It is important to recognize that our expedition traversed the traditional lands of the Tahltan. Many of the kilometers we hiked utilized historic overland routes used by the First Nations. Klabona, the Sacred Headwaters of the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass Rivers in northern British Columbia is an area of unrivaled cultural importance as well as ecological value. Today, despite the designation of the Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness Provincial Park, this large, intact ecosystem has historically been threatened by extractive industries, and those threats persist today. From gold and copper mines, to coal bed methane wells and now pipelines, the fight continues to protect this rich landscape.
Learn more about Klabona at: https://sacredland.org/klabona-canada/
Written by Frank Preston, Jo Kemper, and Daphnee Tuzlak
"You should change your plan." This was not the gist of the conversation I had prior to heading north to the Spatsizi Plateau Wilderness in autumn. It was a direct quote.
I called the owner of Spatsizi River Outfitters in August to inquire about a food resupply at a lodge they operate on Laslui Lake. The response was vague and non-committal. While others pointed out that he never said yes, I definitely never heard him say no! He was, however, quite specific in his estimation that we should not attempt what I had outlined as our hiking and packrafting route to the headwaters of the Stikine River, late in the season.
“You should change your plan,” he said a second time, in case I hadn’t gotten the message in the first few minutes of the phone call.
The problem with me changing my plan was that it wasn’t my plan to change. It wasn’t my plan at all. Jo Kemper had pitched this idea to me almost a year ago, but I had written it off as something I didn’t have time for. With an 8-on, 6-off schedule for the summer season, I couldn’t figure out how to squeeze more than 400 human-powered kilometers into my days off. That didn’t even count the driving to get there. So it wasn’t until I asked if it was a trip that could happen after September 20, my last official day of work, that I could entertain the idea of joining. In hindsight, and if I were to recommend this route to anyone else, I would say go at least 3 weeks earlier.
Now that we had dates I actually started looking at the route. This route can be done as a loop, or with a relatively short car shuttle to the Stikine River bridge on the Cassiar Highway. From the washout on the Klappan Rail Grade we would walk to the McEwan Creek Trail to start the trip. On the back end we could deflate our packrafts at the confluence of the Stikine and the Klappan Rivers and walk 20 km up the rail grade, or ask a friend in Iskut to shuttle the truck to the Stikine bridge. If the weather turned bad, we could eliminate the second half of our route by continuing down the Spatsizi River past Hyland Post to the confluence with the Stikine, instead of hiking up the Ross River and over the plateau. This optional shortened version would knock off five days from the plan. Lastly, if the outfitter agreed to fly in our resupply, we could start the trip with a reasonable 10 days of food in our packs rather than 15. Given our dates for starting the trip, a backup plan or two seemed appropriate.
https://bcparks.ca/spatsizi-plateau-wilderness-park/#maps-and-location
Four people sounded ideal for a route like this in grizzly country with challenging hiking and potentially unrun packrafting on Mink Creek. Four people is manageable, and can be split up into two groups so nobody has to be alone. It also means you can bring two tents and two stoves, and split the gear up to reduce pack weights. A backup plan is always a good idea, but in Northern BC in October, having a second shelter and a backup stove is a legitimate safety concern. With less than three days until we were leaving, our group shrunk down to three. This didn’t give us enough time to find a replacement, nor did it give us quite the time to change group gear strategy, so we rolled with it.
Once we were packed, Jo and I drove to Terrace, BC to meet up with Daphnee Tuzlak. Having grown up in the Yukon Territory you can trust that Daphnee can handle adventure in the north. It is part of who she is. In the car ride to Iskut, where we would roll the dice on securing a resupply with the hunting outfitter, Daphnee talked with confidence about the area, the weather, and her preparation. She brings an amazing blend of knowledge about the area, rivers, geology, human history, and politics of the Sacred Headwaters region. In addition to being a wealth of knowledge about the continued environmental threats in the region, Daphnee prepared by cold plunging daily leading up to our adventure.
I imagine it isn’t every day that the Spatsizi River Outfitters receive calls from random people in the Lower 48 about hiking and packrafting in their area. I tried my best to assure them that we had experience with these sorts of trips, but I was unsuccessful on my first phone conversation, and not much changed during the second. When we stubbornly showed up in person, they maybe took us a little more seriously. Or maybe it just confirmed what they thought- that we were idiots. It definitely didn’t help when they asked if we were bringing guns, and Jo struck a body builder pose, all 135 lbs of her under a comically oversized rain jacket, and said, “Just these two guns.” Regardless of their appreciation of our humor, they were helpful and pointed out where the trails are. Mainly, they talked about swamps and how the trail was a horse trail, unsuitable for hiking.
We began hiking on September 23. The trail had been cleared somewhat recently by horse packers with saws. The forest was nice, but the mountain views were mainly obscured. Mostly, our feet were wet from the amount of boggy swamp walking on the easy-to-follow horse trail. The views improved as we got near the top of the McEwan Creek watershed, and continued to open up all the way past Bug Lake to Cold Fish Lake on September 25.
Walking through one of many swampy sessions of the McEwan Creek Trail. Photo Daphnee Tuzlak
We had all opted for doing the trip with trail running shoes as our do-everything footwear. Jo and Daphnee both chose hightop Gore-Tex shoes, while I went with my standard low top trail runners. This seemed to make a difference on the coldest days, where the hightop/Gore-Tex combo seems to be a bit better for warmth. My feet were cold, their feet were slightly less cold. Hard to say for sure, especially when the baseline is walking through ankle deep water in near freezing temps for 6-8 hours at a time.
At Cold Fish Lake, BC Parks maintains some first-come, first-serve cabins and we utilized this opportunity to dry out our gear and warm up. Knowing that afternoon winds were likely, we launched our packrafts on the 10 km long lake at first light, budgeting about three hours for the flatwater.
Jo paddling into sunrise on Cold Fish Lake. Photo Frank Preston
Cold Fish Lake drains into Mink Creek, which has gradient and on satellite imagery looks to have plenty of whitewater. The horse trail stays far to the north of the creek so we had no idea of how much, if any of the creek would be boatable. We paddled down the lake and into Mink Creek, peeking around corners and probing our way down perfect low volume class III pinball creeking! We expected at any moment a class V drop or unrunnable canyon, but we were pleasantly surprised by bend after bend of fun boulder gardens. We portaged one river-wide log, and made it down into the sunshine where the gradient eased off. Within 1 km of the Spatsizi River, we encountered a river wide log jam only to see another shortly behind it, and another one behind it with no end in sight. Rather than portage and paddle through this maze, we walked an abandoned channel to the Spatsizi and put back in for the 35 km to Hyland Post.
Mink Creek in Autumn. Photo Daphnee Tuzlak
Successfully paddling Mink Creek and a couple hours of flatwater on the Spatsizi had us excited about our progress. On September 26, we paddled about 55 km, equal to the first three hiking days combined. Waking up to an incoming snowstorm didn’t deter us from packing our packs and heading up the Ross River horse trail. The inReach forecast showed one day of heavy precip, when we could stay in the Ross River valley, followed by 2 days of decent weather that we would need to ascend the Spatsizi Plateau and into the headwaters of the Stikine. Heading up the Ross River drainage was not a decision we took lightly. It was the point at which we chose the longer route option, adding 50 km of hiking, 100 km of paddling, and our highest elevations at over 2000 meters on the Spatsizi Plateau. With the forecast looking favorable, we packed our packs and turned towards the Sacred Headwaters.
The Ross River Trail is more swamp than trail, and as the precip intensified we became more and more drenched. We limited breaks to 5 minutes or less, usually huddled underneath a spruce tree- just enough time to shove some calories in our mouths and drink water, but not quite long enough to get cold. Pushing into this weather was only justifiable by the favorable forecast for the next move, as we would need good visibility to cross the plateau. On September 28, we woke up to a cold clear morning and schwacked up an unnamed creek that comes into Ross River from the southeast. Crossing the plateau felt like a ski traverse due to the views and amount of snow and we hurried down into the Worry Creek drainage. The small herd of caribou we saw on the plateau was some of the first wildlife we had seen despite the countless number of moose, bear and wolf tracks we had followed on all sections of the trail.
With no trails, you find a route up an unnamed drainage. Photo Jo Kemper
The Worry Cabin sits in a knee deep muddy swamp, but we needed to find it to pick up the trail to Laslui Lake. We found the cabin with the help of downloaded satellite imagery, and crossed our fingers that we could follow a trail all the way to Laslui Lake. We endured our coldest night at 1500 m elevation (~4900 ft), with temps dropping well below freezing. On September 29 our shoes, water bottles, and basically everything else was frozen solid. This made for a slow morning, but once on the move we were treated to the best section of trail we had seen so far. Travel was fast enough that we were able to descend to the lake, set up, drink a hot drink and hike and paddle to the far side of the lake to grab our resupply bag.
With six days of food at our camp near the outlet of Laslui Lake, we had 250 km to reach the takeout. Paddling 50 km per day would put us there with a reasonable buffer, but seemed a little daunting in packrafts with ever shortening fall days. We knew of a possible portage at the Fountain Rapids, and had heard of a log jam at the Chuckachida confluence. We launched early and paddled the remaining flat miles to where the Stikine begins flowing in earnest from Laslui Lake. Fountain Rapids is impressive and runnable, but after a scout we decided that this late in the season there was no good reason to push our luck. The risk of damaging a packraft or swimming in below freezing temps outweighed the rewards. After the portage we did a quick packraft Gorilla Tape patch and carried on, closing out September by paddling 50 km, in addition to seeing a grizzly bear, a moose, and a wolverine.
We woke up on October 1 to three inches of snow covering our boats and tents. As beautiful as this was, it slowed our progress getting off the beach, and we had miles to make. As with most of the trip, we kept our tempo high, limiting breaks to only when someone had to pee, and even then we would hurry back into the relative warmth of the packraft. This is where a skirt really comes in handy vs a self bailing packraft. As soon as we got out of the boats, we would force some calories in, and get back on the water.
Packing up on the Stikine, October 1, 2024. Photo Jo Kemper
The first week of the trip wasn’t exactly filled with conversation on the trail, but this portion of the trip was an introvert’s dream. We had a routine. Wake up, caffeinate and eat, pack, and make moves. Paddle until someone had to pee- bad. Pull over on a beach but hurry back to the boats. Arrive at camp by 4:00 pm, change into dry clothes, set up tents, drink hot drinks, make dinner, warm up enough to begin hibernating in sleeping bags by 7:00 pm. Prior to sleeping, organize gear in a manner that your drysuit and shoes wouldn’t be frozen solid when we repeat the process.
After two days on the Stikine, during an evening planning session, we all had the same question- “Why are we taking out on Saturday if we can push longer days and take out Friday?” Consensus was that we were completing a route, not adhering to an arbitrary schedule. In August, with longer days and more food, most groups canoe this stretch in weeks rather than days. But we all do expeditions for our own reasons, and given how ambitious the plan was, we were happy to be where we were. The goal was never to have relaxing days, but rather to find an adventurous approach route to a classic section of river.
One additional night of freezing temps and meager calories could be eliminated, so on October 2 we got on the water an hour earlier than we had the day prior and covered 70 km in 8 hours of near constant paddling. We camped below the Kehlechoa River, impressed by the amount of current and our efficiency to cover the kilometers that we had. This set us up to camp at the mouth of the Klappan on October 3, and take out before noon on the 4th. A friend had shuttled our truck, so we could paddle to the takeout bridge and not pack up and hike the rail grade.
Daphnee packing on a frosty morning. Photo Jo Kemper
I would say that arriving at the takeout was uneventful, but that would discredit how cold and challenging our derigging process was. Maybe unceremonious is a better word to describe the scene as we all found sand-less spots among the dozens of hunting trucks and jet boat trailers, and did our best to unpack and change into dry takeout clothes. It is still unclear to me how it could be above freezing yet this cold as we faffed with drysuit zippers, wet gear, and drybags, trying to get packed and into the truck in order to turn on the heater.
I am excited to have completed this route in the style we did. We covered 450 km in 12 days, with 130 km hiking and 320 km of paddling, on a route that initially inspired Jo. There are shorter variations and much harder options, with unrun creeks and rivers in the area. Couple this with routes that the Tahltan people have used for millennia, and there are amazing possibilities for expeditions. This part of the world still allows for true adventure, with unknowns and challenges in a large swath of threatened but intact ecosystem.
Enjoy some additional trip shots below from Jo and Frank.
IR is a proud sponsor of the APA, American Packrafting Association.
The American Packrafting Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting community among packrafters, packrafter safety and education, and opportunities to packraft responsibly on public lands.
APA provides education and organizes events to promote safety and build skills to recreate more confidently on land and water.
Learn More About The APA And Membership Opportunities.
This region does face threats and impacts from mining activity. Daphnee is a contributing writer for awareness and impact the region is facing from Red Chris Mine and the Skeenawild Conservation Trust.