Heart of the YUKON - 14 Days Solo Camping in the Yukon Wilderness - E.1 - Left Alone in the North

thank you that is an interesting feeling my float plane took off I'm literally all alone in the remote Northern Yukon [Music] thank you [Music] I'm going to be on the river for about 14 days and looking really forward to another awesome adventure kicking off [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] well here we are in beautiful White Horse Yukon and I am at up north adventures and this is the place that I get everything ready before I head out on my trip tomorrow I'm leaving first thing in the morning to drive to Mayo and then jumping on a float plane which is going to drop me off on a remote Lake in the mountains called Elliott Lake I'm going to follow Elliott Lake all the way to the heart River and I'm going to continue down the heart to the peel and finish my trip 300 kilometers later wearing a rendezvous with a float plane to take me back out of the Wilderness so I'm super excited I have a few kind of pre-trip Jitters going on here up north Adventures is the place in the Yukon that can give you vehicle shuttles they can rent you boats they have a full outfitting store with all the things you need to get your trip off the ground here if you're interested in doing an adventure in the Yukon give up north Adventures a show this one we got Mark here he uh owns up north adventures and he's being kind enough to take a minute this busy season here to help me outfit this canoe they already got it set up with a spray deck tie down anchor points here that webbing along the side and now we're going to put in some balanced during airbags because uh River and paddling does have some white water so I'm gonna head out there with the best hand I can just trying to learn how to read a tape measure here and figure out how far back we want to set your inflation bags so we can just go 30 from from the end plate is that what you usually do I was going 30 from inside but yeah because you have tanks already these uh Nova craft Prospectors and tough stuff Expedition have air tanks built in so they float pretty well but we want to add a little more flotation the heart river is challenging I was just talking some guides it's not as challenging as the Bonnet plume than what I did last year however there are some pretty tough spots on it it's it's they basically told me that it's too challenging to run guided trips on there's a lot of sweepers there's a lot of tight bends there's some intense you know class three Rapids out there but there's going to be long stretches of Jess beautiful scenery with Swift Current where I can just sit back and watch the mountains go by all around me so I'm very very excited about this one and uh yeah I'm gonna get out there and have a great trip hopefully but there's a little bit of work to be done first foreign [Music] this is Nikki she works with up north Adventures she's kind of a big deal and uh it's the gears of the operation around here some people might recognize the name my great great grandfather's name is Jim and he has something to do with the gold rush back in the day you could Google them wasn't he the guy who basically discovered who started the entire Gold Rush yeah that's the guy that's wild and so he's your great great grandfather yes wow that was super cool [Music] foreign all right so here we are we are driving to Mayo Yukon from White Horse early departure and I jumped out on a shuttle with this group of people uh that are doing a trip with black feather and they're flying out around the same time as me to paddle Another River in the peel Watershed which is the snake so thankfully despite their their tight schedule they were able to include me on the shuttle so I have a little company going up this time [Music] [Music] we have no home foreign [Music] [Music] we just arrived at Alcan air and this is a float plane base near mayo and Mayo is known as the heart of the Yukon which is interesting because I'm paddling the heart River h-a-r-t in the heart of the Yukon so I feel like there's a dad joke in there yeah looks like we got some good weather coming at least for Mayo this is like a lot of gear doesn't it one dollar okay there you go do you accept tips yeah I was here last year too yeah you've done several you can't get enough yeah where are you from Ontario like around uh Perry sound okay hi Jim oh Adam how you doing what's going on my man good to see you yeah Rory are you doing all the work for me man this is my plane this is uh de Havilland Beaver famous bush plane those of you that aren't familiar the way that we transport a canoe by a float plane is we strap it to the struts which are these things right here so that's what we're about to do yeah bye black feather s graceful but I get the job done all right here we are on board the beaver in mayo with uh alken and uh yeah pulled my bear spray out put that in the float we got the canoes dropped on expertly and we are about to start taxing hot day today looking really forward to getting up in the air how long is the flight roughly it's about 45. I'm like the dark and the clouds on a rainy day and I know oh my God okay got it I got it let's unload this stuff into it all right so what are the water levels here look like to you and this like uh it's always tough to tell like this it's me they're high right now yeah okay well thank you yeah I will so a lot of forest fire smoke in there actually saw smoke from an active forest fire burning but fortunately nowhere near me that is an interesting feeling my float plane took off I'm literally all alone in the remote Northern Yukon and it is beautiful surrounded by giant mountains no place to Camp here I have a long shallow Creek to contend with before getting to the heart River proper you know I think I'm just gonna start paddling another awesome adventure kicking off foreign a lot of people don't travel with a firearm but we are in grizzly bear country here alone if you if you're blessed in predator and so um I'm a little safer with it this is my ditch kit or survival kit I keep basically all the things I need on me in case of emergency in case I should lose my canoe in a rapid so I'll have my basic survival gear and I keep this on me the other thing I keep on me is this inreach satellite texting device this is actually a Garmin 66i so it's a fully functioning handheld GPS and an inreach I can send messages via satellites it also has an SLS button on emergency Beacon and I keep that Tethered to my belt on me at all times it's waterproof another thing I keep on my belt two things actually I keep a multi-tool and a sheath knife that way it's always on me I don't have to stash it in my survival kit good sheath I can pull it out with one hand use it put it back and I like a sheath knife and something pretty big that in case it gets really wet in case I'm hypothermic that I can use it to split wet logs and get to that dry interior and then Whittle out Matchstick size pieces to get a fire going should I lose my ax and all that kind of stuff so this is a cold steel srk srk stands for survival rescue knife it's used by the SWAT team in certain areas and it's 3 pm 3v steel which is extremely good steel so it holds an edge really well so now I'm feeling like I'm not naked out here [Applause] [Music] [Music] big fan of these uh water pumps but I couldn't find my squeeze filter so I picked another one up I haven't used them for years but they do the job a couple more things to do but we're at the point where I set up my fishing rod you never know exactly what kind of fish be in a given River most of the time but there's typically always grayly in these Rivers so it might get into some bull trout I might get into some lake trout Whitefish we'll see what Grayling are just beautiful fish and they're delicious too gonna throw on a clamp swivel and a little spoon got a small little uh maps of spoons I also have a lot of map Spinners and small William spoons really have a ton of stuff I was gonna say they might all have been minnows [Music] try it out maybe when we get into some deeper water off a little more luck foreign feels good I'm glad I took a little bit extra time back there just to get everything dialed in I know where everything is everything's packed away properly I feel confident I feel good about getting out here and I am entering Elliott Creek looks shallow like I might have to start dragging immediately I tried fishing a bit but it's a very shallow lake so if there's any Deep Pockets maybe the fish are there but the strong wind just kept blowing me across the lake but maybe there'll be some Pockets here in Elliott Creek that I can try I'm stuck didn't make it too far so I just checked my map again and it's over 20 kilometers of this so who knows how long it'll take me or what the conditions will be like but at the time [Music] foreign [Music] the biggest Grayling I've ever seen right here wow just it came up and took us tried to get my lure but it didn't hit [Music] there we go yes oh lost it [Music] [Music] there we go that's the color they like is silver yeah oh right in the boat sweet oh it's a Whitey white fish baby maybe that's why the other one was so big it wasn't a grayling it was a white fish well I think that that one that I thought was really big that was a grayling was actually a white fish there we go that's uh mountain bike fish I believe it's called oh yeah there's one grayling [Applause] well took a while here but you know I'm chalking it up as a little r d figuring out what kind of fish are here what's biting exciting to catch a white fish and see what was probably one that was probably four pounds just a giant and uh yeah they seem to like this small mouth so number one or a zero MEPS silver is what they will what I was getting the action on a lot of follows on the bigger lures but no strikes [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] well I just put a long stretch of back to back to back shallow stretches of river behind me so I was jumping in jumping out jumping in jumping out and uh one of them was like pretty much a drag over rocks so yeah if there's any less water things would get pretty interesting but it should be okay as long as the water doesn't drop a whole time uh what's going on now though is that I'm pretty concerned because there's nowhere to Camp I'm up high and uh it's all kind of marshy uh surroundings and really lumpy ground no firewood except if you walk way back to the Alpine because uh I'm in the Valley bottom here and cold air sits in the valley so often uh trees don't grow um partially because the river floods in the spring but also because the ground is just Frozen so that's okay I don't need to have a fire but I need a spot that's flat to set up my tent etc etc and right now I haven't seen anything so it's already pushing seven if I can float when I get out of the boat take about a 30 foot float here and then back out of the boat one little pocket here is like the waist deep so backwards thank you looks like on the map it opens up a little bit on the next stretch hopefully looks like I might have to get out again right here though man this is going to take me a long time if it keeps up like this like I've probably done like 3K and I have 20. and out of the boat again I'm just sitting on the back here like this because it's easier to hop on and off because there's literally tools that are too deep to wait and a few feet later you're stuck again so hopefully it doesn't keep up for too much longer man oh oh man this is shallow looks like the water has gone down bummer super shallow it's not even waiting this is just dragging over rocks at this point I just ran up on some more rocks here for the shallow Swifts I'm gonna have to get out and drag and I stood up and it looks like there might be a place I can camp here it's not the best but I'm gonna get out and just check it out with the water level to come up much more you suppose I could pitch a tent on this really lumpy though but certainly better than uh the rest of the stuff around here which is like this well this is uh definitely not the best but I suppose was doable seven but maybe I'll maybe I'll push on for another hour I see some like a little Hill there which means there might be some drier land over that way a bit of a risk but I think either way I'm not gonna be camping in a Primo site tonight we'll see though you know most of the time as long as there's at least enough flat area for me to lie down you get out and you start hanging out and it starts to feel like home so but uh yeah this time I think I'm gonna have to drag over all this Wade through all this and then um get down there and hopefully that lump that kind of like big hill I see hopefully at the base of that there's something that's a solid ground so I'm gonna take the risk and move on a little bit [Applause] foreign Creek's starting to pick up gonna be some uh basically Linings not just waitings or dragons [Applause] well there is that Hill I was going for thinking maybe there'd be some High Ground around there and there's not there's something I could make work it's probably not as good as the last place I was at but uh I did you know make some distance um yeah this is getting pretty tricky I have kind of a pawn like section here coming up so maybe first thing tomorrow won't be such a Gong Show but I gotta just keep plugging away at it I'm probably not even 5K in and it's over 20k for sure it's right on a moose Trail too there's moose Prince wolf Prince here and stuff like that so as long as I can find something that's just big enough for me I think I'll be okay but uh yeah definitely not ideal [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] got my tent set up I pounded a whole bunch of candy and some beef jerky because I was kind of starved so I might not cook up my pasta dime I just have the fish not much food but I already kind of ruined my appetite and uh yeah I just saw the black flies as soon as the wind dies down the black flies are horrific here just throwing on a little bit of my musk all insect repellent this is a 25 DEET you know I typically don't really even [Applause] put a ton on my clothes necessarily but I use the 30 Deet so and this is a lotion too I really like this one mosquito just flew into my eye [Music] all right here we go Yukon white fish [Music] very mild very mild not as marked as a flavor as I'm grayling [Music] the only one

Channel: Jim Baird - Adventurer

Views: 157,822

Keywords: Nature Discovery, Backcountry Camping, Survival Skills, Jim Baird, Jim Baird Adventurer, Wilderness Travel, Yukon River Fishing, camping, hart of the yukon, left alone in the north, 14 days solo camping in the yukon wilderness, Expedition Vlog, Bushcraft Techniques, Remote Travel, Outdoor Storytelling, Expedition Preparation, off grid living, outfitting, up north adventures, float plane drop off, bushplane access, Exploring Uncharted Territory, Solo Expeditions, Wild Camping

Id: 2VU1OEf8qQ4

Length: 30min 32sec (1832 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 24 2023