"Richard Ferguson" wrote in message
...
If the [Rat/Bell/Porcupine] trip is well documented, how many weeks did
previous parties take?

The only book I have in front of me is the Vyvyan book I mentioned earlier.
Their itinerary went like this:

7-7-26 Aklavik - Water taxi up the Peel to Husky Channel, up the Husky
Channel to the Rat, up the Rat to first rapids at:
7-8-26 Destruction City - Up the Rat to:
7-18-26 Summit - Down Little Bell, Bell, Porcupine to:
7-21-26 Old Crow - Down Porcupine to
7-27-26 Fort Yukon

The two women trekked along the Rat while their two guides took the boat up
alongside. They paddled alone from the summit to Old Crow, where they
engaged another guide for the trip to FY.

From other reading, I conclude that this must be about the fastest you could
reasonably expect to make the trip, realizing that heavy rains at the pass
could make the Rat impassable for days at a time.

It sounds like there would be opportunities to take a wrong fork or
wrong turn, I would imagine that the maps are not that great in such an
uninhabited area.

Navigation among sloughs or forks is always more critical with uptripping.
My experience with Canadian maps though has been that they are great
GPS-friendly things - for me far easier to work with than the USGS
counterparts. I haven't seen maps of the Rat, but I would be surprised to
find they weren't great.

There are some other interesting trips that involve portages between
drainages, I think some starting at yellowknife. Pretty amazing what
some of these people did in past centuries.

For sure, and the amazing thing to me is that we're not talking about that
long ago. When my grandfather was a boy, when people wanted to get
somewhere in the North anyway, they either had to pole or line or track or
hire someone to do it for them. Now, anyone who traces any of those ancient
routes is considered crazy.

Fred Klingener