We had two large quad trailers full of supplies like food, water, tools and gas. We would be in the bush for 2 weeks, so we needed a lot of supplies. Finally the day had come. Grandpa and I would take off on a 2 day drive by truck until finally we would reach the Liard River. From there we would take off into the middle of nowhere on quads. We drove and drove through the windy mountain roads of B.C. and I thought it seemed like forever. I dosed off every now and again but this wouldn’t last long because Grandpa “Trapper Ken” would wake me up yelling “William wake up and look at those moose”, we saw so much wildlife on the drive.

We quaded all day, crossing rivers, climbing mountains and fields with our quads. After a long day riding quads and cutting trail, we finally stopped for the day and built camp. We had a good nights rest in our tents.

 Again we awoke at around 6:30 a.m., to a beautiful view of the Barricade Mountain Range. With Nordquest lake and the Liard River behind us, we looked forward to the trail ahead and reaching the goal point, the Grayling River,  where this great journey would end. It was still a few days away but I couldn’t get it out of my head. I was looking forward to fishing for Arctic Char.

 After a few days on the trail, all the meat was gone and we were down to soups, pastas, and oatmeal. We were only men so of course we wanted meat. Grandpa, the trapper he was decided to set traps in hope of snaring a rabbit. If this was successful we would have rabbit stew and finally some fresh meat. Grandpa has so much experience outdoors he promised at least 3 of 6 traps would have rabbits within 2 hours.

 2 hours later as Grandpa promised, we had 4 rabbits, within minutes the experienced trapper had them skinned. I was so looking forward to supper. After the great supper Grandpa cooked up, I brought the dishes to a creek to clean them. I don’t know if I’ve told you this yet but the mountain creek up there makes great drinking water, anyways back to  the story. We had quaded a long distance this day and a beaver had dammed a river since the last time we’d been here. This caused flooding and huge amounts of swamp and mud. We were not prepared for this on this day, so we back tracked and camped at the same place as the night before. We would face the largest challenge of the trip, tomorrow.

Today we got a little sleep in, but for me it was still not enough, 7 a.m. is early to a teenager. We made our way back to the swamp and got ready. We hooked up winches, ropes, cut trees and laid them in the mud for grip. It was a very slow going and even the large 4x4 quads got stuck. After a couple of slow, hard hours we finally made it through the swamp. After all that work, we were hungry, so we decided to stop and eat. As I stepped off my quad, I stepped on an underground bees nest, a swarm of bees flew out and stung us all. This added some excitement and pain to the day. But we ate as planned and continued on.

 The next day the trail got very hard. Heavy snowfall last winter put weight on the trees and caused them to collapse, causing a tangled mess of fallen trees blocking the trail. We cut through for hours but this seemed never ending. The 10 years since the last time Grandpa was up to this area of the trapline had caused a lot of changes to the trapline. We never came prepared for these changes, so unfortunately we had to turn back. We will go back this year and now that we have an idea, we will go more prepared. Although the time there was cut short, we all still had a great time.

"This was a family outing to explore area's we haven't traveled for a very long time."