The original plan was to go from Wollaston Lake to Nueltin Lake and back but that didn't happen so I had to settle for the Nunavut border on the Putahow River. I've started posting the trip report in sections over at canoetripping.net. My apologies for linking to another forum but I know it will be of interest to some members and I don't have the ambition to post the whole thing here as well.

Link to trip report: http://www.canoetripping.net/forums/for ... r-and-back

Thanks for reading. Happy to answer any questions posted on either forum.

Alan

Too bad for MYCCR that this is not recorded here. Wow this is awesome! The trip, your story telling, the pics are all fantastic! I'm really looking forward to seeing how this turns out!

Just working my way through your report. I think those berries you liked are Saskatoons.

I assume you mean these:
20160804_039 by Alan, on Flickr

Saskatoon Berries appear to grow in clumps. These were single. The leaves don't seem to match up either and from the pictures I find online Saskatoon Berries appear to grow ass up, like Blueberries. The berries I came across hung down on individual stems. I don't believe any of the shrubs got to 3' tall. Most were probably 2'.

I feel like I must be overlooking something obvious. These things were all over the place for the entire trip but when I look online I find lists of berries, both edible and non-edible, and from what I can see these don't match any of them.

Alan

Great trip, great photos, great write-up. Thanks!

Is your berry a bog huckleberry (Vaccinium uliginosum)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaccinium_uliginosum

You're right. I'm not good with plants and identify Saskatoons by the four little burrs off the berry. I thought I saw them on the closest one in your picture. Looking back there is something there but only one.

I believe that's it. Thanks! Another common name for it is Bog Blueberry, which they certainly did resemble. One source I found said they can cause headaches if eaten in large quanitites, most likely due to a fungus infection on the plant.

Alan

Dan Wong posted pictures a couple of days ago of what looks very similar from his canoe trip down the Coppermine last week. He identified it as Vaccinium uliginosum (bog bilberry, bog blueberry, northern bilberry or western blueberry).

Here's just one of the amazing fall colour pictures from Dan's facebook album of his trip down the Coppermine.


See another picture from his trip album here, it really is worth the look, so beautiful in the fall colours of the arctic. https://scontent.fyqr1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/ ... 9414_o.jpg

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ColdspringPaddling.com

Oh, and saskatoon berries are related to roses and apples so like those fruits have the remains of the flower on the distal end (the "ass" end, if you prefer). They are quite different from any of the blueberries. The genus Vaccinium is a large and diverse group including the more familiar types of blueberries, but there's more species of those than you might realize.


...and great trip report so far, I just started reading it.

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ColdspringPaddling.com

Great report Alan.

I think you should be able to submit the entire report to the myccr database with one click rather than post it as a thread.

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Brian
http://www.JohnstonPursuits.ca

 

The trouble that some of us run into when submitting reports to a couple of forums is the size restrictions for photo's on myccr. After the report is done, it can be somewhat time consuming to resize the photo's on whatever photo host one has utilized.

Posting photos in the forum on CCR means a size restriction of 800 pixels wide.

However, if one posts images in a trip report in the Routes database, that restriction doesn't apply. It looks like the software for the database will resize the images.

Check out the photos in this trip report:

http://www.myccr.com/canoeroutes/besnar ... otter-lake

Click on each one for a larger view.

In this trip report, click on the jpg of the map at the very end:

http://www.myccr.com/canoeroutes/quirke ... pent-river

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I'm out of bed and I made it to the keyboard....what more do you want?

That was just about the best trip report I've read. I'm in awe! Thank you Alan.

Thanks, Martin. Glad you enjoyed it. It was fun to write too. Something I always mean to do but never take the time for.

Alan