Super Good Camping Podcast
Hi there! We are a blended family of four who are passionate about camping, nature, the great outdoors, physical activity, health, & being all-around good Canadians! We would love to inspire others to get outside & explore all that our beautiful country has to offer. Camping fosters an appreciation of nature, physical fitness, & emotional well-being. Despite being high-tech kids, our kids love camping! We asked them to help inspire your kids. Their creations are in our Kids section. For the adults, we would love to share our enthusiasm for camping, review some of our favourite camping gear, share recipes & menus, tips & how-to's, & anything else you may want to know about camping. Got a question about camping? Email us so we can help you & anyone else who may be wondering the same thing. We are real people, with a brutally honest bent. We don't get paid by anyone to provide a review of their product. We'll be totally frank about what we like or don't like.
Super Good Camping Podcast
Journey into the Wild: Saskatchewan's Untamed Backcountry
Tyler Chilabecki's love affair with the Saskatchewan wilderness began with a fishing rod in his hand at just three years old. Now, as the creator behind the YouTube channel Puddle Jumper, he's on a mission to shatter stereotypes about his home province one paddle stroke at a time.
"Everyone thinks of Saskatchewan as flat prairies and wheat," Tyler explains with the weariness of someone who's heard it once too often. "But half our province is boreal forest and Canadian Shield." This northern wilderness forms the backdrop for his solo paddling adventures, which range from weekend trips to epic three-week journeys through some of Canada's most untouched waterways.
What makes Saskatchewan's backcountry uniquely appealing is the profound solitude it offers. While popular parks like Algonquin might have portage trails "like superhighways" with paddlers carrying coolers and boxes of wine, Tyler describes paddling for 12 days in Northern Saskatchewan without seeing another soul. Even in the province's "busier" paddling areas around Missinipi on the Churchill River, traffic is minimal compared to other Canadian paddling destinations.
The geological diversity adds another layer of fascination. In the "Pelican Window" area, paddlers can find three-billion-year-old Precambrian rock formations that create dramatic landscapes unlike anything you'd expect from Saskatchewan. Tyler's eyes light up describing the Athabasca Sand Dunes, Hunt Falls (the province's largest waterfall), and ancient pictographs along historic voyageur routes that connect the province's vast network of lakes and rivers.
For those inspired to explore Saskatchewan's hidden waterways, Tyler recommends connecting with local outfitters and using resources like GoTrekker maps. Many routes remain undocumented, requiring paddlers to study satellite imagery and topographic maps – adding an element of genuine exploration to each trip. As Tyler puts it: "There's so much to explore here and so much that's undocumented. That's where I keep my focus – trying to document these different routes that no one really knows about."
Ready for a paddling adventure that defies expectations? Follow Tyler's journeys on the Puddle Jumper YouTube channel and discover the Saskatchewan that tourists never see.
https://www.youtube.com/@puddlejumper-sk
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Hello and good day. Welcome to the Super Good Camping podcast. My name is Pamela.
Speaker 2:I'm Tim.
Speaker 1:And we are from supergoodcampingcom. We're here because we're on a mission to inspire other people to get outside and enjoy camping adventures such as we have as a family. Today's guest is part of our continuing quest to have guests from every province and territory on the podcast. At some point he spends some of his free time solo paddling the back country in Saskatchewan, and often filming it. His trips last anywhere from a few days to the better part of a month, and always involve fishing. Please welcome Tyler Chilabecki from the YouTube channel Puddle Jumper.
Speaker 2:Hey guys.
Speaker 1:Welcome Hi.
Speaker 3:What's up? What's going on?
Speaker 1:Good Adjusting to the time.
Speaker 2:Sunday and, yeah, daylight savings time. Yeah, lost an hour, which you guys don't do, right? Yeah, let's just keep going along. I don't know.
Speaker 3:You know it's kind of funny. I don't know why people don't move away from the daylight savings time, like Alberta, I think, voted on it a couple years ago and it decided to keep the daylight savings. And it's like in Saskatchewan. We're looking at everybody else going oh, you guys are just outrageous. Like what are you guys doing? Because it's awesome. You never, you never, have to worry about it.
Speaker 2:So the world changes around you yeah, well, you seven million clocks later going around resetting everything too, and then you have to. It's like oh, I do this twice a year on my watch. What buttons do I have to push?
Speaker 3:yeah, I know that feeling yeah all right, cool.
Speaker 2:So you're from saskatchewan. It looks to me like you do. If not all of your paddling in saskatchewan, certainly the majority of it. Do you ever get outside of the province at all?
Speaker 3:um, you know what? There was a time there's a time where I actually lived up in red lake ontario, so that that was pretty awesome. It was only for about a year and I took full advantage of having that big wilderness park there.
Speaker 1:And there was actually a ton of other stuff there.
Speaker 3:That was just you go down some logging roads and yeah, you just you hear about a route and you just kind of go into the back country and just and just do it up. So yeah, it's a I try to take stay Saskatchewan specific just for my channel, because there's just so much to explore here. I mean, you guys kind of just call it Crownland and we just kind of call it going out in the bush, because we don't really have any designated, designated paddle parks here like you guys have in Ontario.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, it's, if there's so much to explore here and so much that's undocumented. That's where I kind of try and keep my focus with. My channel is trying to document all these different routes that no one really knows about.
Speaker 1:So I absolutely love doing that and it just, yeah, just to explore.
Speaker 3:Like it's, it's, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1:It's a frame of reference wise. Everyone thinks of, like Saskatchewan flat prairies wheat. Obviously, it's not all that, because that's your channel shows. It's not all that, yeah, yeah, no, that's one of the reasons why I started my channel is because I got frustrated with that that stereotype and yeah we are fairly flat, manitoba's flatter and um, it's, it's.
Speaker 3:There's just a stereotype, you know, you can watch your dog run away for three days, things like that. Um. And there is aspects of Saskatchewan like that Um. But once you kind of start learning the landscape and like, for example, if you're driving across Saskatchewan, everybody just kind of drives across, uh say, like uh, the trans Canada highway, and that's the only impression that they get.
Speaker 3:If you see hilly areas, that means like when you think back about 10,000 years I'm going off on a tangent here you think about going back about 10,000 years and the glaciers just kind of receded.
Speaker 3:If you see a flat area like a really, really flat area that you're driving through and basically that used to be lake bottom, if you yeah, it's just if you see sometimes really hilly areas, sometimes a glacier would stop advancing and stop receding and it would just kind of stay in one area and it would just start dropping material. So a place just north of your buffalo pound, if you're on the south side of the buffalo pound, which is kind of a reservoir, it's all really flat and it used to be used to be a glacial lake, and then north of buffalo pound, which is kind of a reservoir.
Speaker 3:It's all really flat and it used to be used to be a glacial lake. And then north of buffalo pound, um it's. It's all really hilly and that's where this terminal moraine kind of kind of built up and then the actual capel valley that runs all the way to manitoba. That used to be a big like basically a big glacial river, cut that. So if you're traveling through and just armed with a little bit of knowledge, the landscape becomes a lot more interesting and you can actually see what's. You know how, the how the landscape changes and what used to be there.
Speaker 3:You know as far as, like glaciation because it formed everything obviously pretty much in canada and then we actually got an area um cypress hills that wasn't covered by glaciation. I think it was like one of the only places in in Canada over the last glaciation. So the Wisconsin glaciation, so, but kind of like um, you know Northern Saskatchewan, um, and just being trees and shield, like it's just like Northern Ontario.
Speaker 1:Um, it's a, it's a little different.
Speaker 3:Like we, we do have some different landscapes up there. You might've heard of that at the Basque Sand Dunes. Sand dunes, um, but um. It's the reason why our flag in saskatchewan the bottom is gold and the top is green is because the green represents the forest of north and the gold represents, of course, the wheat fields.
Speaker 3:So more like canola fields now, but yeah, that's, that's kind of how it rolls, and that's what I try to highlight is you know, we have, like that's half of saskatchewan, like all this, all this, you know, uh, forest boreal forest, or you know, canadian shield, um, you know, athabasca sand dunes, all these different areas. So it's it's.
Speaker 1:It's a lot more diverse than people and you're talking how many hours like north, of say, saskatoon, oh, geez, okay so if you're in saskatoon, um, you probably hit the Boreal Edge, like not the Boreal Edge, the Precambrian Edge.
Speaker 3:You probably hit it in about about five hours. So if, even if you go north to La Ronge or kind of east over to Flin Flon, you probably hit the Precambrian Edge in about five hours so that's. That's the only thing about saskatchewan. If you want to go paddling somewhere like up north, it's good. It's going to take you a while to get here.
Speaker 3:I live in moose jaw and that takes me about seven hours just to get to that pre-cambrian edge. So there's, but saskatchewan driving is a lot different than a lot of other places. You hit cruise control and then you just watch the landscape go by. It's awesome.
Speaker 1:Listen to a podcast while you're here.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, tons, tons, yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:Awesome.
Speaker 2:Cool. So I suppose that I keep thinking seven hours, cause that's like that's beyond Sudbury for us. So that's, we're starting to get pretty North from from Southern Ontario. I'm looking out the window Like you can see what we're in Toronto here, Um, but it's like right Like that's a. So that's why you go out for seven days, 14 days, 24 days, that kind of deal Right, yeah, yeah, that's exactly it.
Speaker 3:It's like if I'm going to go up there, I want to want to make it worthwhile there's, there's times when I go on like a boys fishing trip or something like that for a long weekend. But you kind of want to go up on a long weekend. You don't want to just say, hey, I got two, I got the weekend and I'm going to go up, because you just you drive all friday evening and you be well, especially getting older, right, like you're gonna wake up next morning.
Speaker 3:It's like, oh, you're just gonna roll over and go back to bed, um, and then the next day, like if you fish the second day like I mean you gotta make that big drive back, and I've done that before and that's a young man's game, that's that's not a game that I want to play anymore so yeah, yeah yeah, no, but it's like I said it's, it's a different driving, like if you're going up to sudbury you're probably going through a lot of shield and stuff like that, through Ontario right, and uh, it's a lot, it's a lot more stressed. So here it's to get to that edge, it's, it's pretty easy well, you're, you're a big fisher person, so tell us about fishing.
Speaker 3:Oh, fisher person, yeah, so fishing is it's one of my very first memories as a kid. I remember sitting on my front porch and I had some fishing rod. I think it was about front porch and I had some fishing rod. I think it was about three years old. I had a fishing rod. I was pretending I was in a boat on the front porch and I was, you know, hammering whatever. I didn't even know what fish were really at the time but, I've always really wanted to do it.
Speaker 3:So when I got older and I got out, I developed a real big passion for fishing, developed a real big passion for fishing. And, um, my brother actually, he moved up to a uh, a reserve, um kind of in the Flin Flon area and he was teaching up there is right in the Canadian shield and, uh, the guys would take him out fishing all the time. And I got invited up and we went out fishing and I just fell absolutely in love with that area and it's kind of like an East central.
Speaker 3:Saskatchewan. Um, I absolutely love that area. It's probably I just have so many good memories associated with it and, um, it's uh, I started looking at maps of that area and I'm like hey well wow Like look at this I can?
Speaker 3:I can go from this lake to this lake and this lake to this lake and they would take us up to this um area called uh second medicine rapids. It's kind of the way to go from the sturgeon weir river all the way up to the churchill river. It's like a historic uh canoe route and uh, where the voyagers would always go up on this, on this canoe route, and uh it you'd hit the first medicine Rapids and uh, there's pictographs and great fishing and you'd go to the second medicine Rapids and just the fishing was unreal. We just be like 14 cast, 14 fish, that kind of ridiculousness.
Speaker 3:And uh, it just, it put the bug into me that I could get into all these back lakes and that's where my drive to go canoeing came from was I wanted better fishing, and just that led to a whole bunch of other things, so well how so?
Speaker 2:how busy is I mean? I've seen, I've seen some of your videos where it's like, yeah, you know, I'm 12 days in and I just saw my first people. So that's fabulous, that's, that's totally my, my jam is tim likes that yeah, is it like? What is the back country like? There's plenty of times, especially in in more busier, busier parks here, like algonquin, where, yeah, you're that it's pretty tough to go 12 days and not run into people yeah how does that, how does that compare to what you're experiencing in Saskatchewan?
Speaker 3:Yeah, even if you go to the really populated, busy areas like there is like, if so, if you guys know where La Ronge is, kind of no Okay. So if you know where Prince Albert is, yep.
Speaker 1:Okay, Prince Albert.
Speaker 3:If you go to about I think it's's two, two and a half hours north of prince albert, you hit a town called the branch, and if you go about 80 kilometers north of that a lot of its gravel you hit a little town called missinipi and that's kind of where yeah, you guys know where missinipi, is perfect, churchill river canoe outfitters, you know, do their thing up there and uh, it's right along the churchill river and if you just go up the rapids a little bit you get some really, really amazing whitewater canoeing and they always have a whitewater festival every early july, so, uh, highly recommend it.
Speaker 3:I've never been on it, but I've just heard nothing but good things from it. But that area you're going to run into a lot of people and it's actually camped out they're starting to put in composting toilets and stuff like that in there, just because so many people go to it. It's such a beautiful area and the white water is amazing. Um, and that's going to be your busiest area. And there's a few other areas around Missinipi that you know, there's the Ducker Loop.
Speaker 1:McLennan Lake.
Speaker 3:There's a whole bunch of canoeing in the McLennan Lake area.
Speaker 1:And those are really busy areas Not.
Speaker 3:Algonquin busy but they're busy. Everything else is just wide open, Like you might like everything else is is just you're not going to run into people, especially if you do. Um, you start building your own route. So you just take a look at satellite imagery you see if there's a trap line or something there or outfitters using it to skidoo in and out in the winter to get to their, get to their camp. And if you build something like that, the most you're going to run into is fishermen Like.
Speaker 3:I haven't popped across another canoeer. I don't know how long it's been a really long time so yeah, it's compared to like. That's the thing is. It's like compared to.
Speaker 1:Algonquin, the only place I can maybe consider it to be like.
Speaker 3:is that Missinipi area? Just because like like I said, like everybody's, you know they need composting toilets. It's hard to find firewood at the campsite. You know things like that. Um that that would be the only place and it's such a small area and it's saskatchewan such a vast area to paddle, so yeah, yeah, if you want to be alone. Northern saskatchewan is the place to be like honestly.
Speaker 2:Sweet, yeah, yeah, the Boreal. We just just did an interview with Stefan Kesting. He, he, he's in BC now, but but he did. He did a whole thousand thousand mile trek through the Boreal, the North, the North end of Saskatchewewan, and it was just like sounded wild. Uh rain, reindeer lake, yes, a reindeer lake. Uh, we, I, I happened to, was looking at some of your stuff today and it's like, well, where do I know that from? He, he, that's a big body of water, man, it's huge and he paddled through that yeah, it's huge, yeah, so yeah even
Speaker 1:though yeah, even on that one I didn't see any other canoeists.
Speaker 3:It was just, you know you, you get a lot of kayakers on that lake because it's just, it's such a big body of water and kayakers don't have to portage that right.
Speaker 2:So, um, fishing's great and the scenery is beautiful sweet I will say I'm sure that doesn't apply a hundred percent of the time, but I'm totally jealous. Watch, watching you portage. Your stuff is flat man in the grand scheme of things, cause we're, we're like, right, your, your stuff is. Is you know? I mean sure You're, you're issues with alders and you know stepping into the muck and all that sort of jazz, but you're not high. Yes, you do put it over your head, but you can also drag it like you can't.
Speaker 2:That's not even an option yeah, yeah so totally, totally jealous, just saying that is nice it's uh, yeah, yeah, it's, it's.
Speaker 3:Sometimes I think we're actually me and my girlfriend were watching a canoe video last night and, just being an algonquin, it was just like a yellow brick road. The portage was just so straight and so beautiful and well-groomed and I'm just like, oh my God, what it's like, what's it like to portage on something like that. It's just amazing.
Speaker 2:There, there are some, there's some. It's some scary. The North end of canoe Lake it it's like a super highway it's, it's flat, it's about four lanes wide. People go by with like coolers. You know two wheel with with boxes of wine and stuff and you're just kind of like what, uh, I'm sorry, where, where does backcountry enter here?
Speaker 3:what are you talking about exactly?
Speaker 1:yeah, gotta get a few more lakes in yeah so do you have a favorite of one of your trips that you've done so? We keep going back to you because you enjoy it so much. We're 18 favorites.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's uh you know what I don't usually like canoeing the same water a whole heck of a lot. Um, I find it kind of boring and repetitious. But there's a few trips that are really kind of close to my heart that I go back to and it's just like I get there and it feels like I'm home. One of them is like actually I did one last fall, I did a little bit of video of it, but I paddled across Kingsmere Lake to go do another trip. But Kingsmere Lake, just it's in Prince Albert National Park, so about an hour north of Prince Albert, and it's one of two national parks that we have in Saskatchewan and something about it is just it's kind of like where, from the first, learn how to j-stroke. And I had a eureka moment. I kind of did it on my own and, uh, I was just like, oh man, this is so awesome. You know we didn't have like the coleman canoe that you know you, you have to like you know it's like paddling a tank we.
Speaker 3:But we rented a decent canoe and I learned how to J stroke and it was like it was amazing.
Speaker 1:And it's just, it's a big beautiful lake.
Speaker 3:with it's, it can get kind of a turquoise color to it, just a little bit not like some of the what is it? Some of the lakes that you have in Clarny, nothing like that, but it's still really big, beautiful and just off of that you can protage into lake aujuan and gray house cabins there and that's kind of his final resting place.
Speaker 3:So you can kind of go and do that and then off to the side there's a bagua loop, that's kind of part of the part and parcel of kingsmere lake, and you go through a series of small lakes that have some pretty good walleye fishing and some, you know, nice campsites you always.
Speaker 3:I usually hear wolves there, so that's always kind of cool too. Yeah, so that's one of them, and another one is actually I did a trip it's called Sally Lake S-H-A-L-I, and I do have like some canoe videos on my channel about Sally Lake and it was kind of, I think, I think, my second effort of actually trying to do a video, I think my second effort of actually trying to do a video. And the cool thing about that area is it's called, uh, it's called the Pelican window.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like the first time I protaged into a lake and like not the video itself, but that was one of the first lakes I ever protaged into, and the cool thing about that lake is it's actually the rock in it it's three billion years old and it's really unique in Saskatchewan and it's just a little window of pre-cambrian rock that's up and basically all the rock that fills around it is younger rock because of past volcanic activity in the area. So going in there the rock just looks different. There's some really dramatic landscape in there for Saskatchewanan and I don't know it's it just does it for me.
Speaker 2:I can go in there and I just feel like I'm at home again, so I love that stuff you mentioned with with the whitewater, is it fair to assume that there are? Do you? Do you run into waterfalls and stuff like that?
Speaker 3:oh yeah, yeah, yeah, check out, um, hopefully next year, if my body holds up, hopefully next year I can go visit a place called hunt falls. It's saskatchewan's biggest waterfall. It's pretty impressive. It's not you know, uh. For saskatchewan.
Speaker 2:It's pretty awesome, so, um, and by any standards, I think it's pretty impressive so it's not breaking any records, but it's very beautiful.
Speaker 3:And then one of the bucket list trips that we have in Saskatchewan is to go to Stanley Mission, which is just south of Missinipi. It's in between Missinipi and La Ronge. You start at Stanley Mission and one cool thing about that trip is you get to see Saskatchewan's oldest building, which is a mission. It's a church. It's got stained glass windows in the whole bed. I don't even think there was nails used in construction, if I remember correctly, um, and you can go visit that.
Speaker 3:And then you basically go down the churchill river and you get to a place called the stoic falls, which is basically a set of falls that kind of run into the church River. There's a fishing lodge right there and stuff like that and that's it's an easy trip. There's some amazing pictographs along the way and it's highly recommended. It's not hard and it's very beautiful, very scenic.
Speaker 1:So you'll see canoers on that one. Do you do a lot of whitewater, Tyler? No.
Speaker 3:That's why my channel is called puddle jumper is because I scared I'm really scared of doing white water.
Speaker 3:So I will do a class one, class two, especially with my new canoe. I've got, uh, caribou clipper. Caribou s um s is for sexy and um it. Uh, I can do a little bit of white water on it. Um, but my previous canoe there the, the, uh Winona prism, that had no rocker, it was flat and straight and narrow and even if I got on like boils and stuff like that, uh, like the water was boiling up it felt like it was going right into the drink.
Speaker 1:So it was like basically I always make the analogy.
Speaker 3:It's like taking cross country skis and trying to do downhill. That's what it felt like. So, yeah, I'm getting into whitewater a little bit more because I am going to be hopefully, if everything goes right, I'll be doing the porcupine river here this this summer, which is kind of Saskatchewan's preeminent whitewater trip. I'll probably be doing a lot of portaging on it. But, yeah, I'll have to suck it up and actually do some whitewater. So do you guys do whitewater?
Speaker 2:No.
Speaker 1:Don't say no yet.
Speaker 2:We do a little more gentle backcountry. We're reintroducing the young lady to back country. Um, our eldest and I are tend to be the back country guys and we're actually going to do, uh, may two, four weekend. We're doing our, our intro to whitewater, oh cool, uh, up up in Palmer Rapids with some, some friends, so we will see what happens. We've got it. We've got a trip on the spanish river, uh, in the fall in october. So I figured I should probably have a slight clue about what I'm doing yeah yeah, it's like.
Speaker 3:I guess what freaks me out the most is about whitewater is that I like I took intro into whitewater like to do class one and class two actually up at missinipi, and it was a fantastic course. I absolutely loved it, learned a lot. But uh, I guess I didn't ask a lot of questions because sometimes we'd stop and look at stuff I need point stuff out and stuff like that. But I I still have problems looking at, you know, just analyzing what I'm seeing and understanding what's going on underneath the water. So I always feel when I go into doing whitewater is like am I seeing what all I'm supposed to see? Like, if I'm, am I reading that Right, my understanding what's going on and what I should be doing? And I'm still, it's still kind of a big blank for me. I wish, I wish, I need I need to take another course.
Speaker 2:quite honestly, big blank for me. I wish, I wish, I need, I need to take another course, quite honestly. Well, that, and just racking up time that's I mean again talking to people who do it. You know you put in the time. Yeah, rack up some mileage on there go.
Speaker 3:Oh, that didn't play out yeah I missed that one right and I'm usually solo yeah I'm usually solo, I'm usually kind of going and doing my own thing, so to have that group of people to go with is it's rarity for me. I am part of this group in Regina. It's called RAPID, I think it's. What does it stand for? Regina Area Paddling interdependency. I think that's what it is cool and it's a group and everybody kind of does a presentation. You know, with with, uh, different trips that they've done over the summer. They do a presentation, we drink beer and eat wings and those guys actually. Hopefully, if it all works out, I can go with them and we hit up this, uh, we'll hit up this one river called the montreal river and it's a great. It flows up into la ro and it's a great beginner of whitewater. It's about class one, class two, um in the springtime and it's supposed to be fantastic, um, and you can kind of shuttle back and forth during the day and just keep on running rapids.
Speaker 3:So, hopefully, that works out and I get I, get my, get my rapid or get my uh reps in yeah, cool that's.
Speaker 2:That would probably be a good, the shuttling back and forth, rerunning the same thing so that you can have another look at what you ran and what you felt when you ran that one. All right, let's see what is what happens. If I, if this is the look, this is the you know the channel through.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Sweet sweet.
Speaker 1:Uh, all right, completely off topic. What the hell's wrong with?
Speaker 3:you, what's with the maple leafs hat? Oh yeah, you're telling me. I think every maple leaf fan kind of comes to that conclusion, like what is going on? Why am I cheering for this team? Um it uh, my family, my, my dad, was a maple leafs fan way back when there was original six. Of course he cheered for the maple leafs um, and it just it kind of rubbed off on me like it just. I guess the apple didn't fall from far from the tree, so that's kind of and it's been an infectious ever since and I don't know.
Speaker 3:It feels like I want to give up on the team, but uh, it's, it's hard to quit.
Speaker 2:I'm finding it hard to quit yeah, I take it, you're a montreal canadians fan. I'm not an anything fan, hockey's not my thing but but living here in toronto it's like why, why, what's wrong with you? It's not gonna happen. You know it's not gonna happen. It never happens.
Speaker 1:1963 or whatever, like come on I think it's like the slot machine. He's like okay, it hasn't paid out the last 99 times I've pulled the handle. This hundredth time it's gotta pay it dang, nope, nope well the most.
Speaker 3:The most frustrating thing is they do do good, so, like during the regular season and then playoffs, they just laugh for a better time.
Speaker 1:They ship it yeah and it's just, it's so frustrating.
Speaker 3:It's just like what just happened here. Why is my team like not showing any gumption? It's just then. It makes it hard to root for him. It's like where's the passion? Boys like come on like what's going on? And it's just they.
Speaker 2:They just seize up and then yeah and I mean, yeah, I mean again not a hockey guy, but you watch things like you know you got, yeah, that's the guy, he's going to do it, and then, yeah, it's the crap, the bed thing. It's like what happened, what just happened?
Speaker 3:I know, and there was so much hope when they got Austin Matthews and Mitch Marner and Nylander and all those guys Tavares, and there was all this hope. And it was just like you see these guys just kind of slowly wasting I don't want to say wasting their career by just missing opportunities and missing opportunities and it's just like, oh god, that's gonna suck so, and it's like time's running out on those guys like they're at their peak and it's pretty soon it's gonna be downhill.
Speaker 3:So we'll see what happens. I don't know. Gotta have hope.
Speaker 2:Gotta have hope also have to have a small fortune to afford tickets.
Speaker 3:Oh god, yeah, thank god I there's no way I buy tickets for that team. It's just, you don't even know if they're going to show up that night. So you have no clue and it's like to pay that much for tickets. It's just like no thanks, guys.
Speaker 2:Well that's insane. My I, we're talking this is a camping podcast. We're talking about hockey. My dad and I went. My mom, my mom bought us tickets were a few years back for father's day and we were up sort of halfway up and they were 400 bucks a ticket man I'm like that's nuts. Uh. So it's the one and only leaf game I've ever been to wow yeah was it?
Speaker 3:was it in the maple leaf gardens, or is it? Yeah, okay, no, no no, it was at uh scotiabank. Who knows what it's called now whatever, yeah it's um.
Speaker 2:No, I've seen more concerts at Maple Leaf than I've seen hockey games. Okay, yeah, yeah, that's crazy All right Back to camping. All right Sorry.
Speaker 1:So you mentioned porcupine river. Have you got other trips planned for the summer?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got two trips planned. The porcupine is going to take me three weeks, so I only have a certain amount of time off to get off of work. So but I have another week to play with and what I'll be doing is going to East Central Saskatchewan I don't know, it just does it for me so kind of like where that Sally Lake was, kind of in the same vicinity. There's, um, it's basically it's it's feeder, it's a feeder area for the Sturgeon Weir River goes down flows, down to the saskatchewan river. So the sturgeon weir just a little background, was the link between the saskatchewan river and the churchill.
Speaker 3:So if you can kind of picture it there and it kind of runs, it runs along the manitoba border. Like it's on the, it's on the west side of the manitoba border, so in saskatchewan and that area in there is.
Speaker 3:There's a bunch of historical documented canaries that the government of saskatchewan put out and there are a few documented trips in that area, but there's so much more going on in there. So two things I want to accomplish this spring is to go in there for a week. I'm going to a lake called Kaka Agimak Lake, and it means the lake is long apparently in Crete and the fishing in there is amazing.
Speaker 3:It's just every time I've gone in there, I've slayed fish and I can't wait to get back. But there's a couple of offshoots from that lake that it's not not documented or anything like that, and I want to build portage that whole area. Actually if, if I get ambitious enough, I would love to map it, because there's not a lot of information on it I'd love to map it and get that out to people.
Speaker 3:Um, just that information. So just where portages are, because it's really underutilized like it's. You're so close to civilization but no one goes in there unless you're.
Speaker 2:You're one of the first nations up there who have a cabin back there or you're an outfitter.
Speaker 1:It's yeah, I've never met another canoer back there.
Speaker 3:It's. It's awesome for such a short drive too, so that's one of my shorter drives at seven hours.
Speaker 1:So when you get, somewhere like that.
Speaker 3:You just, you just park your vehicle somewhere. Parking on the side of the road is not not totally advised, because people will come along and mess with it in that area or really in any area. Uh, so what I usually do, uh is there? For example, on this trip I'm probably going to be calling a place called slim's cabins. I'll phone up slim's, say, hey, can you shuttle me from here to here and then pick me me up at this time? And they'll be like yep, sure, and they'll drop me off on that on the river that I'm going to be going up, and they'll pick me up at a set time.
Speaker 1:So there's usually outfitters are really good.
Speaker 3:You can either park at them, or they'll even give you a shuttle for free. So that's kind of where you go. There's not a lot of canoeing, specific outfitters other than, like Missinipi, churchill River canoe outfitters. There's a few others, but that's kind of the big game in town and you're kind of reliant on setting stuff up with outfitters. So for example, when I go up and do the Porcupine Plain, or it's not Porcupine Plain. There's a town called Porcupine Plain here in Saskatchewan.
Speaker 3:But, if you go up to the Porcupine River, there's certain outfitters or people that you can talk to that will help you out either give you a shuttle or whatever.
Speaker 1:So you find out, you ask questions.
Speaker 3:Like I said, churchill River Canoe Outfitters is if you need to know information on a lot of that stuff up in way, northern saskatchewan.
Speaker 1:Um, they're the people to go to when they've with no map necessarily go on, you just use your gps and just use that to navigate around um, there are the yeah, there are go trekker maps.
Speaker 3:So there are maps that you can buy that, uh, former owner of churchill river can outfitters, who just changed hands. He used to be rick drediger and now it's martin uh, rick's kid uh, son, he took over kind of like the the mapping side of stuff like that. He's no longer running churchill or helping him running a churchill river canoe outfitters apparently he's got the mapping business.
Speaker 3:So if you go on to go trek or maps, um, uh and type in saskatchewan or whatever and a whole bunch of stuff will come out, uh, or come up and it lists protages, at least white water levels, uh, or like the you know, with the class one, class two or whatever. Uh shows protages and stuff like that and campsites, so um, there are certain things you can go by.
Speaker 3:But uh, the trip that I'm doing, going up to the porcupine river, is I'm going to be going across black lake and then there's a whole bunch of undocumented stuff which I basically print off, the old, um, the old topographic, canadian topographic maps.
Speaker 3:I mark it up, um, and uh, I basically look at satellite imagery saying I can protage here, I can camp possibly here, and I mark it up and I go by that, and usually a lot of times what I'll do is, with the protages that are unknown, I'll print off satellite imagery just so I can see what I'm getting into probably the best way to approach it, because there's a lot of times when I've pulled up to a place and I'm like oh man, what's going on it? Looks like it's supposed to be here and you know you start searching through the bush and you're like, no, that's not gonna work.
Speaker 3:So having that satellite imagery, it's just, it helps out. So much, so yeah and then, but the porcupine coming down, I'll be using one of those GoTrekker maps to come down and get back to Black Lake. It's basically what I'll be doing.
Speaker 2:Are you able to get more recent satellite imagery? Like you know, if it's a, you know Google Maps three years as a general rule three years out, that portage is gone. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:There are. You know what I heard? Bing mapping is supposed to be a matter, somebody just told me the other day. Then google earth, it's got more, it's got more. Uh yeah, up-to-date satellite imagery. There is a saskatchewan website that I go to. It's a saskatchewan government website and you can get a whole bunch of stuff off that like you can get burn history.
Speaker 3:You can get, uh, what else? Just what? What fish are in what lakes? Um, mining energy, like just a whole bunch of host of stuff. You can actually go in and see, like, for example, on the on the trip that I'm editing right now, uh, I can't, you know, come by. I came by a mining claim, so somebody had a claim and they were doing some exploration. There's a bunch of flagging tape and editing right now. I came by a mining claim, so somebody had a claim and they were doing some exploration. There's a bunch of flagging tape and I was like what the heck is this?
Speaker 3:And you can actually go into this Saskatchewan website and actually find out who has the claim on that area or what company is actually doing something there. So, yeah, and I can get fairly up-to-date satellite imagery, so you have a few to choose from.
Speaker 2:How about you guys Any?
Speaker 3:suggestions.
Speaker 2:No, I was just going to say that's, that's some giant brain stuff Like to to figure out that. That's cause I'd be. I'd start with Google earth. Yeah, we, I tend to. We, we almost exclusively do provincial parks simply because there's so many of them, and I don't have to think I can just buy a map. Bob's, my uncle and I'm off to the races, like I don't have to. Super easy for old guys.
Speaker 1:Just maps that long. Those are the ones that you use yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they've already done all the work. They know how you know, know how long it's going to take to go through there, what, what kind of you know if you're going to get into rapids or anything like that, where all the sites are, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1:So so that it removes the whole rocket science part for me yeah, but how cool to be like the first one who ever went through this area. Sure area.
Speaker 2:Sure. Yeah, it's um, and another off topic question Skittles. What's that all about?
Speaker 3:Oh, you don't have any. Yeah, it's Skittles, I don't know. It just makes you happy. It's just like this is a mouthful of awesomeness and they're bright and colorful, especially on a gloomy day, and you're kind of looking at them and you're like, oh yeah, man, it's freaking awesome.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it's just it, just it just kind of makes you happy.
Speaker 3:It's like I like wearing Maui gym sunglasses with the rose colored tint and it just makes. It brightens everything up and makes everything just look so much happier, especially on those rainy yeah gross days.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's awesome awesome anything to help you out right like yep, I can see that yeah, sponsorship opportunities too, that's it I'm the skittles guy I feel like I want to try and get a sponsor from kfc yeah, that'd be all right. Yeah, get a sponsor from sponsor from KFC and it.
Speaker 3:Uh, I love going and eating their chicken after I go on a big trip, because it's like I feel like I'm eight, my metabolism's like it's 18 again and it's like, all right, I can handle a bucket now. And we stop on the way back I get KFC. So if they can sponsor like a canoe or something like that, for me I'll call it the Colonel. It'll be red and white, It'll be awesome. So we'll see.
Speaker 2:No, no offers yet. Yeah, that's fine, we'll, we'll make sure we flag it for them. We'll we'll hashtag KFC. That's definitely a thing that the big kid and I, when we're about two days away from ending the trip, it's like oh yeah, there's going to be a really, really, really good burger in two days.
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh, yeah. Yeah, you're starving for calories. Your metabolism's up Like you're burning through calories, like anything, especially when you get older, something like that You're going to feel it for usually like just on a normal day.
Speaker 1:You would eat it and then you regret for three days, but when you get out of a canoe trip you go and eat it and it's just like oh god you know, it's just no regrets. No, not one regret give me all the grease.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I think I might have just wet myself yeah, um, can you saskatchewan?
Speaker 3:I'd, it's about it. You guys got to come and, uh, check it out. If you ever have the time, if you're passing through, come up to northern saskatchewan and uh, yeah paddle around I think you'll, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised sounds beautiful, it does and I I've been telling you that your portages I would. I would take those in a heartbeat right, so a lot better than what is it? Uh, is it? I can't remember? Is it quetico, the diablo portage, or something like that?
Speaker 2:that's not the diablo. Yeah, there was.
Speaker 3:There's like a diablo staircase and then there's diablo portage or something I don't know there's a bunch of that and it's, and it's, it's a portage.
Speaker 2:After you've done you still have to go through like so much deadfall that you can literally walk on it, break an ankle, but walk on it to get to the portage. And then it's, you know, very close to bushwhacking straight up for days. It's yeah, we've got some friends that have done it. They're like Never again. Yeah Well, we've got some friends that have done it. They're like never again. Yeah Well, that's, I've checked that one off. I'm never doing that again.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, it's probably the worst portage that I can think of off the top of my head. In Saskatchewan we got I think it's pronounced methyl, methyl portage. So it's going from the Churchill river to the oh, what is it? Clearwater. And it's. I think it's 18 kilometers long and it's. It's old fur trade stuff. Right, that's how he got up to Clearwater. To go up to what is it? The McKenzie.
Speaker 1:I can't even remember.
Speaker 3:Basically, you get up to Lake Athabasca and you go that route and, yeah, it's I. I knew, I know a guy who I think was attempting it, but then he hurt his knee and he had to get carried out and not carried out but rescued. Yeah, it's, it's, I've wanted to do it but I'm getting a little little gray in the beard, so it's like now. Now it just doesn't seem appealing at all. It just sounds like a lot of pain and I'm just trying to avoid that 18 kilometers isn't a portage, that's hiking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, your canoe trip turns into a hiking trip for sure. Yeah, no, thank you.
Speaker 2:Nope, okay, all right.
Speaker 1:All right, that's it for us for today. Thank you so much to our special guest, tyler Chilabecki from the YouTube channel Puddle Jumper. Please do check him out. Check us out on YouTube while you're there and check us out on all the social media. If you'd like, you could email us anytime at hi at supergoodcampaigncom. That's hi at supergoodcampaigncom, and we'll talk to you again soon. Bye.
Speaker 3:Bye.
Speaker 1:Bye.
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