetic and attentive voice. This is very much a white man’s interpretation of the North but what makes it so interesting is that he does not see himself as a conqueror—he differs constantly to the power of the land, the knowledge of the Indigenous peoples and he respects both. On several occasions I smiled as I Downes painted pictures of how ridiculous the ambitions of white men must seem to the Indigenous people—how futile this perceived power is in the inscrutable face of the North. Downes also lamented the ways in which the obnoxious settlers presence was destroying this place he loved so much. And it was a love without ownership, only respectful reverence. That we could all have such a thing. . . . #pgdownes #friluftsliv #outdooreducation #north #nueltinlake #canada #thenorth #hudsonbay #portage #canoetripping #bookrecommendations #bookreview #bibliophile #canadianwriter #canadiannorth #recommendedreading #readthis #indigenoushistory #furtrade #whatimreading #arnenæss #sleepingisland #bookstagrammer #getoutside #booksbooksbooks #indigenouslivesmatter #watchee #booklove
Throwback to late July as I was playing dodge-the-thunderstorm on Nueltin Lake, the most complicated and island-packed lake I’ve ever been on. Overall I got lucky with the weather on this lake and managed to cover 150 km in 4 days, bringing me to the Lower Thlewiaza River, the Barren Lands, and caribou country. There’s so much history here; I would love to go back and explore this lake at a slightly more leisurely pace someday instead of going at full hell bent for leather mode. #nueltinlake #canoeing #nunavut #1000milesolo
A royal send off from gods and lake monsters of Nueltin Lake as I received fine useable tailwind for most of the morning (they did have to to include gray skies and the continual threat of squalls to do it but thatʼs a trade off I will take any day). Trying to drink in as much of the landscape as I can. Itʼs so dramatic and stark. For anyone who is never been up here I can really only compare it to the Alpine. Imagine the blasted alpine heath on a mountain just carrying on and on for miles. It has taken 4 days to make it from the bottom to the top of the Nueltin Lake. This ends stage 6 of the trip and leads us to the final stage, number 7, the descent of the Thlewiaza to the Bay. If youʼre going to paddle Nueltin Lake then campsites arenʼt going to be a problem. From the south end of the lake to the narrows you have unlimited sand beaches, each prettier than the last. And from the narrows north you have tundra, so you can camp wherever you want so long as you can find a place that is reasonably level and not bedeviled by giant boulders everywhere. Oh, and a bit of protection from the wind by the topography or a clump of krummholz is nice too! The weather has been amazing and the wind conditions couldnʼt have been better on this giant lake. I was really only able to sail on one of the four days - today - but that was way better than nothing. I figure I was making about 6 km an hour for most of the morning, three of which came from paddle and three of which came from sail. I have to say that this 1.4 m Falcon Sail is amazing. Itʼs a rocket fuel that I can add once in a while to make the miles go much quicker. It is so quick to put up and down that you can really take advantage of even a short change in the wind. That being said itʼs also one of the most dangerous things I own. If you are sailing a canoe you need to be paying attention 110% of the time. Think of it like running white water; you need to be ready for things to go wrong at any moment. Much appreciated Nueltin, youʼre beautiful, so long and thanks for all the pics! #nueltinlake #nunavut #stephankesting #1000milesolo #falconsails
Possibly last campsite on Nueltin Lake? Unless Iʼve just jinxed it tomorrow I should be on the Thlewiaza, heading downriver with the current again! It was a place to pitch a tent though, close to the water so I donʼt have to carry the stuff too far, and a little bit of shelter from some low spruce bushes. The mosquitoes are fairly bad tonight. As you fall asleep you can hear the hum all around you, 1 million bugs wanting to get into the tent and suck you dry. In the past I have relied entirely on bugnets and clothing to prevent getting eaten alive, but in my old age I have resorted to the strategic use of DEET occasionally. I really only use it a couple times a day, typically applying it right before eating. #nueltinlake #hillebergtent #barrenlands #1000milesolo #sthephankesting
7:18 am and on the water. Conditions on Nueltin have been pretty much idyllic other than the occasional thunderstorm. No massive waves, never-ending headwinds or storms yet, all of which are a certainty on these giant northern lakes if you just wait long enough. So how many hours should you spend paddling when conditions are good? All of them. Itʼs beginning to take its toll though. Iʼm beginning to do stuff like paddle with my eyes closed while counting to ten, then opening them briefly to make sure Iʼm still going in the right direction, and then closing them again. Also today I started feeling a burning pain in my left shoulder blade that was frighteningly reminiscent of the pain I felt when I pinched a nerve preparing for the ADCC trials a decade ago. I hope that this doesnʼt go any further. Finally my pace on Nueltin has slowed down these last 3 days, breaks are getting more frequent, and the reasons for breaks are getting more ridiculous. “Maybe I just should re-re- recheck that map... Maybe I should reapply sunscreen, for the third time this hour... Etc.” Overall though my physical body has actually held up pretty well on this trip, given that I started it with an injured shoulder, elbow and hip (which is why most of my preparation for this trip was cardio, not actual upper body training). Shockingly all of those injuries have gotten better, much better. Seems like all you need to do for physiotherapy is to do 20 to 30,000 paddle strokes a day, every day, without a break. Seems applicable to the population at large ;) Ultimately Iʼm putting in the time. You can have all the high tech boats, bent shaft carbon fiber paddles, and fancy folding sails you want, but ultimately itʼs having your ass in the seat that gets you down the lake. Itʼs just like study time for getting your degree, or mat time for mastering BJJ. Time in activity matters. #paddlingonnueltinbeforejoc ko #iwillownthathashtag #nueltinlake #wildernesscanoeing #1000milesolo
Question: I heard by sat text that lots of people have been saying I should write a book. If - and thatʼs a BIG if - I do it then whatʼs a title that would get you to buy it assuming you didnʼt already know who I am? I promise I will read all the comments when I get back to civilization. Also this was my campsite for the night. Very pretty but hard to find a level place in amongst all the boulders. Not ideal, but thatʼs where the wind decided I was going to be staying last night. #stephankestingbook #stephankesting #1000milesolo #nueltinlake #kayakingadventures
Today Nueltin was a mirror: not a breeze and not a wave. At least for most of the day. I made good time, doing some bigger crossings that normally I would have been much more nervous about. By ‘biggerʼ I mean 3 to 6 km without a bailout option. Thatʼs about as big as Iʼll risk in a canoe because the weather can change so quickly up here. In the afternoon a series of thunderstorms came in from the north. The wind was still light but I had to adjust my route, sneaking from island to island in case the lightning came close and I had to put to land. Then in the early evening, just when the wind is supposed to be dying down - BOOM - heavy winds from zero to thirty in less than 10 minutes. This is why I fear and respect larger crossings. After fighting the wind for 20 minutes I went to shore to have dinner and see if they would drop. When they were still blowing fiercely at 730 pm I decided that enough was enough and I would have to be happy with the 35 km I had already covered. #stephankesting #wildernesstravel #nueltinlake #1000milesolo #canoeing
“Tell me father, is it like the land of little sticks when the ice has left the lakes? Are the great musk oxen there on hills covered with flowers? There will I see caribou everywhere I look? Are the lakes blue with summer? Is every net full of great fat whitefish? Is there room for me in this land like our land, the Barrens? Can I camp anywhere and not find someone else has camp? Can I feel the wind and be like the wind? Father, if your heaven is not all of these, leave me alone in my land, the land of little sticks.” A Dogrib Indian to an Oblate Priest. On a July evening in 1992 I made the worst phone call of my life. I had just finished my first long solo trip: 3 weeks to go down the Missinaibi to Moosenee on James Bay and then back towards Lake Superior by way of going upstream on the Albany and Kenogami rivers. I was on an absolute high and wanted to continue all the way to Lake Superior. I pulled into the town of Longlac, ordered a pizza, then called home to reassure my parents that I was OK. On that call I learned that my next youngest brother, Peter Johann Kesting, had died in a totally preventable motorcycle accident the week before. He had been 21, the age at which young men live like theyʼre going to live forever. The next few years were rough. I watched my grandmother pass away at age 90, then my next youngest brother, Matthias Roland Kesting, also died in a totally preventable accident, also aged 21. This period coincides with the time I first became aware of Nueltin Lake, linking it forever to the lives and deaths of those two brothers. Something about this lake straddling the forest and tundra, Manitoba and Nunavut, and being the juncture of so many routes and rivers makes it an icon of transitions for me. Rest easy brothers, I think you would have liked it here. #nueltinlake #transitions #1000milesolo #landoflittlesticks
Alas poor Rudolph, I knew him well Horatio! Despite the challenges today I got north of 60 degrees latitude, into Nunavut, and a good portion through the treeline! The tree line isnʼt some magic line where the trees suddenly stop. Itʼs a broad area, spread out over maybe 50 km, where the trees start being more sparse, then only growing in sheltered areas, and then not at all. The tree line is also in different places in North America. For example, in Alaska, the treeline extends quite a distance north. As you come east however the treeline comes further and further south. In the Nueltin area itʼs at about 60 degrees latitude. In Ontario and Quebec itʼs even further south than that. I love seeing the different kinds of tundra appearing, mixed in with the remaining trees. Itʼs an amazing landscape, the land of little sticks. #treeline #caribou #nueltinlake #stephankesting #landoflittlesticks #1000milesolo
This morning I felt terrible. Overtrained, under rested, and moving like a zombie. I heard the rain falling on the tent, the waves lashing the shore, and the trees getting whipped by the wind. Whitecaps were being whipped up on the lake by a very strong southerly wind. Right, I said, a rest day, and burrowed my head under a pile of clothing to shut out the light. The fact I immediately fell back asleep is indicative of how hard Iʼve been pushing these last weeks. Heavy physiological and endocrinological load, thatʼs for sure. Normally when Iʼm up Iʼm up, but not today. And I stayed unconscious for another 2 1/2 hours sleeping from 630 to 9 am. The second time I woke up the winter dropped somewhat, the waves were smaller, and there was now an opportunity to travel. Right, letʼs just go a few kilometers today (just the tip, just for a second, just to see how it feels...). 9 hours of paddling and 40 to 45 km later I made camp in the Nueltin Lake Narrows area. A good day salvaged after all. Dodged thunderstorms all day. They were thundering to my left and flashing to my right but thankfully never overhead. That, plus the smell of smoke from a distant fire down south made it seem kind of apocalyptic at times. You donʼt want to be out on the lake during a thunderstorm. Youʼre the highest object for miles around. Paddling to shore and sitting huddled waiting for the worst of the storm to blow over sucks but is often the best option. #nueltinlake #thestrenuouslife #1000milesolo #stephankesting
Nueltin Lake is the most complicated lake Iʼve ever been on. I pity the person trying to find their way here who doesnʼt have really good 1U50,000 maps, a compass, and the skills to use them. Navigation is a complicated black art, absolutely necessary to be safe in the wilderness. Half of it is using every tool you have at your disposal to pick a route and know where you are going. Your compass, your map, your GPS. The other half is using every clue nature gives you to try to disprove your current hypothesis about where you are. Itʼs a process of continual self doubt and questioning because itʼs so easy to believe what you want to believe and go the wrong way. The clues include the size, shape, the direction of the waves. The shape of a distant hill. The presence of a patch of forest in a plain of tundra. The direction reeds are bending both above and below the water. The shape of a bay, the presence of an island. The absence of a beach. The roar of a rapid. A sandy patch on a slope. How different parts of the landscape are in shadow and in sunlight... All of these are facts that need to be continually thrown at your assumptions about where you are to make sure youʼre in the right place and on the right track. #navigation #mapandcompass #nueltinlake #1000milesolo #stephankesting
The day started with two problems. 1: my body was worn out and needed a break (more on that in a later post), and 2: there was a very strong southerly wind blowing mixed with intermittent thunderstorms that made travel across the larger open areas of the lake unsafe. Fortunately a solution was found for both problems: head north via a sheltered but slightly circuitous route through a dense tangle of islands. I would still paddle the slightly larger crossings but then be able to use the sail in the more sheltered areas and click of the miles without ticking off the body. One thing Iʼve noticed is that sailing requires a ton of attention. Itʼs usually much more of a mental than physical game. Youʼre forever monitoring the wind, the waves, the angles of sail and boat, and whether youʼre about to get in over your head. Also in a boat without a keel a sudden gust of wind can tip you over almost instantly, so you have to continuously monitor for that, be ready to brace, scull, and kill all power to the sail. A side effect of sailing is that navigating becomes trickier. Thereʼs simply less bandwidth left available to make sure youʼre going exactly the right way. Thatʼs why itʼs often useful to pull into the lee behind an island and take a moment to confirm your exact position on the map. #canoesailing #nueltinlake #1000milesolo #canoetrip #stephankesting
Nueltin Lake! This is an extraordinarily gorgeous lake. 1,000 islands, bays and beaches with the trees getting ever shorter and widely spaced as you head north. Had pretty much perfect conditions on the lake this afternoon - a light wind from the west. Enough to give a slight sail assist to the paddling but not too strong to make conditions difficult. Kept going till 730 pm; after days and days of headwinds I had to make the most of this change of pace and get as many miles under the keel as possible. As the B.B. King song goes, “Well things have been going wrong long enough to know when everything is just right, Iʼve been walking in the dark long enough to know when Iʼve finally seen the light, Iʼve been losing long enough to know when Iʼve finally found the one, And even a blind man can tell when heʼs walking in the sun.” Saw a second bear (the 6th of the trip) on a sandy ridge between Sabiston and Nueltin Lake. Looked like he might have eating crowberries from the green patches between the dunes. Either the bears really like the Nueltin area or the fact that the area is a lot less vegetated makes it easier to see them. Even as recently as yesterday that same bear would still have been there but just hidden by the more abundant spruce, larch and birch trees. It looks like thereʼs a giant fire somewhere to the southwest of the lake. I look back from time to time and especially in the afternoon it looks like a nuclear blast has gone off. I saw it earlier from the Sandy Lake area too, and triangulating I would guess itʼs 10-20 km from the southwest corner of the lake. Iʼm totally safe from this because Iʼm heading into the tundra and thereʼs no way this fire can catch up with me. Finally I am informed by urgent satellite text that there are a couple of armed killers on the run in northern Manitoba somewhere. Again, absolutely nothing to worry about. They are many hundreds of kilometers away. If they are on foot they will never get here. Thanks for the concerned messages though! #nueltinlake #1000milesolo #stephankesting #canoeing #campingadventures
Close encounters of the bear kind... So just around the corner from Nahilini Falls I came upon another abandoned fly in fishing camp: the Treeline Lodge from Nueltin Group. I had known this lodge was somewhere on the lake but not exactly where. I wandered among the buildings, marveling at the amount of investment (structures, boats, motors, infrastructure) that had just been abandoned. Millions of dollars worth of stuff once you get it all up here. I saw a few bear tracks but wasnʼt too alarmed. You do see those fairly regularly up here in the sand. I approached the main lodge I noticed a few things at once. First, the bear plate (a board with hundreds of giant upward pointing nails) had been moved. Then that the the main door had been kicked in. Then that there were about 25 piles of bear scat all around that front door. And then a low snort from inside the door. At that point I beat a very hasty retreat. Thereʼs a HUGE difference between coming upon a bear in the forest and cornering it in its den. Mr bear had made his den inside the main lodge building. I took a different, more direct route back to the boat and came across MANY more tracks. Some were so fresh that the sand was still moist around the claw marks. Itʼs a good reminder that many bear problems happen around hunting camps and fly in fishing sites. The bears get used to finding fish guts, garbage, and other tasty treats in those areas. This one, apparently, also found himself a killer bachelor pad! At the Kasmere Lake Lodge I had a lovely stay in an abandoned cabin. When it comes to Treeline Lodge, however, I think Iʼll pass and if you come this way I suggest you do too! #bearencounter #blackbear #nueltinlake #treelinelodge #1000milesolo
Here’s the route of the #1000milesolo from Missinipe, Saskatchewan to Arviat, Nunavut. It’s downriver on the Churchill River, upriver on the Reindeer River, north across Reindeer Lake, upriver on the Cochrane River, over the height of land into the Thewiaza watershed, down the Upper Thlewiaza to Nueltin Lake, and then down the Lower Thewiaza to Hudson Bay. Each 1:50,000 topo map is about 28 km by 28 km so it’ll be a good haul. I’ll give this project 100% effort which, in reality, means about a 50% chance of success. #expedition #churchillriver #reindeerlake #cochraneriver #nueltinlake #thlewiazariver #canoeing
Photo from 2005, Nueltin Lake "International Airport ", Manitoba, Canada with the public restrooms (backhouse) #nueltinlake #nueltin #northernmanitoba #funny #instafunny #backhouse #bécosse #airport #internationalairport #fishing #natgeotravel #nueltinlakelodge #smallairport #travelgram #lovetotravel #mytinyatlas #cnntravel #bbctravel #worldtraveler #worldtravelpics #ig_travel #worldplaces #instatravel #cntraveler #cooltravelpix #funnytravel #nolinoraviation #catchandrelease #travelmanitoba @travelmanitoba #kelbyonepics
This is Don Millican (left) and Terry Millican (Right) from Rowlett, TX caught this 44 inch Lake Trout caught on a recent trip to Nueltin Lake Lodge - Canada, using a Huskie Devle - Shad (347). #LakeTrout #Laker #Canada #Nueltin #NueltinLake #Lodge #Husky #HuskyDevle #Shad #Dardevle #Eppinger
Such a spectacular sight #Caribou in #NueltinLake #Nunavut #beautiful #animals #nature #barrenland #unedited
A few photos taken while at #NueltinLake in both #Manitoba and #Nunavut #wildlife #nature #animals #Caribou #swimming #hunting #mediumgame #subarctic #remote #barrenland #majesticlandscape #unedited
Trip to Nunavut. Filming for the lodge. #bestplaceonearth #fishing #lodge #fishinglodge #flyin