Into the Canadian wilderness – 1,500 km by canoe

In the summer of 2025 Håvard Hasund and four others paddled 1,500 kilometres through the wilderness of northern Canada – from Yellowknife to Baker Lake, in 47 days, without seeing another person on the way.

We go through the whole trip: where the idea came from, how it was planned over a year and a half, and what they brought in the way of safety equipment, firearms and medicine. And then what actually happened – the fishing, the musk ox, the five-kilometre portage, the shotgun that disappeared into a tarn, the rapids, and the grizzly sow that rose onto her hind legs thirty metres away.

Håvard is a paramedic, so we also talk about how you assess risk when help is hours away – and why capsizing is far more dangerous than a bear.

The content is experience from a single trip, not a substitute for qualified training in outdoor skills, first aid or whitewater paddling.

Main topics

• A canoe expedition in northern Canada
• Planning and preparation
• Risk assessment and safety in the field
• Medical preparedness far from help
• Bears, musk oxen and wildlife
• Fishing for Arctic char
• Running rapids in a canoe
• Food, weight and the calorie budget

Questions this episode answers

• What was the Canada expedition actually about?
• How do you plan a 1,500 km canoe trip?
• What is the biggest risk on a trip like this?
• What first aid and safety equipment should you bring?
• Does ordinary travel insurance cover an expedition?
• How do you handle an encounter with a bear?
• How do you plan food for nearly fifty days?
• What would he do differently next time?

Key points

• Set a date first, and plan backwards from there.
• Capsizing into cold water is the real risk – not bears.
• Bear spray matters more than a firearm.
• Ordinary Norwegian travel insurance excludes expeditions in the northern Canadian wilderness.
• An emergency beacon does not save you – you have to manage until help arrives.
• Travel as one group, not as two.