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My name's Adam Shoalts.
I'm a writer and an explorer.

And my dream is to try to cross
nearly 4000 kilometers

of Canada's Arctic
wilderness alone.

As far as anyone knows this has
never been attempted before,

probably because no one was
stupid enough to try it.

It's a very Canadian
approach I have, you know,

just coming out here skating
around by myself
as a way to train.

My first playground was
the forests that surrounded
my family home.

I mean that's where I grew up,
I grew up in the woods.

All around us where we lived,
we were in a really small town,
was forest.

So with my dog
and my brother, we would always
be out in those woods

building shelters and making
fire without matches
and catching frogs.

And my father, he would
encourage us and he taught us
all the different trees

and how to build birch bark
canoes and cedar strip canoes.

And that's where I really fell
in love with the natural world

and just came to really
appreciate it.

I mean I think it's so important
that we preserve it.

And that's always been a big
part of who I am and...

And why I do these
expeditions and these journeys

because I feel like that's the
most important thing there is,

is this natural world
and we try to preserve it.

When I zoom in
on the satellite imagery,

I measure all the exact
distances so I will know
exactly like, well,

okay, I've got, you know,
27 kilometers to go this stage
where I want to get to

or, you know,
13-kilometer portage here.

But to get
an actual topographic map,

I'm using a Garmin BaseCamp
over here on this laptop

and I'm copying
my route manually
from the satellite imagery

on to the topographic maps here
and then I can download...

Download the
topographic maps onto this
little device here, the GPS,

and carry with...
This with me in the field.

The winner is Adam Shoalts!

Nice.

- Can you recall the price?
- Yeah, it was 1,800.

This is good.

And I want something
super tough,

durable that can withstand all
the punishment that the Arctic
can dish out to itself.

The polar bears mostly stay on
the seacoast and they only come
in land a little bit. So...

What about grizzly bear?

There's lots of grizzlies, but
I figure I can take a grizzly.

You could take one? With what?

My bayonet.

You think I should take a gun?

Something more than a bayonet.

- I got a bear spray...
- Or... or... yeah, bear spray.

Yeah, you're gonna make yourself
flavourful while
he comes at you.

It's just that I have to travel
as light as possible

and the gun
is cumbersome and it has to be
kept protected,

it has to be
inside a waterproof case.

I showed you a small gun.

I'd be bringing a gun with me,
personally.

I know it's a lot of
work and everything but,

I don't know,
he's a... he's crazy not to.

I mean like polar bears,
everything, like, it can happen,

especially if they're hungry
this time of year.

So, he's definitely got like
a lot to undertake.

I have full confidence in his
ability to be able to carry
their sel.

But there are things out there
that see humans as a meal.

Especially in the part
of Canada he's going,

there's things that could stalk
him for... for multiple days and
him not even know it.

The expedition that he's gonna
do now is gonna be very tough.

There's a lot of unknowns and
it's a long distance and he has
got a lot of gear to carry,

it's very tough.

I would say there's only a small
percentage of people that
probably could do it,

especially doing it alone,
that makes it even harder.

When you talk about an
expedition that's gonna span
several months,

several thousand kilometers,
how could you not look at it by
asking the question,

"Is it possible?
Will he be able to do it?"

So, I know he has his
determination working for him.

I think he has that advantage
over top of anyone else.

I'm nowhere near as nervous
as my mom, I can tell you that.

I'll sleep fine at night.

I have quite
a confidence about it.

I won't be as near nervous as my
dad who will be slightly less
nervous than my mom,

but I'll be nervous thinking
about it and hope for the best
because, realistically,

it's like tackling the near
impossible.

But, yeah, like his dream is my
mom's worst nightmare.

Super-lightweight,
but I'm doing a bent-shaft
12-degree one,

so it's a little more efficient
for flat water and this will be
for white-water rapids.

I don't know if this is gonna be
enough Gorilla Tape. I'm gonna
go to buy a second.

Which canoe are you taking?

Fifteen-foot solo,
built for me by Nova Craft,
weighs 53 pounds.

Middle is tough stuff,
super hard.

You can hit it
with a sledgehammer
and it won't break...

If you don't make
it back, can I have it?

Yep.

I don't think he's gonna have
the anxiety that most people
would probably have out there.

I think he's done enough of
these and he's gotten out of his
comfort zone.

It's just gonna be
a very long trip.

So that'll be new for him.

But I think he's
going to be able to break it up

into mentally shorter trips...

A month here, a month there.

So I don't think he's looking at
it as one big long trip.

I think he's breaking
it down into his mind

as a series of smaller trips and
smaller accomplishments.

I think that's how you get past
the... the five-month issue

being out there by yourself.

When you see the design that no
one talks about.

The... it's like
kind of more on the back of your
head, more on the side.

So I like them better than last
year. It's just all sanded.

It's like unbelievable. You can
have a beach picnic
there, right?

They called it Sandy Creek for
obvious reasons.

But it turns out that that's not
why they call this Sandy Creek.

I was... my... my eye was burning,
so I just... the only water...

- Here is Dawson City.
- Okay.

Coming down the Klondike Highway
and then if we were going east
on the Klondike

and we were going up the
Dempster through Tombstone
Territorial Park through here.

What I've kind of done is I've
taken all these historical
accounts

and stitched them together into
one big epic journey.

And no one knows if
it's really possible to do it
all in a single season.

You could do it maybe if you
spread it out over
several years.

But it's gonna be a race against
time to see if I can squeeze it
all into one year.

I mean my
first wilderness trip by myself,

I was only 13 years old and I
was terrified all night long.

But, you know, 18 years later of
wilderness adventure,

you... you get into the rhythm of
things and you start to feel
much more comfortable.

So now when I look
at on that wilderness,

I don't see an alien foreign
environment,

I see something
that looks like home.

So, you know, I'm in my element.

There's nowhere I'd rather be in
the world than right here.

SOS.

Thank you.

This is the send-off, I suppose.

Long time coming.

Yeah. It's... this expedition has
been three years in the making,
at least three years.

So it's been a long time coming
to get up to the Arctic Circle

and now
I'm finally here and all these
years of planning and preparing

and dreaming and visualizing has
culminated in this moment.

So, we'll see
how it goes from here.

Godspeed.

Thank you for all
your support, Chuck.

Yeah.

It's been a blast having you
here as part of the expedition
support. So, that was awesome.

So honoured to help.

Oh, well,
I'm honoured to have you and
everyone else here.

So, very good.

What a contrast from
the days when it was just me.

I mean I guess I'm gonna get to
that pretty soon. Okay.

So I mean look at the size of
that. I mean it's massive.

Going off in that direction.

So, bear crap and bears
on the road here.

And the road can give you
a false sense of security.

I mean you think it's a little
outpost to civilization,
but it's not really.

I mean, the grizzly is... they
just walk right on them.

They do their
business on the road.

And probably coming down from
those mountains there.

And it kind of
makes me want to keep, you know,

one eye over my shoulder
as I do this hike.

I feel like I could almost be in
one of those post-apocalyptic
movies

and everything is just
desolate and barren

and I'm like one of the last
people left alive on Earth
looking out on this landscape.

Here is my canoe fully loaded

and ready to set off on my
journey across the Arctic.

This canoe and I are about to
become very good friends and
very close companion.

If I'm to cross the Arctic,

I have no choice but to travel
up river on many of these
waterways

because they're flowing north
out to the Arctic Ocean

and I have to go east if
I'm to cross the Arctic.

It's a matter of necessity.

The vast Mackenzie River.

Over two kilometers wide,
sometimes three kilometers wide.

Way down there is my canoe.
Who wants to be my pole?

My main strategy for getting
upriver was kind of hauling
along the bottom a bit

like they
do on those boats in Venice,
gondola I think they call them.

So that's my... that's my style,
it's very romantic,

I like to think, as I pull my
way up the Mackenzie River.

I may be doing this journey
alone but in reality I could
never do it

without the support
of people like Chuck, Mark,
my family, the crew.

I mean they've all been terrific
and it's just... I mean it's...

It's really an
overwhelming feeling having done
expeditions for years

on a shoestring budget all by
myself not having anyone to
support me.

I mean saying thanks
doesn't seem adequate.

But it's just a really
nice feeling knowing that there
are people out there

who are rooting for me,
who are cheering for me,
supporting me.

And without that... without their
support I really couldn't do it.
That's the truth.

Yeah, I got my stuff up here,
satellite phone, first-aid kit,

bear spray, air horn.

These are my little
accoutrements of weapons,
air bangers over there.

My pillow,
I just take my clothes and I...

You know, socks,
dirty socks and things

and I stick them inside my
sleeping bag case

and that's my pillow and I... you
know, I love that pillow.

So friggin' comfy.

Look at the remains of
that massive blister down there

from hiking along
the Dempster Highway.

I think my dreams of becoming a
foot model have pretty much been
decisively ended now.

It's pretty cold but there's...
there's no really no other
option right now.

I've got to
wade across this mud flat.

So I just took my boots
and my socks off.

I've rolled up my pants.
It's kind of like quicksand.

It's pretty cold but didn't seem
to be any other option.
So here we go.

There's the grizzly track.
There's another one up here.

Imagine if I am just pulling
along and the bank gives way

and... and just smacks into my
canoe and sends me
into the river,

probably from the melting of the
permafrost and the ice breakup.

It's really quite strange though
coming along this section

I got a bit of a chill like you
get in the grocery store when
you go on the frozen food aisle.

That's
kind of what it feels like with
all these mounds of ice here.

You know a bit of a chill coming
off it as they go along all this
dirty ice that's melting.

There's nothing quite like the
smell of wet socks drying
in your tent.

It's 2:30 AM and I was asleep
and something woke me up
outside the tent.

There was a noise and
it sounded like a big animal
crashing through the woods.

So I started yelling.

That's what you
normally do if there's a bear
outside the tent,

like "Hey, hey, hey."

So I scared it off.

And I could hear
something crashing.

So I unzipped the tent
and looked out,

grabbed my little air horn and I
went to squeeze it.

It just made the hissing noise.
So the thing doesn't work.

So I thought it was a bear but
then I looked again
and it wasn't a bear,

it was a giant male muskoxen.

A muskoxen just outside my tent
in the bushes over there.

This is my '80s rock star hair
look right now.

My toe looks kind of messed up
and it bled a little today.

And I'm about to leave behind
the familiar that is the
Mackenzie River over there,

and head into the unknown.

This new waterway leads
east into the forest.

One thing I don't pack on
expeditions are towels.

So I'm just gonna have to air
dry and shake like a dog.

It's moving a little bit.

Dude, check out what it is.

I have to head that way anyways,
but I'm gonna stay a bit far
bank for safety.

It's best not to disturb them.

I'd only been asleep for about
an hour and twenty minutes and I
heard a noise outside.

I woke up.

And, thankfully,
I'm a light sleeper

'cause I heard something in the
bushes and I heard the noise,

and, instinctively,
when I hear a noise outside
my tent I start yelling.

So if it is a bear, hopefully,
I scared it away.

And I quickly
unzipped the screen door,
poked my head out

and I saw
something move in the bushes and
sure enough it was a black bear.

I don't know
if you can see it there.

I propped my canoe up
alongside of the tent

to create like one side of a
barrier and, thankfully,

I did 'cause the black bear was
just on the other side
in the bushes there.

I started yelling
at it in my most menacing and
intimidating manner

and smacking
the paddle on the canoe making
as much noise as possible,

and, eventually, he walked off,
he didn't run.

He walked along
the edge of the bushes there
down the shoreline.

And I've
continued to make noise. But I
don't know how far he went.

The more I've gone up this river
and the more I've explored it,

the more I feel the... I started
to wonder about that old 1972
government report on the river.

It described the landscape that
the river flows through as,
quote,

"Subdued and gently rolling."

And I don't know about you but I
wouldn't describe that as
subdued or gently rolling hills.

I mean that's a pretty
spectacular peak right there.

There's this vertical cliff that
rises beside the river.

That's pretty awesome.

Mosquitoes are getting bad.

It's never a nice feeling when
you wake up and you see just,
you know,

hundreds of mosquitoes just
waiting for you the second
you'll unzip the screen door

to come attack you.

Looking pretty nasty.

The nail is gonna fall off.

But that's okay.

And my... my fingers have become
incredibly sore, I think,

from gripping the pole so hard.

It really... it's really sore
when I go like this with them.

Yes, my toenail has fallen off

and I used an alcohol wipe on
that and cleaned it up a bit.

This morning is officially the
first day of summer

but it actually feels colder
today than it's been the last
several weeks.

And I had a pretty good
night sleep on this beach here
except, you know,

you never really sleep that
soundly because there's always
noises in the wilderness.

Like right now off to my left
somewhere I can hear a baby
beaver crying

and there's geese
that honk and birds that chirp

throughout the night.

And sometimes, like a few nights
ago, there's a bear
that will wake you up...

A bear woke me up at least...
when it's walking through the
brush or, you know,

you hear a muskoxen rumble or
all kinds of things like that
will wake you up.

But I guess, eventually,
you just kind of get used to it.

That wolf yesterday,
that white one on the bank,

actually that was the most
curious wolf I've ever seen.

He actually looked at me for
quite a long time and, you know,
he walked along the bank.

It was almost like seeing a
domesticated dog.

The... the look in his eyes,
the way that he stared at me
and our eyes met;

we looked at each other and I
filmed him and I was just...

It was almost like having a
friend in the wilderness
seeing that wolf.

It was just such a nice moment.

This area has been burnt out
before from a forest fire

but there is really high cliffs
over there.

And the river,
the Hare Indian River here

is getting quite small and
hemmed in by willow bushes

on either side
as I near the headwaters.

There is just not a lot of
vitamin C in granola bars and
dehydrated foods

but there is something I can do
pretty easily to remedy that

and make sure I don't get scurvy
from lack of vitamin C,

which is to take... let me show
you here... take some
of the spruce...

Take some of the spruce needles
which is loaded with vitamin C
and throw that in my pot,

boil some water
and make spruce tea.

They say that, you know,
spruce tea has more vitamin C in
it than orange juice.

So that's pretty good. And
I don't have to worry about
getting scurvy.

It's a real disheartening sight
behind me here.

The river that
I'm following pretty much just
disappears into that morass.

And there's no question I'm not
gonna be able to drag the canoe
through there.

I'm gonna have to
portage everything,

which is not gonna be easy
considering it's just like a
foul morass of swamp and muskeg.

But I think I'm almost
at the next lake,

so I just got to tell myself
that and try to find the mental
stamina to push on.

Well, I followed the river for
as long as I possibly could,
the Hare Indian River.

My gear is behind me here,
but there's pretty much nothing
left of it, just this ditch.

The current is clearly flowing
that way and that puts a smile
on my face

for very important reason
because that means, you know,

all the water I have encountered
so far has been flowing
the other direction

it's been flowing west,
but this is flowing east.

And because it's flowing east,

that means I have crossed the
divide between the Mackenzie
River watershed

and Great Bear Lake over here.

I'm the only person on the whole
lake all to my lonesome.

And some caves way up there on
the mountain slopes.

And when I see
a cave on a mountain,

my imagination always goes to
strange places and I imagine

what manner of creature
might live up there.

It is 4:24 PM on June 25th and I
have just reached

Great Bear Lake.

This is a big achievement
for me.

It's a new chapter in
the expedition.

It's like I've
reached a new level,
a new phase of the journey.

I've got the accumulating
scrapes and bruises.

Nice bruise.

My lovely fiancée has
made these super helpful labels
for me because,

believe it or not,
despite the fact that I am
filming this entire documentary,

I'm not very good with
technology.

So she labeled everything like
"unplug as soon
as charging is done."

"Plug this end into the
solar panel." "Charge battery
pack." It's very helpful.

She labeled everything.

I just came
around the corner here and this
is what made my heart sank.

There's just nothing but ice as
far as the eye can see.

And it's a lot of ice and it's
gonna slow my progress right
down to a crawl.

There's just so
much ice out there.

Melting ice floes out there
that's blocked up my passage

along the coast
of Great Bear Lake.

So, there's nothing
I can do about it.

I started at 3:30 AM and I'm
operating on only three hours
of sleep.

I paddled 41 kilometers
today on three hours of sleep.

So I've made my camp
on this beach.

Try to get
as comfortable as I can.

I'm gonna have a fire
in a second.

And just hope
that when I wake up,

this ice will be out of here
and I can continue.

3:12 AM,

and I am about to set off
through the ice here
on Great Bear Lake.

It's entirely possible I'm the
only person on this entire vast
body of water

paddling right now,
especially since it's still icy.

Out there I can't make it any
further along Great Bear Lake,

it's just my route
is blocked by ice.

All right team, listen up.

Mr. Canoe, Mr. Blue Barrel,
Paddles, everyone,
I need your attention.

Backpack.

Now we are going to be patient
and we are gonna wait

until the ice melts out there
and then we can continue.

So today is a
lesson in patience.

I know like me you're eager and
you want to push on,

but it's
just too much of a risk.

If we get stranded in that
ice again and then
the wind picks up,

it could take us way out into
the heart of the lake and that
would be extremely bad.

So, team, I'm proud of the work
we've done together,

but right now we've got to try
to be patient and just wait for
that ice to melt.

It seems like I'm not the first
person to become stranded

on this island here in the
center of the island.

Looks like long time ago

someone once had a campfire here

because these four rocks look
like they've been placed here

and in the center of the rocks
there's some very old bones,

some animal bones or somebody
cooked something.

So somebody else maybe was
stranded on this island, too.

You know if I follow it maybe
I'll find a pot of gold.

Actually I would be more happy
just to find open water
and no ice.

I'll take that over the pot
of gold.

The longer I sit
waiting for ice to melt,

the less likely it becomes that
I'll get all the way
across the Arctic

and then I have to, you know,
re-evaluate my goals, what I'm
gonna do on this journey.

Still some pretty
big ice floes out here,
but most of the ice has melted.

Iceberg dead ahead.

Hard to starboard.

Now I'm just trapped
on a fog-bound coast here

and this one looks less inviting
than the other one.

I can see some swampy alder
bushes back in there.

There's a summer out here
in the woods.

I know that there's ruins
of Fort Confidence.

Fort Confidence was built almost
200 years ago

as a fur trade
fort on Great Bear Lake

and there's not much
left of it today.

There's probably just
some stone foundations.

But I'm
gonna go off into those thick
spruce trees over there

and see if I can find anything.

And I see something up there.

Looks like an old stone chimney
just poking out of the... the
undergrowth of the forest.

And the fort itself would have
been built out of spruce logs

cut right here, no doubt.

They just kind of
hacked through here.

It's a little bit eerie.

Kind of just seeing ruins in the
middle of nowhere

reminds you of the ghosts
of the past as it were.

That, you know,
hundreds of years ago there were
explorers here before me.

Oh, wow, that's really neat.
Look at that.

You can see the masonry
work in there.

So this is a chimney. We got
some rocks down below.

Wow, that's actually quite neat.

A bit of wood
sticking out of it, too.

Everything else must have
rotted away and been swallowed
up by the forest

over the last 200 years.

These are granite rocks pulled
out of the lake shore there.

Oh, yeah, I can see straight up
the chimney.

I mean it's a little bit eerie
the ghosts of the past,

but it's also very fascinating
from a historical perspective

to think that hundreds of years
ago this forest here would have
been cleared out

and they would have had a fort
with cannons and muskets and
high wooden walls.

The river I'm trying to find is
named after the guy who was in
charge of this fort, Dease.

So I'm looking for the
Dease River.

Well, let's get back
down to the canoe.

I don't like to leave my canoe
for too long.

I get... we get kind of
separation anxiety
when we're apart.

So I tied it up
down there on the water and I
better get back to it.

He was really curious but then I
accidentally made a noise
with my paddle.

He ran off, he got scared.

Poor sock just trying to get dry
in the sun and the bugs are just
swarming up.

Somewhere out here in the forest

should be the remains
of Douglas' cabin
from over a century ago.

And I think I see it up here.

Yeah, I can see it now.

So just the
parts of the walls are left but
the roof has collapsed.

In over a hundred years the
elements have done that to it.

There's the inside of the cabin.

And you can see over there in
the corner this was this...

This would have been its
fireplace over here.

I mean the preservation is
pretty good in this cold
environment, right.

It's a pretty dry
environment despite the snow,
so things don't rot that well.

But in a hundred years the roof
has collapsed.

But there it is down in there.

So that would
have been his hearth,

very important for the long cold
Canadian winter.

And that's all
that remains of it.

You can see
the construction along the side.

And just very slowly the forest
is gonna swallow it up

and it'll vanish into the
wilderness and there won't be
anything left of it.

But now I got to get back to
the canoe and continue my own
journey upriver.

Last night when I was
setting up my tent,

I discovered there was a hole in
it, a little small hole in the
screen here.

And I was inside my
tent at the time

and I had nothing to patch it
with other than a bandage.

But now I've got my duct tape.

So I'm gonna make a little more
proper repair to the mesh there

so the bugs cannot find a way in
and bite me in the middle
of the night.

There's just unbelievable number
of those horse flies

on this beach
and all over the river.

You can see some...
there's just a bunch of them
accumulating inside my tent

around... under the tent
fly... there's one right
there... and they're big suckers.

And when they bite you, it feels
almost more like a bee sting.

And if you want to see
what it looks like,

it's like a welt where one got
me right there
on the shin today.

Another one bit me down there.

Millions of mosquitoes and black
flies just swarms of them

all over the place down there on
my gear and just...

They're so bad
that I'm just not even gonna
brush my teeth this morning

because I can't take this bug
net off to brush my teeth with
like millions of mosquitoes

buzzing all over the place.

So I'm just gonna go.

The skies are dark and I can see
that a storm is coming,

so I want to batter down the
hatches and secure all the gear.

I had a quick fire,
made some herbal tea and some
dinner really fast

and I just threw my backpack
under there on my paddle and I'm
gonna jump in the tent.

You don't want to be caught out
in the open in the storm.

This tent's been pretty strong
so far but this is the first
real big test of it.

It's intensifying,
definitely intensifying.

You know there's something about
a storm alone in the wilderness.

It can get
on your nerves a little.

I've been through a heck
of a lot of storms in the
wilderness,

like probably over 50 of them.

And you just have to wait it out
and try to... excuse me...

My tent is really flying around
all over the place.

Water coming off down there.

Oh.

I got this map to follow and I
think this is the creek here
that I'm on.

Then you go across the tundra
here and through them
the marshes

and then I'll see the lonely
mountain and I'm gonna head for
that lonely mountain

and I have to cross some fields
of ice, but, eventually,

they'll take me over into the
Dismal Lakes.

I'm gonna hope to try to do this
in just three loads.

So if it's a 10-kilometer
portage one way,

I would take my big heavy pack
first, that's 20 kilometers...

10 kilometers there,
10 kilometers back.

Then I would go to this barrel
which I've loaded fully right up
to the brim.

It's gotta weigh close to
50 pounds.

That would be another
10 kilometers there,
10 kilometers back.

So that
would be 20... 40 kilometers.

I'm gonna try to follow this
sand ridge to begin with.

I saw
some wolf tracks over here.

So it looks like the wolves use
it as a highway and I'm gonna do
that as well.

Here's... here's
some faint wolf tracks.

There's one down there and they
went that way.

So I'm gonna go that
way as well.

About 10 kilometers from me and
that's it, the lonely mountain.

And that's
where I want to get to.

And you can see the trail,
the drag marks where I dragged
the canoe

all the way over there
and across through those trees
several kilometers away.

And sand and gravel seems a
little bit hard on the canoe,

but I don't really have a choice
at this point.

I feel really privileged to be
here right now amidst
such beauty.

Maybe not so privileged when
there's hordes of black flies

and mosquitoes eating me alive.

But this view is just
magnificent and I'm really
soaking it in right now

and looking forward to another
freeze-dried meal.

This canoe has been through the
ice, it's been over the rocks,

upriver, downriver, hauling,

paddling, it's taken a lot of
abuse but, you know,

fuss far there's no leaks and
it's still... still standing up
to the rigors of this journey.

So I just hope that so far so
good and that it stays that way.

And there they are. At long last
my first glimpse
of the Dismal Lakes

and they don't look that
dismal to me from up here.

They look
actually quite refreshing
after this nightmarish portage

with horrible bugs and marshes
and high hills.

So the Dismal Lakes look pretty
good from up here.

That's what I thought
of that book.

No sense in carrying any
extra weight than I need to.

Packing another book doesn't
make any sense.

So there you go.

But for sentimental reasons I
did actually... I saved
the cover.

I saved the cover,
I'm gonna keep that.

My neck was massacred by black
flies the other day
on that portage.

I'll show you some of
the bites if you can see them
down in there.

And the black flies just love to
go for the neck.

And, yeah,
they've just bit me all over the
place in there portaging.

It's pretty cold night.
I don't mind that.

I actually kind of
like getting cozy inside my
sleeping bag here

and huddling
down with all my extra sweaters
and blankets and things.

You can see the tent buckling
under the pressure.

You can hear the wind howling.

I created this rock wall on this
side to cut down on the wind
rushing underneath the tent fly.

If nothing else,
it was creating a lot of noise
and keeping me up at night.

It's not really anything
else I could do.

Everything is pretty exposed out
here by the Dismal Lakes.

So that's where
I'm headed... out there.

The longer the expedition
goes on,

the more my gear starts to
suffer the effects
of wear and tear

and had a couple of holes
in it up here and the fabric was
coming out.

They look like they
have been burned,

singed by the fire but I don't
know how because
it's in my hood.

There's the other hole in
my tent down there that I
patched with actual duct tape.

Wristband broke off of it,
so now I'm just using it as an
old-fashioned pocket watch

that I keep in my pocket.

This busted off of it,
so I'm gonna try to repair that.

Otherwise I don't have a bear
banger, which wouldn't be good.

You know after a month and a
half or more, two months almost,
being out here,

my tent begins to feel like
home, like this is my home

and I'm really... when I'm warm
and dry in here and it's cold
and wet outside

it just feels like the
greatest luxury in the world.

Feels like
a five-star hotel to me.

My path up the Coppermine is
blocked by a massive canyon.

It represents a huge obstacle.

I'm gonna have to do a really
long portage up over these tall
cliffs to get around it.

So I've got all my gear here.

I've just prepped it.

And I tied my hiking boots onto
the outside

because for the first one I've
got to wear these wading shoes
which are bigger and heavy.

So I'm just gonna wear them,
leave them over there and then
switch into the hiking boots.

I've got three loads to do...
The barrel, the backpack.

This barrel I've emptied,
so it's now empty.

And then, finally, the canoe and
it's gonna be hard because this
is one heck of a canyon.

I come across a rather
unexpected sight which is this
monument.

In the last place on
Earth you'd probably expect to
see a monument.

It says David and Carol Jones
who loved the north

and its people were
drowned in these rapids on
August 14th 1972.

They respected
honesty and truth.

You know seeing that it's a very
solemn reminder of the hazards

involved in a wilderness
journey like this

and it's very touching.

I feel for them and their family
and want to take a moment

to pay my respects to
fellow wilderness travelers.

Makes me want to be extra
cautious because it's a
reminder of, you know,

what can go wrong with the
slightest mistake out here.

But that's what I'm portaging
around this big canyon.

It was a pretty demoralizing
day, I have to say.

It was just really brutally hard
labour all day long.

The bugs were awful.

And I knew coming into the
expedition that this phase

would be one of the most
physically rigorous
of the whole journey...

The Coppermine River,

which is just a big powerful
river with strong white-water
rapids, waterfalls,

and canyons on it,
and that's why no one travels
upriver on it.

But that's exactly what I'm
trying to do here.

And, you know, I put in a very
long 11 hours of travel

but I only made it about
12 or 13 kilometers upriver.

So that kind of took the wind
out of my sails.

And I mean you can
see the river right there.

Didn't have the great... best
camping place either

but you can see how strong the
current is in the river.

And... and I mean that's not even
like a strong part, that's just
like the ordinary part.

Hearne depicts this area
and this is, you know,
247 years ago,

as very windswept barren rocky
tundra with not a lot
of tree cover,

maybe just some scattered spruce
here and there.

I mean there is
some trees but not many.

And that's also the impression I
got from the 1820 accounts

written by John Franklin
and John Richardson,
two later British explorers.

And, yet, here we have, you
know, pretty large extensive
spruce forests.

And that makes you
wonder about things.

Is this the result of global
warming? Could be.

We know that the climate has
been warming since about the
mid-19th century.

Don't quote me on that,
but I think that's about right.

Right, the Little Ice Age came
to an end and then the climate
has been warming.

So, it's possible that over the
past almost a quarter of a
millennium,

it's a long time since Samuel
Hearne was here in human terms.

The forest has really grown up
and there's trees where there
was never trees before

because the climate is warming.

So it's been 55 days since I
left the Arctic Circle,

longer
since I started camping though.

It's cold but refreshing.

Every night I have a little
ritual that I do inside my tent.

It's called kill all the black
flies that come inside the tent
with me.

And if you can hear
that gentle pitter-patter,

it's not the sound of rain
against my tent fly.

It's sound of hundreds of black
flies against it

as they get trapped under the
fly and they try to escape.

But some of them
get inside here with me.

No matter how quick, no matter
how nimble I am, when I dive
through the tent door,

some of them come inside.

My toe is still pretty swollen
and busted up.

Fact is it just... your feet take
a beating when you're on them
13, 14 hours a day

wading through rapids and rivers
and boulders and whatnot.

So they're my favourite bird.

Although what I don't like about
them is when I'm paddling
by the shore

and they have a nest nearby,
it turns into the Alfred
Hitchcock movie The Birds

and they swarm at me.

And if you
look carefully, you'll see that
they have very sharp beaks.

It's July 22nd, I'm waiting for
the sound of the Bush plane.

So I'm looking forward

to some new food rations
and fresh batteries.

And I'm just waiting here so.

It's him.

He's gonna touchdown.

Nice.

Food is on the way.

It's raining for the fourth
straight day

and it's about 11
o'clock at night,

I'm inside my tent.

And I'm still nice and dry and
warm and snug in here.

And it's gonna take more than
rain and bugs

to deter me.

That's what I'm dealing with
here, the white-water of the
Coppermine River.

There's no way to drag up
through that or pull,
so I had to portage around it.

And here is my wader and it's
just those two little
punctures there

that are causing me
all my grief.

So I'm gonna take some of
this from the tree with my Swiss
Army knife.

And then when that has melted
I'll lather it on to the wader.

And you can see I've
applied some of the spruce resin
to the hole in the wader

with the stick here and,
hopefully, this does the job.

It's July 31st and the bugs are
just atrocious this morning.

They were bad last night but I
mean there's just massive clouds
of them here.

The fantastic news is that my
patch on my waders

using the resin from the spruce
tree has held up like a dream.

So, in the end, it was nature's
solution that did the job

that modern materials couldn't.

Duct tape, Gorilla Tape didn't
work on its own,

but when I heated that resin up
and put it on, it worked
like a charm.

And now I've got dry feet.

Oh my goodness,
there's a jackpot over here.

In Newfoundland they call these
bake apples.

Mm...

This is so good.

I still can't entirely dispel a
bit of anxiety that I feel.

It's still an open question
whether or not I'll even make it
to Baker Lake.

It's just such a
long way and winter is coming.

I mean winter could come in
August, I don't know.

It's impossible to say.

So I am just super conscious at
all times that time
is running out.

Not too far away to the
southwest is a tree line

and that marks the start of vast
forest that cloak northern
Canada.

And somewhere down there
to the southwest

there must be
some pretty bad forest fires
raging right now.

Still little
hazy from those forest fires.

I only really have at this point
five weeks of decent
weather left

and it's gonna probably
take more than that for me to
get to Baker Lake.

Right now the
task for the moment is to kill

all these friggin' black flies
inside the tent with me because
there is a lot of them.

I repeat, that is not a rock.

Those cries are coming from some
waterfowl out there on the lake.

They make the strangest cries
like a child in distress just as
I am about to call it a night.

Listen to the birds crying.

And look at that it's something
like The Land Before Time,

dinosaurs
roamed the Earth over there.

I have to get my canoe across
all of that

and all of my gear
for about a kilometer.

Well, I just completed the
fourth portage of the day.

I got the
canoe across all in one shot,

carried it over my head

because I didn't want to risk
any more abuse to it

than necessary dragging it over
these rocks.

Well,
in a land of desolate rock as
far as the eye could see,

old as time, this is the oldest
rock on the planet,

goes back billions of years,

it's rather ironic
and good for me

that I have this beautiful
little bed here for the night.

I'm gonna call this home for
tonight and sleep

in this nice
little patch of lichens and
Labrador tea and crowberries.

For the first time in like
almost three months

I can see the moon,
and it's a full moon

and there's always something to
me anyways special
about a full moon.

But it's starting to get dark.

And the night is dark and
full of terror, as they say.

You paddle for over 11 hours and
almost all of it
against the wind

and you really just want to
make dinner and crawl
inside your tent,

but you can't because
there's water down your stove.

First animal that pops into
mind almost immediately
is polar bear.

I don't know what it's all from,
it's just the wear and tear

and the abuse that your body
goes through on an expedition
like this.

Thunder clouds rolling in across
the tundra. And that's always
a little ominous.

Look at this nice beach
all to myself. How lovely?

This is where a grizzly bear has
dug up the burrows

of some Arctic ground squirrels
because the grizzlies love to
eat the ground squirrels.

So that's what this is here.

Red sky at night,
sailor's delight.

Red sky in morning,
sailors take warning.

I'm gonna go now and paddle
as hard as I can

for as long as I can for as
long as the lake stays calm.

But it's another rainy morning
and I have to get up

and hike all the way back to the
start of the canyon,

grab my canoe
which I left there,

portage it across the canyon or
at least up to this point,

which is kind of like the
halfway point,

and continue the portage
in four loads,

taking all of my stuff all the
way across the canyon.

I have to do it.

Well,
good thing I got waders on
'cause that's pretty deep.

Hasn't been break for a while,

it's just this dismal Grey skies
hanging over the land.

So it's made it hard
to really dry stuff out.

I got some wet clothes that
I can't dry for lack of sun

and I'm running kind of low on
my battery life too

because I
haven't been able to recharge
anything with my solar panel

because there hasn't
been enough sun.

But I'm gonna get cozy as I
can inside the tent

because the
nights are getting cold now that
it's later in the season.

And...

The nights
are also getting darker.

It's getting dark early
and it's staying dark longer

now that we're getting late in
the season.

And I'm not really sure
at this point how much longer
it's gonna take me

to get to Baker Lake.

But that's when I am
pushing myself 12 hours a day

to get to Baker Lake,
the little Inuit community.

Right now my biggest
concern is the wind.

Wind has been fierce all day,

just really powerful wind gusts
that make canoeing downriver

seem like
I'm still going upriver.

At times the current has been...
Or the wind has been so strong

that it actually has pushed me
back upriver despite
the strong current.

Basically, I've tried to shift
everything out of the back end
of the canoe,

the stern up to the front.

So I've loaded up the front as
much as I can, the bow
of the canoe,

with anything I've got,
you know, GoPros, water bottles,
my backpack,

and I've shifted the barrels up
to the front as well

to concentrate the weight up

at the bow
of the canoe that's going
downriver into that headwind,

that really strong wind.

Doing it this way is allowing me
to make progress even against
that strong wind.

Otherwise, the canoe lightly
loaded in the bow,

wind is just spinning my canoe
and I'm, literally,

just spinning 360 degrees
and not get anywhere.

So shifting the weight up to the
front is making the canoe go

downriver even into the wind.

I pulled ashore here because I
could see that there was some
serious trouble

waiting for me up ahead.

We've got a rapid there.

That's not the real problem.

It's what's beyond the rapid.

That's a vertical drop
and I can see the mist rising,

there's a big waterfall there
and another canyon.

That goes in the
right canyon there.

I know that I'm not, obviously,
not the first person
to canoe this river

because I'm following
some historic reports.

But, obviously, someone at some
point came before me

and wasn't fully prepared for
just how gruelling and long

the portages around these huge
canyons actually are because
look at this,

someone has abandoned all this
stuff right here.

There's a barrel,
a bag of garbage,

three backpacks,
some other bags,

some empty Coleman camp fuel.

And these bags have been here
for quite a while.

You can see the water is
accumulated on top and they're
drenched and they're pretty old,

ripped up and sand's
accumulated around them.

You know I
believe, fundamentally,

that coming to this wilderness
is a privilege.

And no matter how difficult and
back-breaking it may be,

you have a responsibility to
pack in anything you...

Or pack out anything you bring
in with you, right.

You can't just throw
stuff away. The litter out here
is real travesty.

It's a very famous grove on the
Thelon River

and it's in that spruce forest

that in 1927 John Hornby
and his two companions

starved to death in their cabin.

They were depending on the
caribou migration,
they never found it.

The geese have started
to fly south.

Winter is coming.

That's a wolf, you hear him?

Her. She's calling her baby cub.

Check on the little ones because
they saw this suspicious
creature going downriver.

Wow, that's amazing.

Did you hear that?

So it's a whole
family of wolves there.

The mom with four little pups
and the two adults there.

It's just incredible.

So I'm coming up to four months
since I actually last
saw my fiancée

and since I was last home.

And I don't know how long,
you know, take me

to complete the end of this
journey and get to Baker Lake

because the weather is
beyond my control and wind is
such a critical factor.

Today with the wind in my
favour, I traveled probably a
hundred kilometers.

But if it goes
against me, I'm lucky if I can
get 10 done in a day.

The moose is
really enjoying the beach.

Came up here on his
summer vacation from the forest
down south.

Heard that they had some nice
beaches up here on the river.

And my matches
just fell in the water.

Looks like bad news.

If I'm very lucky,
the wind might blow them
right past me.

But my canoe is still
down there and I gotta go get it
and bring it up here.

I've made camp here.

And this canoe has just been an
absolute warrior.

I'm amazed that how tough it is.

You can see it's suffered
quite a lot of damage

from the ice and the
rocks and everything else,

but there's no leaks in it
whatsoever and it's holding
on its own.

So, very sturdy canoe
and I am very lucky

and fortunate
to have it with me.

Kind of puts one in a meditative
and reflective mood, I suppose,

when you're out here alone in
the wilderness and you're just
wandering across the land

and you come across a human
skull just lying there
in the open.

Out of respect,
I'm not gonna film it and show
the bones on camera,

so I didn't film it.

And I guess if I were
superstitious and afraid
of ghosts,

I might be a little apprehensive
but, fortunately, I'm not,

and I find it more interesting
than anything.

So it's early morning
and I've just got my canoe
loaded behind me.

The wind is still pretty strong
but I'm gonna paddle hard

and I'm in the final phase of
the journey at this point.

The end is almost in sight,
so I gotta get going here.

Since day one of the expedition,

stashed away in my barrel I've
been saving this tea...

Tea teabags, cinnamon apple.

And I had it
before I left on the expedition
when I was back home

and I thought
it was really delicious
and I had a second one of these.

So I decided to take it with me
on the expedition
and I only had this one.

All my other herbal
tea was mauled apple.

But this cinnamon apple one is
like of a much better quality.

And I've
saved it this whole expedition.

Let's get that off of there.

So down
behind me there that's my
last campsite of the expedition,

fingers crossed.

If everything goes according to
plan, the weather holds out,

I should be good to paddle the
rest of the way to Baker Lake,

the little community,
and that will end my journey
alone across the Arctic.

So, yeah,

it's been over a
hundred days now solo.

It's September 5th and
first thing tomorrow,

September 6th,
I'm gonna paddle into town.

It's not quite over yet,
anything could still happen.

The dawn could bring
some crazy weather,

a bear could come
and maul me in the night,

muskoxen can plow
inside my tent,
go get struck by lightning.

So, you know, I don't want to
celebrate just yet.

But tomorrow
when I reach Baker Lake,

then the journey will be over.

This is the morning
of September 6,

and I'm just packing up my canoe
for the final time.

I'm about to
set off on the final leg of my
journey to reach Baker Lake.

So this is day 102 since I left
the Arctic Circle

and nearly
four months since I left home.

You only live once,

you're only young once

and I've always been very
conscious of that fact

when it comes to
planning my expeditions.

I really want
to push myself hard now

because I feel like I'm in my
prime and I have to do
these expeditions

and I want to continue doing
them for as long
as I am able to.

One day if I am able to look
back when I am old

on all the adventures and
journeys that I've done,

hopefully,
I'll have some satisfaction that
I saw the wilderness

while it still exists.

There's a tinge of regret and
sadness that it's coming
to an end

because I really loved
the expedition and I really
loved the journey,

and there's a part of me that
wishes I could keep going.

Yeah, that's as
good as I was expecting.

Well, you're supposed
to drop off a canoe.

Apparently,
they emailed you about it.

And her name is Sheryl.

Does that sound about right?

- Yeah.
- Yeah.

So it's time to say goodbye to
my friend, my companion

in the last three
and a half months.

We're supposed to be reunited
in Winnipeg.

And it feels kind of
sad to leave it here,

but it's amazing canoe and it
withstood this journey
the whole way.

So, it's pretty awesome.

How many barrels did you bring?

Well, there is, what, five.

There's actually five here
'cause the yellow one is inside
this one. I think it's...

Welcome home.

Yeah, I'm not... I'm not
wearing the big one.

I'll wear this one. I think that
one should come off though,
it might fall.

I'll hang on to this.

I can handle this.

Well, Adam Shoalts is a writer,
explorer, and public speaker

who has hiked to all corners
of this country.

His new book is entitled
History of Canada in Ten Maps.

It tells the story of
Canada from the Vikings to the
early 19th century,

and Adam joins me now.

And I guess first
off Adam, welcome back.

You just recently returned.

Oh, yeah, I was in the Arctic
for the last four months

doing a journey across as my own
Canada 150 project.

But it's great to be back
and here in the studio.

♪♪