08-Jul-2011 -- I was originally planning on trying to get to this confluence by snowmobile, but it didn't happen. I was planning on doing a canoe trip anyway so this gave me a place to go.

This confluence is approximately 50 kilometers from the nearest road near Fort Smith, NWT. It is possible to get to this confluence by canoe, but we had a limited amount of time (4 days) to complete the project so we decided to fly out to the north end of Leland Lake in a small float plane and get dropped off. It took less than 3 hours from leaving home to successfully visit the confluence. However, the canoe trip home involved about 100 kilometers of canoeing and portaging through multiple lakes, rivers, and swamps.

The confluence itself is located about 500 meters west of North Leland Lake. It is typical northern canadian shield country. Rocky hillsides with valleys of fairly dense vegetation. The exact confluence happened to be in a rocky clearing in a young stand of Jack Pine. The hike from the lake up the hill to the confluence was heavily vegetated with poplar, alder and willows. Our shins took quite a beating trying to break a trail through there.

After leaving the confluence we canoed south down the lake and camped on a small island on the south end of North Leland Lake. The next day we portaged into South Leland lake and canoed all the way to the south end. After a few more portages we ended up in a small river/creek system that went through some marshlands and another small lake and eventually made it into Myers Lake. We decided to camp in one spot for two nights and actually managed to take a day off to explore Myers Lake, hike over to Post Lake and do some fishing and swimming. We finished the day with a great feed of fried pickerel (fish) and a few sips of whiskey.

The last day was very long as it involved traveling from Myers Lake to Fort Fitzgerald via the Dog River....this meant over 12 hours spent canoing and portaging (including one 1 km portage over a large hill). It was a very hot day and we had trouble staying hydrated. We arrived in Fort Fitzgerald by 9pm at night. Over the 4 days we saw 2 bears (one of which we ran into on a portage). We paddled upon a bull moose, followed 20 minutes later by a moose calf swimming across the river. We also saw countless beaver, muskrat, and waterfowl.

All in all it was a great trip.

The Northwest Territories/Alberta demarcation line is passing exactly through the Confluence.