WWW ALDHAWest

Trails

Hiking

Join ALDHA-West!

Mail Bag

The Canol Trail – A Very Different Hike

By Dave and Roberta Cobb

If you need a change of pace from yet another hike through beautiful scenery, try the Canol Heritage Trail. We walked the Canol Heritage Trail with Steve Queen in August of 1998. The trail has history, wildness, challenges, multiple changes of scenery, and many surprises. The Canol is a former oil pipeline and road built hastily during World War II to secure an inland oil route to Alaska. The U.S. Government abandoned the pipeline soon after completion, and the path recently became a Canadian National Heritage Trail.

The Canol pipeline was built between Norman Wells, Northwest Territories (a major oil refinery), to Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. Every pipeline has its attendant road, which is now the trail. There’s a museum in Norman Wells dedicated to the Canol, and the trail itself serves as a museum, albeit without the usual signage.

There’s only one way to get to Norman Wells, and that’s by plane. You can then walk the town in less than an hour, and supplies are limited there. Steve arranged to rent a bear spray canister, and since there was not one available and no way to get one to Norman Wells, the hotel owner lent Steve her own. Thankfully we did not need to use it. We were also lucky enough that an earlier hunter had left a gallon of white gas, and we filled up our small fuel bottles. You can’t carry these items on commercial airlines.

An odd feature about this hike is that you must fly to one end and boat across the Mackenzie River at the other. We chose to fly first, and Dave arranged to be picked up by boat at the trail’s end, so we started knowing we had a firm deadline. We flew to start of the trail in a 4-seater Cessna. Our wonderful pilot intimately knew the territory and pointed out features of the trail. We relished the scouting opportunity. We had to endure the bouncing plane, and it felt odd when the pilot looked back and chatted with us, pointing out landmarks and the Canol below while the plane continued towards a mountaintop. The aerial views of Echo Canyon, the Twitya River crossing, forest fire hazards, and bare jagged mountain passes were worth the price.

A bit of confusion started our hike. Had we landed at Mac Pass at milepost 222 we would have saved a sixteen-mile true roadwalk. Instead, we landed at Mac Pass airstrip in the Yukon Territory, walked the driveable road over Mac Pass into the Northwest Territories, then stayed overnight at the Mac Pass airstrip which serves as the official terminus of the Canol Heritage Trail. The problem was mitigated because we found great company in the game warden and his father-in-law, and a fun-house of a shelter for the first night’s sleep.

We knew we were going to walk a "road," but this is no roadwalk. The Canol starts as a poor jeep road and quickly deteriorates into a track, sometimes a footpath, jungle-like thicket, animal trail, or a mass of strewn boulders down a riverbed. We were amazed that mountain bikes tried to follow this road. A couple of bikers were ahead of us. We heard that they pushed their bikes more than peddled them. They were forced back at the Twitya River, and we never met them.

Like other roads, there’s debris. Most of this junk was abandoned in the 1940s, thereby elevating it to interesting antiques. Trucks, oil barrels, tire chains, pipeline, phone lines and insulators were commonplace. A toboggan along the way made for a comedic snapshot. WWII-era trucks with their bug-eyed headlights and big happy grills poking out of the willows brought a smile. Often this wreckage helped point the way along the trail, but it sometimes detracted from the wildness.

There were many Quonset huts, pump houses, and cabooses remaining from the road construction. A handful were maintained just enough to keep the weather out. A large Quonset hut at milepost 104 was better kept and served as a resupply station. We had packed our food in two 5-gallon plastic buckets to keep the rodents out. Our pilot dropped them off to our first resupply and another pilot in yet a smaller plane flew them to milepost 104.

There are all these signs of human activity, yet this is remote land. There’s one outfitter along the way, and this is the only emergency exit. They have an expensive radiophone and good cowboy coffee. Other than that, you’re on your own. It’s amazing though that word does spread, and the few people we met knew of us and our progress. They would also pass word back that we had reached our resupply and were OK. It was reassuring to know that we were being watched, even as it felt we were incommunicado.

This trail is rough. Our boots and our feet were wet most of the time, and when we were not walking in water, we were balancing on rocks – boulders to gravel. We also hiked on tussocks, which were like semi-inflated basketballs of sod that you slipped off of and into surrounding muck. We knew our boots would take a beating. Dave decided to wear worn-out boots. His sole separated from the upper and he was constantly digging out pebbles. Steve bought brand new boots and performed major surgery on them. Roberta wore her best boots and although she probably ruined them she didn’t have feet problems. The best thing about boot problems is that you must sit. It’s wickedly better when your hiking partners have the problems, because you still must sit. While you rest, you gaze around at the fantastic scenery. It’s so gorgeous it seems unreal.

The Canol is a truly spectacular hike. The scenery changes dramatically from limestone spires, snow covered peaks, forested taiga, tundra, to deep narrow canyons similar to those of Utah’s canyon country. There wasn’t the typical flora and fauna either. We saw our first wolverine; there were also Dall sheep, caribou, grizzly, Dolly Varden (fish), and tundra flowers we haven’t a clue about. Campsites were a bear to find some days; we didn’t camp next to the trail because of the bears. We also needed to camp on dry land and between streams. We sometimes hiked further than planned in our cross-country search of that perfect campsite wedged between the tussocks.

River crossings, river crossings, river crossings. Steve and Dave hiked the CDT where fording was commonplace, but on this trail the fords seemed endless. Sometimes they were, like in Dodo Canyon, that day we crossed creeks and rivers over 75 times. Bridges no longer remain on the Canol. There were hundreds of fords on this trail, but three major ones we worried about: The Carcajou, Little Keele, and Twitya. You must swim the Twitya. Wade a couple of braids of the river, then wrap the gear in a plastic bag and strap it to a $5.00 child’s inflatable float ring. Take a deep breath, plunge into the icy river, and kick like hell. It’s 50 yards as the crow flies, but 300 as the current flows. After heavy rains and snow we crossed the other two major rivers with arms linked; they were tough but manageable.

The last twenty miles of hiking was tedious through a tunnel of willows and swarms of mosquitoes. We were overjoyed to find a well kept first aid station/shelter open for our midnight camp.

Which brings us to the end of the trail. Did you know the last five miles are a water crossing? The path ends at the Mackenzie River, milepost 5. At how many trailheads do you get ferried by the mayor? Dave didn’t know it at the time, but it was the mayor of Norman Wells and his son who picked us up, ferried us across in his motorboat, and jovially deposited us at our hotel for a much needed shower. What an end to a fantastic, challenging, and memorable backpack trip.

Other Readings:

Canol Trail by Steve Queen -- Read as these hikers brave swollen rivers, summer snows, eroded trails and bushwhacking to explore the wanders of the Canol Trail. Located deep in the Northwest Territory in the wilds of Canada, the Canol Trail follows an old abandoned road built to service an oil pipe line in World War II.