Deh Cho Solo: My Journey Down the Mighty Mackenzie River
Summers are sacred to me, a time to journey under my own power through a wild landscape that’s new to me. Usually, I do it with a partner or two—sharing a seminal, unique experience with friends that will bond us for life, even if we never see each other again.
Suitable partners are hard to come by sometimes, so a couple of years ago, I tried a solo journey by completing a 400-kilometre, 14-day line by kayak on the North Coast of BC. The experience was better than I’d thought and put me in a different, freer headspace than the one I’d have if I had gone with a partner. So, when I couldn’t find a partner for a remote canoe trip through the Mackenzie Mountains, I decided to switch gears and instead plan to go on a solo trip for 1,650 kilometres down the Mackenzie River—the longest river in Canada. My route will take me from the town of Hay River on Great Slave Lake to the town of Inuvik in the Mackenzie delta.
Known as ‘Deh Cho’, which means ‘Big River’ in the language of the local Dene people, the river is rich with history, culture and wildlife. As far as my own experience on it, I’ve only paddled an 80-kilometre section during a trip in 2022, when I entered it from the mouth off the Keele River and exited it by going up another of its tributaries—the Great Bear River. It will be fabulously new to me this time.
Having just come back from working abroad, I had to organize a trip that was logistically simple, that could be pulled together with minimal planning. I always strive for any journey to be as simple as a weekend getaway. The gear is all the same—you just stay out there longer. To that end, I’ll be doing the journey by kayak in a folding skin-on-frame Trak kayak. Having already used the same kayak on the aforementioned trip on the BC Coast, as well as a 500 kilometre trip around the Darien Gap last spring, I knew the Trak would be the perfect craft for the mission.
I’ll start by flying into Hay River, where the headwater of the Mackenzie lies a little ways to the west. I’ll do a bit of food shopping there, grab fuel and bear spray, assemble the kayak, pack and go. I’ll be camping along the way in the robust but light MRS Access™ 2 Two-Person, Four-Season Ski Touring Tent, and I’ll be lulled to sleep by a symphony of mosquitoes outside as I slumber on my Thermarest NeoAir XTherm sleeping pad inside my Thermarest Questar -6 C sleeping bag.
For sustenance, I’ll be boiling up water for my oats and coffee in the morning with my trusty MSR WhisperLite International Stove, and for my dinners, I’ll be chowing down on scrumptious meals by Happy Yak in the evening (with lots of added cayenne pepper). My favourites are the pad thai and shrimp curry—both delicious meals that give me ample calorie hits after a long day on the water.
On the water, I’ll be propelling my Trak kayak with a Werner Paddles Ikelos bent shaft paddle and be warm and comfortable wearing my Kokatat Tempest dry top combined with the Neptune Life Vest.
Wildlife will abound as wolves, grizzly, musk ox and black bear roam the shores of Deh Cho, and the culture will be equally rich as I’ll be passing through several Indigenous communities along the way. Dene, Gwich’in and Inuvialuit Peoples populate these towns and have millennia of history in this region, deeply tied to the ancient lands and waters I’ll be travelling through.
If you’d like to follow along, I’ll be sharing my journey via and Inreach Map Tracker and composing a daily Haiku that captures a moment of the day or the essence of the day from my campsite. You can check in daily beginning July 8 here.
Happy summer adventures—wherever they may take you!
