Yukon Canoe Adventure - Episode 1 

Super happy to have been able to help. I actually met the organisers of the Yukon 1000 in my hotel lobby while I was out there last year. It seems like an awesome race but a bit too fast paced for my liking :) I am keen to hear of your experience. We went with UpNorthAdventures purely based on the online reviews and when I contacted them they were prompt to reply and supplied me with good info. We are actually going on another trip to the Yukon in July 2019 and will be using KanoePeople as our outfitter, so far the communication with them has been spot on too. I would say send them both a message and see which outfitter answers your questions best. My top tips would be to not leave your cooking gear behind, calibrate your drone compass before flying and bring a fire extinguisher!!! Haha, but seriously though, there is no such thing as overplanning. Have a good equipment list, food list, rough itnerary of where you plan to stay each night and leave a copy with a friend / loved one. Satellite phone / tracker should be part of everyones kit list (we would have given a lot to have a phone during our forest fire - we are taking one this time). Research bear safety (I certainly am no expert but I learnt a ton about bears and best practices). One item we will also be taking this time is a cooler bag with some iced bottles to keep fresh food a bit longer - not so sure this applies to a Yukon 1000 trip. I hope this helps.

Great - thanks. After a few e-mails it looks like I'll be using KanoePeople too as their equipment seems better for my needs. I'm just waiting for the reply now to see if we have got in as there are only 15 teams allowed to go but my race partner is Dr Mike Stroud (Sir Ranulph Fiennes expedition partner) so should be ok, fingers crossed! Make sure you post your other adventures to keep inspiring us all!

We used UpNorthAdventures as our outfitter on this trip upnorthadventures.com. They were really helpful and provided us with some great gear. The maps I used were authoured by Mike Rourke. These books contain handdrawn maps along with indications of key points of interest and camps (although a bit outdated there are more camps not marked on the map which are relatively easy to spot). You can get official topo maps but I thought these were good enough to meander down the river. I needed both the "Teslin River" and the "Yuokn River" map books as the Teslin book only covers up until Carmacks. www.yukonbooks.com/shop/customer/product.php?productid=2613&cat=0&page=1 It's exciting times to be planning a trip like this, enjoy it!