Upon landing the float plane at Glacier Lake, it was clear we were indeed very far from anything. The lake was as still as glass, and only the buzzing of mosquitoes drew the attention of the ear. We unloaded our gear from the plane, including two full racks of climbing gear, taglines and ropes, packrafting gear for each of us, and 100kg of food that was supposed to support us for the next twenty-one days. Nine days of food and the packrafting gear we stashed in the bear boxes at the Parks Canada cabin at the lake before beginning the 10km hike up into the cirque. As we begrudginly lugged each of our 82lb packs up the steep approach, our spirits were held high by the towers appearing above us. The Cirque of the Unclimbables stood out as the tallest landscape feature around, concentrating an afternoon storm cloud above the peaks as we inched our way up the steep trail.

After four hours we entered the basin and instantly understood why it was called Fairy Meadows. Granite walls in 270 degrees pierced the landscape through glacier and scree fields. Lucious heather meadows and vibrant green moss added color to the palette, and silvery glacial streams were the final brushstrokes. It truly was a landscape akin to a fairytale. We unloaded our packs and found our spot on the canvas to call home, a small but steep boulder cave that provided shelter from the ever-present rain.

Even in its driest months, the Cirque of the Unclimbables is known for its frequent rainstorms, often giving climbers only a couple days of good weather within a two week window to climb. By luck of the draw, the karma gods were in our favor and the sun was set to shine for almost a full week. We opted to take a full rest day to recover from the travel, but were excited to seize the good weather the day after and set off for Lotus Flower Tower.

At 2 a.m. our alarms went off, but darkness was nowhere to be found in these high summer latitudes. The dim morning light made the landscape retain a sense of mystery as we hiked up the drainage, through meadows and over scree fields to the Lotus Flower Tower. Smoke from wildfires in British Columbia had tracked into the Northwest Territories, adding to the mystique. The air was silent except for the dribble of the glacial creek where we filled our water, and after a couple of hours we were looking up at the cracks that formed the first pitch of the route.

At this point, we were only a few pitches from the summit. Hayden hit a caloric wall from leading and belaying non-stop for the previous 14 hours, and we all took a pause to make sure we hydrated and ate our combination of chips, gummies and nut mix to bring up energy levels. I offered to lead the group up the final pitches while everyone snacked and hydrated, a hero hand crack for 150 feet followed by a strenuous and unprotected 5.8 offwidth/chimney to reach the summit. Sixteen hours after leaving the ground that morning we celebrated on the summit, still in broad daylight thanks to the high latitude.

From the summit of the Lotus Flower Tower you receive a 360-degree view of the Ragged Range surrounding it. Parrot’s Beak next door hosts an equally prominent 2000 foot face, and down the ridge to the south the knifeblade of Mount Proboscis slices the skyline. For as much vertical rock as there is in the Cirque, it makes one wonder why it is so “unclimbable.” I think the main deterrents are the vegetated cracks of anything not south/southeast facing, and of course the fact that the middle of the Northwest Territories isn’t the easiest place on earth to get to. Regardless, the magnitude of vertical rock surrounding the LFT makes one reach into the imagination and wonder if surely more isn’t possible. 

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Arriving back at Glacier Lake, a low fog welcomed us to the water. We stashed our climbing gear to be picked up and flown out by Warren, exchanging it for another 50lbs of food and our packrafting gear. A single two-person canoe was the only available shuttle boat to reach the other end of Glacier Lake and begin our hike down to the South Nahanni River, so in we piled. The silence in the air mirrored the stillness of the lake as we carefully weaved it through the fog.

Struggling to shoulder our packs once on the other side, we joked that packrafting wasn’t actually that packable. We begrudgingly began a 6 hour hike through bogs and seeping muskeg, eventually reaching the South Nahanni River with sore hips, wet feet and an appetite for anything but walking. We hopped in our boats, happy to let the river do the work from there on out.

The South Nahanni River is famous in and of itself as a river trip, with guided raft parties and canoeists frequenting it each summer. There are a few variations of the trip to choose from depending on your boating experience. More experienced whitewater boaters can start on the Little Nahanni and paddle through technical class 4 rapids before portaging to the South Nahanni (this is also how you would paddle into the Cirque of the Unclimbables for the ultimate boating/climbing combo). For easier paddling you can put in at the headwaters of the Nahanni on the Broken Bow and run the river from its incipient shallow flows, with a layover to to hike up to Glacier Lake and the Cirque along the way. Our section from the Cirque of the Unclimbables (Britnell Creek) to Nahanni Butte would take us 220 miles (353km) from the slow rolling mountain river, through four canyons with rapids, and finally to the meandering braided river as it exited the mountains and entered the plains. This would be our highway back to civilization over the next eight days. 

Even though we had little to no packrafting experience, the Nahanni River proved to be a gracious teacher. The intro rapids in Fourth Canyon proved to be straightforward sections of class 3 wave trains where we quickly learned to paddle through the peaks and lean into the troughs. After a few sections we were full of new energy, finding play in the river and paddling with ease through rapids, lounging to admire the deep cut canyons in between. 

My geology background came in handy during our days paddling the canyons. The massive walls of the canyons were a marine delta sedimentary deposit, with each canyon slowly transitioning from from mud-dominated marine delta sediments to sand-dominated marine delta sediments as we paddled downstream and down-strata, the results of which were that each canyon’s walls were strikingly more erect than the next. By this point paddling had become second-nature and our ten hour days on the river had me convinced I had been doing this my whole life. That was, at least, until I flipped my boat for the first time on the last rapid of the river and lost the water filter.

As the canyons came and went, the Nahanni, too, changed form. The swift currents and rapids of the steep walled canyons now released into the low angle plains, forming a relaxed braided river. It was as if the water finally had time to stretch and release its tension and finally flow slowly onward for its final days. The calm water and open plains housed herds of bison and perched osprey curiously eyeing us as we wove through their backyard, paddling happily through the rain in our brightly-colored dry-suits. 

Eight days and 220 miles after we left the Cirque of the Unclimbables we pulled our boats ashore for the last time into the town of Nahanni Butte. The locals welcomed us kindly, letting us shower in the community center and helping to sort our shuttle driver back to our cars in Fort Nelson. Our time as guests of the Nahanni was over. I felt inside of me a small piece of sadness, knowing that the joy created here could never be replicated in the same way. At the very least, though, it could be shared.