Canol 2011

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sdo · #1 Post by **sdo** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 10:18 am

As some of you may know, there is a small group of trucks in the NWT doing the Canol road again this summer.

We have be in touch with them as of last night, Kris was able to get in touch with his brother over the HF radio.

All is well, there are currently (as of Aug. 21) 20 kms from the spot they got to 2 years ago (where they posted the sign and turned around) and progressing well. When they get to the sign they are going to push the “all OK” button on there Spot transmitter and keep moving. You can watch there progress here

http://share.findmespot.com/shared/face ... fTGUbP7KlZ

They left the lower mainland on Sunday Aug. 14th and got to Ross River on the 17th, they then spent a full day relaxing beside a lake and hit the trail on the 19th.

Weather has been poor, rain and cold most days. No major problems, just some minor ones. Pete;s winch is dead, mechanical failure on a long pull up a steep slope. Glen rolled backwards and crushed his exhaust and broke his tail lights, they have cut the exhaust off under the truck and it is all good. Kris dented he rear diff cover and had a power steering leak, but both are fixed now.

I have received this info second hand, some of it may be untrue.

We hope to hear from them again tonight or tomorrow and I will report any news.

DaveB · #2 Post by **DaveB** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 4:49 pm

Thanks for posting this! We've been curious about their progress.

And welcome to the forum.

Dave_F · #3 Post by **Dave_F** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 6:17 pm

OK...so I've been living vicariously through Pete, Kris and Glenn. My daughter is getting married on September 17th so the time was just too tight...let alone the funds necessary for the trip...alas... :(

As of 6:10pm today they have passed the point where the 2009 Canol Expedition turned back. Good on you boys!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

From what I understand the weather they are dealing with is a lot worse than 2 years ago, with a lot of rain. This will swell those rivers considerably. :shock: :shock:

Given they are down 2 trucks from the 2009 group and they have to split the raft and all the fuel necessary over just 3 trucks (no Sankey this time) they are doing fantastic.

I guess tomorrow will be a big day as they are only under 20K to the Twitya River, which is a BIG DEEP crossing...not factoring in the increased rainfall they are dealing with.

Good luck and Godspeed!

sdo · #4 Post by **sdo** » Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:06 am

Pete called me last night at 9 pm, they are camped 1.5-2 kms past the turn around point from last year. All is well.

He confirmed what Dave said about being 20 kms from the river, and back into the thick bush, they will be going a lot slower now.

sdo · #5 Post by **sdo** » Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:45 am

More info on the team, I just talked to Kris' brother, who talked to Kris on the HF last night.

The did a river crossing yesterday, had to drive around 100 M downstream, Kris did not figure they would be able to make it back up the same stream if they had to. Very fast flowing and deep.

Glen broke a rear axle so they will be fixing it this morning before they head out. He has spares with him.

Weather has been up and down, changes every few minutes.

sdo · #6 Post by **sdo** » Tue Aug 23, 2011 12:30 pm

Dave, Do you have a way point for the Twitya crossing? I am trying to figure out where it is and there route.

thanks

HeadDamage · #7 Post by **HeadDamage** » Tue Aug 23, 2011 7:11 pm

The river crossing is in this area:

64° 7'55.00"N
128°24'40.91"W

Dave_F · #8 Post by **Dave_F** » Tue Aug 23, 2011 8:49 pm

HeadDamage wrote:The river crossing is in this area:

64° 7'55.00"N
128°24'40.91"W

Yup...somewhere close to those coordinates...although I think they may need to do some exploring to find the best crossing.

If they need to use the raft...this will now be very, very challenging given that Pete now has no winch.

If they get past this then they will be on the North Side of the River. Immediately after they have a major road washout/slide to contend with around Trout Creek, then they need to stay left at the fork in the road just around Devils Pass...this will put them up on the Plains of Abraham which according to reports should be a good section of the road for a while.

Next stop would be Camp 80 (miles from N.Wells). Then they will be on the south side of the Little Keele River (Pump Station #3) and have another dangerous crossing of the Little Keele (3+ feet) just pass Canol Lake.

From there they will enter Dodo Creek with rocks the size of VW Bugs and lots of water crossings back and forth. They will pass Pump Station #2 before entering Dodo Canyon. Once through this they have one more nasty deep water crossing....the Carcajou River...then its a slog through the Muskeg to the Mackenzie River and a view of Norman Wells on the other side.

Then they get to turnaround and do it all over again in reverse.

sdo · #9 Post by **sdo** » Wed Aug 24, 2011 7:52 am

Here is todays report,

Yesterday they did 8 kms in 1.5 hours then spent the rest of the day digging out a slide. The road is along the edge of the river and the hill side above have washed out. They had to tie the trucks off to trees to keep them from falling down the side slope as they drove over the slide.

There are more large slides ahead and Kris estimates 3 days of digging to get past them.

There is talk of turning back as there is only 3 of them and its lots of digging.

Plan today is to scout the area for bypasses to the slides and come up with a plan (don't expect to see them move much today)

Oh and good note they fixed Pete's winch, something had come loose in side it, but it all seems good now.

They have been lucky and can get reliable use of the HF radio every night back to Mark in Langley, not bad for 1800 + kms.

Dave_F · #10 Post by **Dave_F** » Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:53 am

Been there...done that...I feel their pain.

The area where we turned around in '09 was almost completely overgrown, and even with 5 trucks and 7 guys it was incredibly difficult. I can only imagine doing this with 3 guys...they must be completely exhausted.

If they can make it around the bend north into the valley towards the Twitya River they "may" find some relief as the valley seems fairly broad and flat...although it could be again heavily overgrown.

Thanks for the updates via Mark...greatly appreciated.

Dave_F

HeadDamage · #11 Post by **HeadDamage** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 12:35 am

Looks like they have turned around. That is too bad, I suspected that it would be a problem when myself and Norm had to pull out :( Three guys is just not enough if there is pioneering work to be done on any large scale.

Perhaps this mounted in the back of a rover might be helpful?
http://www.shurlift.ca/components/com_v ... 318578.jpg
http://www.shurlift.ca/all-seasons/outd ... cial-order

sdo · #12 Post by **sdo** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 7:00 am

Here is the news from last night

The spent the day hiking ahead on the "trail", found away around the first slide, but it would require a days worth of rigging and winching. Then 1 hours hike farther along there is a much larger slide, its way to much manual labor to continue. 3 guys can't do it all.

Plan is to turn back today (aug 25) and head for Ross River.

They did not have rain yesterday and the rivers are running much less, so they have high hopes that they can make the 100M up stream that awaits them.

They should have 4-5 days back to Ross River, and 2 more to Quesnel, then they plan to turn west and do the Mackenzie trail and take the ferry over to the Island and head for home.

Well they tried, and they tried much harder than those of us who are watching them online. I commend them for there hard effort.

I will keep posting when I hear from Mark.

Dave_F · #13 Post by **Dave_F** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 9:38 am

Thats too bad. All of the planning, time off and money spent....bummer.

I suspected that they were going to be shorthanded when i heard the final truck count. You just can't do this type of trip with just 3 guys.

KUDOS to Pete, Kris and Glenn for getting as far as they did with the weather, mechanical issues and the "trail" conditions...they must be disapointed and exhausted.

Dave

DaveB · #14 Post by **DaveB** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 4:01 pm

sdo wrote: They should have 4-5 days back to Ross River, and 2 more to Quesnel, then they plan to turn west and do the Mackenzie trail and take the ferry over to the Island and head for home.

Unfortunately Mackenzie Trail is closed too due to fires...

http://www.sitesandtrailsbc.ca/search/s ... &type=Site

Pelican Lake and Tsacha Lake have forest fires.

Dave

HeadDamage · #15 Post by **HeadDamage** » Thu Aug 25, 2011 5:05 pm

Too wet in one place and too dry in the other...

sdo · #16 Post by **sdo** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 9:53 am

Well where else can we send them, they have 2 full weeks left of vacation time, what other trails are there between Ross River and Langley?

I talked with Pete last night on the sat phone, they are making good time and hope to be to Ross River in 3 more days.

He said there will be some winching along the area in front of the hunting camp, lots of water in the area.

sdo · #17 Post by **sdo** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 11:10 am

Some one asked what HF frequency they are communicating on.
They start on 7.280 at 9:30 PM and move up or down from them depending on others on that frequency.

Hope that helps.

HeadDamage · #18 Post by **HeadDamage** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 11:18 am

There is something north of Ross River called the "Wind River Trail" but I don't know much about it.

I've driven to Inuvik on the dempster, nice drive but not off road.

Didn't someone talk about an old rail line that we should try sometime that was in North Western BC?

DaveB · #19 Post by **DaveB** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 12:21 pm

HeadDamage wrote:There is something north of Ross River called the "Wind River Trail" but I don't know much about it.

I've driven to Inuvik on the dempster, nice drive but not off road.

Didn't someone talk about an old rail line that we should try sometime that was in North Western BC?

Hope I can make this work. I'm posting from my phone and cut paste not so easy...

http://roverlanders.bc.ca/roverforum/vi ... ght=skeena

I was hopIng we'd do this in the next year or two but since they're in the area, they can check it out.

Dave

HeadDamage · #20 Post by **HeadDamage** » Fri Aug 26, 2011 4:34 pm

That was the post I was thinking of Dave.

PS... I see they haven't moved much today, Hope they are just taking the day off.

HeadDamage · #21 Post by **HeadDamage** » Sat Aug 27, 2011 10:20 pm

Looks like they have made good time coming out... hope they had fun even if they could not get to the river. I'm looking forward to details and photos to see what it was like this time :)

DaveB · #22 Post by **DaveB** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 7:14 am

Yea, definitely looks like they're making use of the midnight sun as they've been going all night and nearly hit the Yukon border already. (Or they left the SPOT on overnight :lol: )

Obviously they're out onto the "road" portion of the trail again.

defender · #23 Post by **defender** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 10:23 pm

Hi there it's Mark. I have never posted on here before but I couldn't wait until tomorrow to post what is happening. I spoke to Kris tonight and here is the story.

Currently they are camped at a de-commisioned tungsten mine called Mactung. It has been closed since 2005. There is tonnes of equipment and enough jet fuel and diesel to get them all home, but they won't be taking it.

Glen lost his clutch 100 km's back and he managed to get to this point without one. They figured he wouldn't be able to get much further so they decided to fix it the bush way.

They used two winch cables, one pulling the vehicle over on it's side and the other one holding it back, and flipped it over and rested in on the big float bags for the raft. They pulled out the transmission today and noticed that the pressure plate springs were weak and worn so the pressure plate was not engaging. Kris went to the back of his truck and pulled out a new pressure plate, clutch and thrust bearing. They assembling back together tomorrow and might stay one more day just to relax. The only other vehicle issue they have had is Pete's vacuum pump crapped out part way into the trip and it started pissing out oil. Kris went to the back of his truck and gave Pete a new one.

(If your vehicle breaks down make sire there is a polak around)

Kris figures they will be headed straight back home after this with the exception of a quick stop at the 100 mile property.

I will be talking to him again tomorrow and I will update again as long as my wife promises to type for me again. :)

Leanna... ooops I mean Mark.

ANDYD · #24 Post by **ANDYD** » Sun Aug 28, 2011 10:41 pm

Hi Leanna, opps I mean Mark! :wink:
Congrats on your first post! See these Typewriter/computor thingies aren't so hard to master....

Thanks for the update, Kris must of been carrying a ton of spares!
Are there not any trails around the 100 mile they can explore for a couple of days?

Keep us updated,
Cheers, Andy

PS Thanks also to Alex for all the previous updates.... those radios are amazing

sdo · #25 Post by **sdo** » Mon Aug 29, 2011 9:07 am

Mark,

thanks for posting, sorry I did not answer the phone last night, I was in bed (some of us have to get up at silly o'clock for work you know)

The Rover-Landers of BC

The Rover-Landers of BC

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