After 6 months confined to the edit bay, our LITTLE NORTH film series is now completed and ready for your viewing pleasure!

LITTLE NORTH chronicles a 450km canoe journey across Canada's Little North, a vast wilderness sprawling for over a million square kilometers in the northern reaches of Ontario and Manitoba. The adventure is centered on the Cat and Throat River watersheds of Northwestern Ontario. In an attempt to retrace portions of a long forgotten fur trade route, we paddle upstream on the Cat, cross the seldom travelled height of land and then descend the Throat from its headwaters to confluence.

The area is steeped in first nation use and some sections are still traveled to access hunting and fishing grounds. Other sections have been lost to the ravages of time, and retracing these historic routes is no easy task. Few travel the remote waterways that crisscross this expansive wilderness, but those who do, are rewarded with unparalleled solitude and seclusion.

The entire film series clocks in at 2:24hr
EP I - The Lakes: https://youtu.be/zD5jMJT7XUw
EP II - The Headwaters: https://youtu.be/0nXCwj_P1Ho
EP III - The River: https://youtu.be/ERMJruq1nrM
Full Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGpPQg36xOWDBmY9A-I_VBUv6qLISv8wv

There's a near endless possibility of trips in the Little North. I highly recommend anyone looking to paddle this region pick up a copy of the Canoe Atlas of the Little North. It's an invaluable resource in plotting a trip through the area.

We used Goldseekers Canoe Outfitting (https://www.goldseekers.net/) to shuttle us to the start of the Shabumeni River. From there, we paddled NE across Birch Lake and down through Springpole to reach the Cat River system. We then paddled north on the Cat River and upstream on the Kamungish river and Quintosh creek to reach the height of land at Sleep Lake. After crossing the height of land, we descended the Throat river to its confluence with the Berens river. Goldseekers picked us up, 16 days later on Berens Lake.

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My Backcountry Website: www.explorethebackcountry.com

I recently watched ep. 1 & 2. Looking forward to ep. 3! I have The Canoe Atlas Of The Little North here in the library, and have spent lots of time gazing at the Cat / Throat River system. Awesome to see you guys paddling this route. Inspirational for sure. Cheers.

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www.mikemonaghan.ca

Thanks for sharing your experience canoeing the Cat, Throat and Berens rivers.

It’s grand to see canoe trippers paddling in the Little North.

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Brian
http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 

Thanks, I enjoyed re-visiting this area through your quality video.

I remember from earlier posts on here about the Throat that I couldn't remember exactly how we accessed the headwaters. The video made me pull out my old 1989 route log. Turns out I was mis-remembering the hardest parts of that trip... on an unrelated section of that trip we had several days of brutal bushcrashing, and I was thinking that that was getting into Tinker, but it was not.

After heading west from the Cat at Pesew Lake (up the Kamungish River), the route in the video heads down to Quintosh Creek and Sleep Lake, portaging into the lakes/creek east of Tinker. The route we took didn't go down that way, but continued straight west to Long Lake, and from there hopped another lake into Wigwasikak above Tinker. That first section of the Throat was twisty & beaver dams, but we got our boats down all but the last 400 m, where we were stopped by deadfall and crashed a portage for the final stretch to Tinker. There was also an established trail to Wigwasikak and a trapper cabin, not brutal bushcrashing. But the challenges with dragging over small creeks on both sides of the headwaters are of course the same.

Great area, thanks again for making the video. Glad to have this memory glitch sorted out!

Pat.

p.s. Apologies if my previous comments about the bushwhacking into the Throat threw anyone off, I meant to look up the details then, but never did. That said, it's still hard, slow work hauling your loaded canoes over rocks & trees up & down the headwater creeks!

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Learning to paddle is like learning a language:
It's easy to learn the basics, but will you be understood in a strong wind?