Thelon is epic adventure Isolation a lure for Mainers

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Every once in a while you hear about an adventure and say, “I want to go there.” This past July, Alan Groh of Ellsworth went on such an adventure.

Alan, his brother Nelson, Alan’s son Brandon, and their friend Jim Appleton canoed the Thelon River for 12 days and 11 nights. The Thelon is located only 250 miles south of the Arctic Circle. It starts in the Northwest Territories of Canada and ends in Nunavut Territories. It’s an epic adventure in remote wilderness.

I had a chance to talk to Alan and Nelson last week about their trip, and Nelson said it was the remoteness that drew the canoeists to the river.

“We all had canoed the Allagash a couple of years ago and are experienced paddlers,” Nelson said. “The reason we chose this trip was for the chance to see the wildlife and its remoteness. They estimate that under a hundred people paddle it a year.”

It took two years to plan the trip, Alan added. They used an outfitter to arrange a charter flight from Yellowknife, on the shore of Great Slave Lake, to their put-in on the river. It took five days for Alan, Nelson and Jim to drive Alan’s truck loaded with two canoes and supplies from Ellsworth 3,600 miles to Yellowknife, while Brandon flew in, due to job requirements, to meet them.

Once there, the charter plane, a turbo-prop six-seat floatplane, carried them and their 525 pounds of equipment, canoes and food for two weeks to the put-in on the river 320 air miles northeast of Yellowknife. From there they could begin their float down the river.

They were introduced to the river with rain on the first day. They paddled only a few miles. It caused Nelson to quip, “Thelon River 1, Us 0.”

The next day high winds and rain forced them to shore due to very rough water and rough paddling. After that rocky start the weather cooperated, sort of.

“The day would usually start off calm,” said Alan, “then by 9:30 the wind would pick up and the water would become rough, meaning hard paddling. But we were only forced off by weather a couple of times.”

Nelson added, “But more by wind than by rain.”

I asked about the wildlife they saw in the subarctic watershed. The Thelon Wildlife Sanctuary is the largest game sanctuary in North America at approximately 26,000 square miles. The forest is subarctic, made up of thick stands of thin white spruce, alders and willows, where there are trees, but mostly it’s treeless plain.

“We saw wolverine, several fox, caribou, snow geese, bald eagles, golden eagles, Canada geese, ptarmigan, arctic hare, and on the last day, a white tundra wolf,” Alan said.

There are musk ox in the sanctuary, as well as grizzly bears, but they didn’t see any of those, Nelson said.

I wondered about the river itself. Nelson said the flow was moving water with occasional Class 1 and 2 rapids.

“The river is broad. In some places it’s a half mile wide. But we weren’t after white water. We wanted to paddle a wilderness river,” he said.

I also asked about a typical day’s routine.

“We were usually on the river by 7 in the morning and off again by 4 in the afternoon,” Alan said.

They fished, but only kept a couple of lake trout and arctic grayling. They had those for breakfast one day.

For water treatment they used two Steri-Pen brand water purifiers, provided by the maker, Hydro Photon, located in Blue Hill. The purifiers use ultraviolet light powered by AA batteries. The hand-held device treated a gallon of water in six minutes, Alan estimated.

Because of Thelon’s proximity to the Arctic Circle, I asked about the length of day.

“It never really got dark at night,” Alan said. “The sun only dropped below the horizon and it was light enough to see without a light throughout the night,” he said.

They were totally self-guided, using Canadian government topographic maps and pulled in to camp wherever they could find an adequate site on a gravel or sand beach. They kept a clean camp and cooked away from the site in order to discourage animals.

The bugs were bad, they both agreed.

“I never seen mosquitoes that big,” Nelson said. “We paddled in head nets unless the wind was blowing hard.”

“They were ferocious, with clouds of black flies,” Alan added.

The temperatures were in the 60s most days and dropped to the 40s at night, he said.

But all great trips must come to an end and this one ended near the west end of Beverly Lake in Nunavut Territories. Alan made a comment in his journal that summed up the trip: “We shot the heavy water at Thelon Bluffs. Bailed boats following the run. We pushed on to find a decent campsite. Sad to be at the end. This may be the last day of paddling if the location suits the pilot. Prettiest topography so far. Canyons, high cliffs and river twists.”

Once at the location for them to call for the plane, they used the satellite phone that the charter service provided and by late afternoon the plane arrived to bring them home to Yellowknife. They had paddled 180 miles of river from their put-in.

I jokingly asked them if they were still brothers after this trip.

“Oh yeah, we’re still brothers and still friends,” Alan said.

When I asked if he would take that trip again, Alan responded, “I’d do it again in a heartbeat. The isolation was awesome.”

If there is a next time, I wonder if there’s room for one more.

sourball@gwi.net