A windy day along the Lower Peel

My footprint beside the wolf.

Hi dear readers!

There hasn’t been much activity anymore on my blog since the summer. However, this doesn’t mean I have been sitting still in the last few months. During last May I hiked large part of the Hautes Fagnes trail, a non-official trail invented and composed entirely by myself, winding through the most interesting hiking area of Belgium (in my opinion) and that I want to introduce to the hiking audience. Due to some knee and foot pains that came up during that hike I prematurely terminated the trip. I’ve now the intention to hike the remaining part in a few weeks and post an informative report about that trail with lots of pictures. I’ve also done several day packraft training trips throughout July (most of them were not so interesting to talk about here) to become in shape for the big summer trip.

A black bear its footprints.

The rest of July and early August were dominated by the final preparations for this big summer trip, a long trip of 6 weeks in northern Canada, hiking in the Wernecke and Ogilvie Mountains and floating the Hart and Peel river in my packraft. The pictures in this post all show what I encountered on one of the last days along the Lower Peel river while strong head winds forced me to hike along the river instead of paddling through the wind waves while being blown upstream. I wanted to announce the trip here on my blog before leaving but some events in my personal live kept me from writing about the trip plans till the very last minutes. So my blog has been a bit dead over the last weeks, but now here’s the proof I’m still alive!

The Canada trip has been great with lots of unimaginable scenery, a wide variation of wildlife, multiple grizzly bear encounters, and some beautiful canyons on the rivers with also very dangerous whitewater though, all together a very informative experience. You can expect a long trip report later this year. For now I feel I have to make some more hiking or packrafting soon since sitting home and at work for too long makes me longing to go into the outdoors again as soon as possible. So until later!

… and this is what you stumble upon every few minutes while hiking on the clay beach along the Lower Peel river.