In July of 2010,

Rob Kesselring will embark on an ambitious 910-mile arctic canoe trip. The trip will begin after a bush plane flight to Nonacho Lake in the Northwest Territories. Rob has a canoe stashed on this remote lake 160 miles from the nearest road. From there, things get really remote. Montana adventurer Pete Lenmark who paddled the Mara-Burnside river system in Nunavut with Rob in 2008 and the Snowdrift River in the Northwest Territories with him in 2007 will join him again on this expedition.

Their route will take them 290 miles upstream on the Taltson River and then up an unnamed river to the Arctic Divide. Here they will portage across the divide to the Hudson Bay drainage. This primordial portage is where Rob and his niece Karen were charged by a grizzly bear on a 1997 expedition. They will pick up the Elk River and follow the Elk to the Thelon River and then downstream the Thelon for hundreds of miles and through three giant lakes: Beverly, Aberdeen and Schultz before ending their journey at the small, Inuit settlement of Baker Lake.

The expedition will span the entire range of the Beverly Caribou Herd. This herd has suffered a massive population decline. When Rob taught in Fort Resolution the herd contained an estimated 450,000 animals, but recent surveys indicate a remarkable and tragic decline of over 90%. Cause of this decline remains a mystery and one of the objectives of this expedition is to study the range for clues and to look for remnant populations.

A second expedition objective is to increase global awareness of one of the last giant and truly pristine tracts of wilderness left in the world. They will travel across an area the size of Minnesota and the Dakotas combined that contains not a single permanent human resident. This transitional boreal forest tundra ecosystem is one of the least studied environments in the world. Beginning in 2011 the Deze Energy Corporation is planning to build a winter haul road and a powerline through a portion of this route. This development will open the area to widespread mineral extraction. Rob and Pete's expedition will document the way it was.

In upcoming Uncommon Seminars Rob will share what they discovered and communicate what he learned to community and business leaders and to school children.

As always, Rob leads arctic expeditions on a shoestring and makes as little impact on the Land as possible. Companies and individuals that have helped make this expedition possible are listed below. If you would like to join this effort and support this most uncommon expedition, please contact Rob.

Bending Branches Canoe Paddles
Cooke Custom Sewing
Henry Wang
SteriPEN
Capital Sports and Western Wear
Adventure Egg Anywhere Scrambles
Carter Air Service
Garmin International
Canoeing.com
Boundary Waters Journal
Dick Pula
Bob O'Hara
Karen Kelley
Peter Schlenzka

Track Rob current location via the SPOT Satellite GPS Messenger.
View Arctic Expedition 2010 in a larger map