From Algonquin To The Yukon: How Two Paddlers Plan Big Remote Canoe Adventures

Smoke-choked skies, waves breaking over the canoe, and a plan that has to work even when there’s no cell signal. That’s the reality of the kind of wilderness canoe tripping Eric and Hillary from Tailwinds North love most, and they join us to share what it actually takes to travel farther off the beaten path without turning every day into a crisis. 

We start with how their story grows from paddling around Bancroft and Algonquin into bigger routes like the Yukon River, the Snake River, and a fly-in canoe trip to the East Arm of Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories. They walk us through the trip planning process they use each winter: researching maps and trip reports, checking satellite imagery, sorting logistics like boats and access, and then getting into the gritty details of backcountry food prep and dehydrated meals. If you’ve ever wondered how people make 11 to 15 day trips feel manageable, you’ll hear the systems and habits that make the difference. 

Then the conversation turns to the moments that test your judgement. Eric and Hillary describe paddling through heavy wildfire smoke in the Yukon and how they used an inReach device, firefighter guidance, and constant observation to stay safe. We also unpack a humbling Great Slave Lake launch that goes sideways fast, plus what they learned about wind, cold water, spray decks, and when to call it and head for shore. Along the way we talk flatwater versus whitewater, fishing plans that assume you’ll catch nothing, and why time is the hardest resource to budget. 

If you’re into canoe camping, remote paddling routes, Ontario Crown land, or Yukon and Northwest Territories adventures, you’ll leave with practical planning tips and a clearer sense of what “prepared” really means. Subscribe for more, share this with a paddling friend, and leave a review, what’s the biggest trip you’re planning next?

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Transcript

Welcome And Meet The Guests

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Hello and good day. Hey, welcome to the Super Good Camping Podcast. My name is Pamela.

SPEAKER_01 0:04

I'm Tim.

SPEAKER_02 0:05

And we are from Supergoodcamping.com. 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 guests are outdoor adventurers that prefer wilderness trips off the beaten path, like way off, float plane level sometimes. They love being out there whether it's minus 20 degrees or plus 30 degrees, paddling and fishing, especially when they can convince friends to join them. Seems to be their favorite pastime. But they're also fans of dragging a toboggan of gear into the woods in the middle of the winter to do some hot tenting. Please welcome Eric and Hillary from Tailwinds North. Yay, welcome. Hello, everybody.

SPEAKER_03 0:45

Hello. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for having us. We're excited.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah, this feels like it's been a while coming. Adventure people are always busy doing things like outdoor shows and stuff like that or out adventuring. So it's like, I don't have a signal. Sorry.

SPEAKER_03 1:06

Well, well, now the stars have aligned and we can meet. So we're happy to be here.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

And we're glad you were able to find some time for us. Um man, I don't even know where to start. How did you so you guys do like some pretty, pretty, from my perspective, some pretty crazy trips? Awesome, awesome crazy, like in a good crazy. How did you how did you go from zero to 60 like that? Like how what what was what's the what's the beginning? How what were your baby steps in cutting your teeth on doing massive adventures?

SPEAKER_01 1:39

Yeah.

From Local Lakes To Yukon

SPEAKER_01 1:40

No, we we definitely didn't uh we we worked our way up to those sorts of trips, but um Hillary and I both grew up uh in the Bancroft area, and so we spent a lot of time uh when we were younger um going up to Algonquin, spending time on lots of lakes around that area, um, out in the canoe, um uh like Crown Land trips, and then and we still do, we still do lots of those trips as whenever we can. And about 10 years ago, I think it was 10 years this this year actually, my sister sent a message to us and said, Hey, what do you think about paddling the Yukon River this summer for a couple of weeks? And so we we got a kind of a ragtag group of friends together and my sister and and uh did that trip, and it was a two-week trip, and that kind of really uh, I don't know, just kind of got us on this, you know, trying to get out whenever we could, you know, save up our vacation and and budget to get out at least on one big trip once a year. Um and yeah, it's kind of taken us on all sorts of trips across Ontario and and in Western Canada or in the territories. Um and we've been like to get out into places where we haven't paddled before and and some more wild areas, so that was kind of the the origins of it. Um so yeah.

Planning Trips And Dehydrating Meals

SPEAKER_02 3:24

Well, and so do you plan your own trip sometimes? Sometimes it's an outfitter, it's always an outfitter. How did how do they work?

SPEAKER_01 3:31

It's it's almost all it's always us. Like we usually around this time of year in the well, and really starting in January, February every year, we're kind of looking at maps and watching YouTube videos, look reading books, and kind of pick like everybody else, everyone else, yeah, and uh kind of dreaming up well what routes could we do, and um yeah, and then we start reaching out to figure out how do we get out there and how do we, you know, do we rent a boat, do we bring our own canoe, like all those sorts of things. We'll start to plan throughout the winter and then start dehydrating food and all that fun stuff, which we need to start doing, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Oops, I I can send you some meals. I think I have like I think I have about three years worth of tripping dehydrated in the freezer. So take a nice.

SPEAKER_03 4:35

Please let us any recipes that you want to share. Oh, you know what?

SPEAKER_00 4:39

So I have said this a million times uh for our regular listeners. Kevin Ride has Backcountry Eats. Anything in that book is fabulous, like it's just amazing stuff. He's already figured out all the things. The big win is when you want, you know, beef, ground beef or ground pork in your meals, or or you know, you're gonna dice up some sausage to put into it. Boil it, rinse it, boil it, rinse it. Gets rid of the fat and stuff, and it's not it's not rehydrated gravel at the end of it.

SPEAKER_01 5:13

Yeah, yeah, that's the win. Kevin, uh, we we uh we saw we've been following him for quite a while, and we saw he did uh dehydrated pickles once. So we tried that a couple years ago. It was actually really good.

SPEAKER_03 5:28

Our last our snake river trip, we had dehydrated pickles on behalf of Kevin.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Nice. Worked out great. I didn't know that. Dehydrate, sorry, making notes.

SPEAKER_03 5:43

We had it on our um uh we make like a de like we dehydrate uh sweet, or was it black bean burgers? Uh and we had them on the pickles on the black bean burger hamburger, and it was really great. That's cool.

SPEAKER_00 6:01

Great. So okay, we're gonna bail. I'm gonna I'm gonna go get um okay. So your that first trip was or sorry, that first big, big faraway trip uh was two weeks. It has that sort of stuck as, or do you tend to do shorter ones, 10 days? How does that play out for you now?

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Yeah, I think we've I mean we're usually it's either we're not as big on the solo trips, so we it's usually Hillary and I, or we'll try and get a group of friends together, and we just like going on trips with our friends and introducing friends to to those types of trips as well. But um usually I think the the longest one we did was about 15 days. Um, but usually we try and try and keep it like 11 to 11 to 15 days. I find once you get out on one of those longer trips, you really start to kind of disconnect. And um, but we're obviously limited with vacation and everyone's schedules and things like that. Uh otherwise, I'd love to get out on a 30-day trip, but I don't we have to figure out our jobs first with that.

SPEAKER_03 7:18

Like many people.

Wildfire Smoke And Staying Safe

SPEAKER_02 7:20

And that Yukon trip, didn't anything go wrong on that trip? Anything unexpected? Anything that kind of came up they weren't anticipating.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Um on the first trip? No, it was actually surprisingly everything went pretty well on that one. I don't think we had any issues. We had a I guess our second Yukon trip, we got into some wildfires pretty bad. Oh no. Um where we actually just couldn't see anything for several days, like more than 10 feet in front of you. But um otherwise, it was yeah, our first trip was uh maybe that's why we just kept going back and doing more trips because it it went beginner's lots wide. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:12

So the wildfires, like how close to you were they, do you know?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

So that trip we actually uh I think well it was pretty close. It was you could see the flames coming over the hills, and we actually stopped at one there was kind of a historic site uh at Fort Selkirk that we had stopped to to check out, and we hadn't uh we hadn't seen any any other people really for about 10 days, and there was actually a helicopter flew into the site with and they started installing hoses, and they told us the the flames were gonna we'll likely start to see them come up over the mountain towards the river as we paddled through. Yeah. Um but uh we didn't end up uh we we saw it, but we ended up kind of just paddling, paddling past it. But it was it was a pretty it was kind of scary.

SPEAKER_00 9:09

It was like I was gonna say there'd definitely be some pucker factor there.

SPEAKER_02 9:13

They didn't evacuate you out though, they didn't recommend.

SPEAKER_03 9:17

I I went up to the firefighter when they were setting up their hoses, and it was just in precaution because they were trying to protect um Fort Selkirk, which is an old Hudson Bay trading post, and it still to this day has amazing, it's like a museum, so it has all the original cabins, um, there's a church, it's a really great place to just explore and see that history. So they were setting up to protect it in case the fires did get close, which didn't happen to be. But um, I went over to the one firefighter and I said, should we be concerned? Like, you know, we've been um getting messages from Eric's sister and the in-reach, just kind of she was watching the fire maps for us. Um, but it was just a little concerning because we could see them over the hill. Um, but the firefighter just informed us, no, keep going, keep going towards Dawson City. Um, you'll be okay. Uh the fires are kind of going the other way, like the winds were going the other way. So we we managed to get that correct information, that promising information, and just carried on with our trip. But I did ask him, I was like, are you evacuating us? What's happening? Because we're totally disconnected from the world out there, right? You just we do take an in-reach device um and it's two-way, but yeah, you don't know what's happening in the news. Um, but luckily we were safe and sound and and made it to the destination we needed to get to. And it did shift like the as we moved closer to Dawson City that way, it was um it was kind of dissipating. But there was some heavy smoke where we had to wear our um we had like our buffs over our faces and things like that. But do get wildfires sometimes, but that was really the only trip we've been on so far that had that.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah, I think yeah, with wildfires, anyways.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

Yeah, so we've been lucky, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:17

Yeah, yeah, it just it just made me think I would never have thought that I needed to put respirator on my my checklist for packing, right? Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, well, it's definitely you know with climate change now, it's it's you know, well, Ontario every summer, right? And same as you know, out west in the territories, it's something basically have to just almost account for there's probably gonna be some some wildfires or a chance that we might need to cancel the trip and hope hope everybody's uh yeah, hopefully, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

Between wildflow fires and uh floods. I mean, we're getting you know massive rainstorms over the course of you know 48 hours. You're yeah you're getting 75 or or 100 plus millimeters. Uh I don't even know what that works. I have two other people in Imperial, uh whatever it's tons, so that's gobs and gobs and gobs of rain. It's way more than you know the

Flatwater Versus Whitewater Preferences

SPEAKER_00 12:20

the ground can absorb. So yeah, then suddenly you get you know that it's not it's not a flat water trip anymore. Suddenly it's a whitewater trip.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

And do you mostly do flat water or do you do some white water as well?

SPEAKER_01 12:33

Yeah, we do kind of a mix. I mean, we do uh kind of yeah, we've we've done a few bigger kind of whitewater trips, um, like the Missanovi and um did the Snake River in the Yukon a couple years ago. That was a that was a challenging river for us, and uh, but then we also love actually our favorite trips are the ones where we can kind of do a bit of both flat water and whitewater paddling.

SPEAKER_03 13:03

So those are my favorite. I mean, you can do both the lakes and a little bit of the river action, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Yeah, I agree. It's we we literally just got into doing white water last year, and it it's that's that's it's nice to have nice easy paddle, paddle, paddle, and then a bit of woo, and then back to nice easy paddle paddle. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_03 13:28

What did you do? Where did you go?

SPEAKER_00 13:30

Uh well, we so we did a bunch up in uh Palmer Rapids. Um that was the training portion of the program, and then we were headed for uh oh my god, I've already forgotten. What's what's the one we're doing this year?

SPEAKER_03 13:45

Spanish River.

SPEAKER_00 13:46

Spanish River. We were headed for the Spanish River. Got well, we got a phone call from or not a phone call, we got an email from whoever's the CNRail. Yeah, CN Rail that they were pulling the bud car off uh the night before we were supposed to go. So at big scramble, and uh we did ended up doing tomogamy, which which was awesome. It was so beautiful, beautiful colors, but it was like 20 degrees during the day. It was fantastic. It was a it was an awesome trip. It's potentially one of the things that's a great plan B. Yeah, yeah. Very cool. So, okay, so you guys have done Yukon, Snake River, and you don't want to do the same ones all the time. Some of the other places you've done, or and or some of the places you're looking at down the road. Yeah, that's a

Great Slave Lake Fly In Reality

SPEAKER_00 14:33

good question.

SPEAKER_01 14:33

So we've done um well, we we did the the Steel River. That was a that was a fun trip.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Isn't that the one with the El Diablo? Is the is the portage?

SPEAKER_03 14:44

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:46

That was the part that wasn't so fun.

SPEAKER_03 14:49

Our dog had fun. Our dog did the Diablo pat the Diablo portage, I think, 10 times. Well, we managed to do it in three hours.

SPEAKER_01 15:01

Yeah, we didn't beat any records on that portage, but um yeah, the the snake or sorry, the the steel river, we got up into Wabakimi, did the Allenwater River. That was a that's a beautiful trip.

SPEAKER_03 15:15

Um highly recommend.

SPEAKER_01 15:17

Yeah. Um what else?

SPEAKER_03 15:20

Last year.

SPEAKER_01 15:22

Yeah, and then last year we did uh the east arm of Great Slave Lake out in the Northwest Territories. So that was uh that was a big trip for us. Uh really yeah, yeah. So we were we it was a fly-in trip out onto the to the east arm, and we were kind of pretty humbled in our first few minutes there because when we we landed, it was dead calm out, and we had all of our gear kind of just the the plane had left and we just had our gear sitting in the in the canoe. We'd loaded it up, didn't have our spray deck on. Um, we were only planning to paddle like maybe a kilometer, I think, to find we we had seen a nice spot to camp from the plane, and anyways, we got out onto the lake and we kind of came around into a more open area. And wow, the we we got a taste of the it wasn't it it wasn't even the big open part of the lake, and we were getting we were getting surfed by the the water, like it was coming right up over the the canoe, and so we we got to shore pretty quick because we were yeah, we were taking on water, and uh you were willing to go further, and I was like, Eric, I think we need to go to shore.

SPEAKER_03 16:52

He's like, No, let's just keep trying a little bit more, and the canoe was filling up with water, and I was like, I think it's time to go in as we're surfing along the waves. So we made our way back to shore, and uh we made it 500 meters that day.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yeah, yeah. So we were windbound for a bit, and then we uh we we eventually kind of found a little spot just big enough for the tent and a little sheltered area, but the next day we we got everything kind of geared up and spray deck on and dry suits on and all that stuff because it's cold too.

SPEAKER_00 17:39

Well, at what time of year was this?

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Uh it was mid-August when we went, but it it I think sometimes that section of the lake is the last part to to lose the ice, so I think even into like late June they still have ice, but it essentially just doesn't warm up there, and that's and that's also why the fishing is so good there, because it's so cold.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

So, what kind of fish are you getting there and and what what ones did you actually get out of it?

SPEAKER_01 18:13

So the in Great Slave Lake, the there it's probably one of the top, if not the top, uh lake trout fisheries in the world. So pretty much exclusively lake trout is what we were catching. We caught a few pike, um, and uh we caught a couple of Arctic grayling. But it was almost all it was all uh lake trout, and we were catching them pretty much within five minutes of every time we put the line in the water.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

Sounds terrible.

SPEAKER_02 18:50

It's a hard life. Fresh fish every day.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

So good. Wishful thinking. Do you uh when sorry, could because I I plan to catch zero, so I pack the amount of food plus a few extra meals. Do you do you actually factor in the catching fresh and and therefore you don't take as much, or do you just bring more food back with you?

SPEAKER_03 19:15

Yeah, we we like I'm the one the meal planner usually, so we pack enough in case we do not catch fish. Um plus we'll do a couple emergency meals on top of that, just because the dynamic of of flying in, flying out. You could um airplanes can only they need to see, like the bush planes need to visualize where they're going. Um so sometimes you can

Fishing Food Planning And The Dog

SPEAKER_03 19:44

get a couple days in between um departure and um arrival, like getting back. So we always bring extra. But um we we ate a lot of fish, just so we did take a couple meals back and just reuse them in our other trips. There's no biggie, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

So do you take your dog with you on all these trips?

SPEAKER_03 20:07

I wish we we don't, but um, because actually she's named after Dawson City in the Yukon. So we will have to get her there one day, maybe drive across. But I just can't bring myself to put her on the plane just just to have her on our trip. But um, so she's safe and sound with uh a family member while we go on these trips. But the ones in Ontario, she loves it, she'll go with us, and she's great in the canoe. We've had her in the canoe since she's 10 weeks, so she just loves it. Yeah, she's sits there and enjoys it and doesn't really move and hops in, hops out when we tell her to. So we love that. But love to take her on a on a trip up way up north in the territories or Yukon, but um that will be maybe a driving trip one day.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

Yeah, that's a long drive.

SPEAKER_03 21:06

Maybe when we retire, have the time.

SPEAKER_00 21:10

Yeah, that's gonna happen soon. Not gonna buy a lottery ticket.

SPEAKER_03 21:16

Or buy win the lottery. If we win the lottery, there'll be signs.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

But you have to wait till I win because I need mine for retirement. Then you can win all you want. Cool.

Outfitters Trade Shows And Yukon Routes

SPEAKER_00 21:29

So so what's your what's your connection with uh uh up north adventures? Because that's uh that's where we see you all the time, or at least that's where I see you all the time, is at the booths, at the uh outdoor adventure shows.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so we I mean we've been we've done quite a few trips out in the Yukon over the years, and uh a few years ago uh we we did some little bit of uh film work for them and and doing some promotional.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

work for them and uh and then we started helping them out uh with their at the trade shows i mean it's yeah it's a long ways to come over from the yukon and so we like to to to help out and we've done quite so many trips in the yukon that we know a fair bit about many of the routes that they that they serve and um yeah they're great great company and and mark the owner he's uh yeah he's uh got a lot of knowledge about paddling out there so and we have a lot of fun at the the shows as well just really anything where we can talk canoe trips with people is pretty fun day to us so yeah yeah yeah and mark's been um he's been the outfitter there for over 35 years so he is a go our go-to for all our tripping out in that area very knowledgeable and he has great staff the boats are all top notch um it's the same with the all the equipment so we just uh love to we just built that relationship with them and and keep going back so that's excellent well 35 years yeah that's you can rack up an awful lot of knowledge then yeah very cool what's uh so so great slave lake very cool trip what what are some upcoming possibilities yeah so we are planning another trip in the yukon this summer um we just keep going back out there um we're planning kind of a uh we've got a another couple that are planning to come with us and it's gonna be a kind of a mix of lake and river paddling we're kind of picking a little bit lesser known route there's a little few unknowns we're still researching and I spent I don't know six hours the other day on mapping just trying to see what yeah how much uh

Upcoming Trips And Mapping Tools

SPEAKER_03 24:05

yeah what what we can see on some of these routes and figuring out the logistics and things so uh we've got that somewhat planned pretty we're we're getting to getting there for for that one um there's lots of trips in Ontario we we want to do as well um yeah there's I mean that yeah like the Spanish River um like to get up onto another one of the rivers heading up into to James Bay again that was one of our first whitewater trips was on the Missanabe River and uh so we'd love to get out on maybe another one of the rivers up that way and and love to get back to Wawakimi.

SPEAKER_00 24:51

There's so many yeah I know we're spoiled here we really are yeah yeah I know at 649 if it pays out maybe maybe on Saturday then then I could start to actually you know knock them off the bucket list like it's it's a list that's very very long yeah it's really the the time is the hardest thing right just finding you know even just to get to northern Ontario takes takes a good day at least to drive up to Thunder Bay and um so that's that's usually the limiting factor is like how much time do we have to squeeze in as many trips as we can I'm sure everyone's feeling the same thing. Yeah it is it is a bit of an obstacle I mean it obstacle I honestly I feel like we're somewhat blessed to have all of that here as close as it is to us. But but yeah you're you're right you know like a you know it's a 17 hour drive even with two people and and and then you like you guys you know you're you're talking about uh 11 to 15 day trips and and I totally get it I mean we tend to sweet spot with the our our eldest son and I is around eight days just because you know um life responsibilities and stuff whether it's work or or whatever you know and but you're not really starting to get that chill vibe until maybe day three right you're really only getting four or five days of it and you're starting as even as you're ending the trip you're already starting you can feel my shoulders starting to tense up and stuff because I'm going back into that wonderful Toronto traffic 649 come on agreed um when sorry go ahead Hillary no go ahead okay uh when you're looking at your maps uh fine fine and dandy for maps do you do stuff like use you know Google satellite images and stuff to look at maybe more recent pictures of you know uh dams or or portages that you're gonna try to work your way through yeah so most of the a lot of the time like you know well most trips I'll I'll use uh like a caltapo um if you've used that before with the satellite images and then kind of flip between any of the other mapping that's available on on that there's a bunch of other software you can use but yeah and usually I'll start actually with with Google Earth and just look so even for Crownland camping um just try and find lakes that don't have buildings on them and and then uh yeah and then start looking into like in Ontario the um some of the public mapping has different um more detailed images that you can find than what Google has on it.

SPEAKER_01 27:55

So found that really helpful too. Yeah and then we'll start like uh yeah then you can even start like some of them have tools where you can start mapping out your actual route and marking up portages and um getting the distance. Yeah figuring out how long those portages are and uh um yeah looking at ra even it's helpful even where where there's no um like trip reports or minimal trip reports available online you can even see okay what time of year was this image taken and if you can sometimes you can even see okay there's there's rapids on these sections and you can start to mark those out and um kind of help supplement some of the topographic mapping as well.

SPEAKER_02 28:45

Cool that's a that's a skill that would take a while to learn I mean for me most of the places I camp it's I just maps by Jeff right yep easy peasy he's already done all the work for me so yeah yeah it's great

Wrap Up And Follow Along

SPEAKER_02 29:02

yeah got lots of the lots of jeff's maps here too I I have all of his maps I I have a bit of a map issue uh it's an addiction it's it's it's not certifiable I checked all right that's it for us for today thank you so much to Eric and Hillary from Tailwinds North please do check them out like and subscribe on YouTube and follow them on Instagram and while you're there do the same for us and if you want to reach out to us anytime we are at high at supergoodcamping dot com that's h i at supergoodcamping dot com and we will talk to you again soon.

SPEAKER_03 29:39

Bye bye thank you