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Overview map
Introduction and Fly-in
Island Lake to Broken Skull River
Broken Skull River to Virginia Falls
Virginia Falls
Virginia Falls to Deadman Valley
Deadman Valley Through First Canyon
First Canyon to Blackstone Landing
Contact us: chorton@azteca.com
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| The paddle from Broken Skull to Virginia Falls passes by the Cirque of the Unclimbables and Rabbitkettle Lake. The Cirque offers some of the most spectacular scenery along the river. |
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| The water from Broken Skull to Rabbitkettle moves along at an acceptable pace, although it slowly decreases in speed. There are no rapids in this section. When we arrived at Rabbitkettle, there were several other groups arriving via airplane at the lake. We had intended to camp at the lake, but not with 20 other people. The ranger told us the Rabbitkettle River was too high to cross and see the tufa mounds, so we decided to continue down the Nahanni. We left Rabbitkettle Lake at about 4 pm. We thought about stopping at a beach about 20 minutes downriver, but it seemed too early in the day. In hindsight it might have been better to stay there. Because the water was so high, camping spots were non-existent. We ended up paddling until about midnight. Just as things were beginning to get dark, we located a spot above a massive eddy. In the morning, we watched the eddy for quite awhile, there was a large log with a branch sticking straight up about 20 feet circling the eddy all morning. |
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| The next day we paddled to the Sunblood ranger cabin and camped in that area. The paddling in this stretch of the river redefined slow. In the right-hand picture above, the large meanders were nearly unbearable. Due to the large meanders and the slow flow, the down-canyon movement was almost imperceptible. On numerous portions of this section, trees hung way out over the river. |
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