It was January 2nd. 1962 and a lone pilot was flying a Cessna 180 ski-plane, to a gold prospecting camp located deep in the Mackenzie Mountains in the North West Territories of Canada. He was an experienced bush flyer and had flown this trip several times already; landing on the ice of Mickey Lake with supplies for his partners living in a cabin on the nearby Bennett Creek.

When the pilot departed from the Smith River airstrip for the one hundred mile flight north, the weather had been clear with a mild Chinook wind blowing from the west. He had however, almost certainly been unaware that a cold front was sweeping down from the north, bringing with it snow and a reduced cloud ceiling. Despite deteriorating weather conditions the pilot pressed on towards his destination. Although in poor visibility and by then following the lower ground of the mountainous topography, the single engine plane was still on track as it passed over first Clarke and then McMillan Lakes. After these way-points, the pilot should have continued down McLeod Creek before turning left to pass south of Two Cones Mountain and on into Bennett Creek. Whether he mistook McMillan for McLeod Lake is uncertain, but he turned too soon, into Moose Creek and towards its headwaters. With its steep sides and a six thousand foot mountain closing the way ahead he had flown into a blind valley. Realising his mistake the pilot began a turn. It was his only chance of escaping the trap. Unfortunately the aircraft was unable to complete the manoeuvre before it ploughed into a grove of spruce trees at an altitude of over four thousand feet and was destroyed.

Miraculously the pilot survived the accident unscathed and set about building a camp a short distance from the crash site. He was so well equipped to survive, with food, fuel, shelter and camp provisions from the aircraft's cargo that he was confident that rescue would come within a matter of days. So he waited and confided his circumstances to his diary. On many occasions he watched as searching aircraft flew overhead but none saw him. He was, in fact, only six miles as the crow flies from his destination and his friends, although he was probably unaware of his exact location. For around fifty days he continued this lonely vigil and then he mysteriously disappeared. Six months later that one of his partners came by chance upon the wrecked aircraft, the pilot's camp and his diary. The only items missing were his snowshoes and his gun. The search for the missing pilot was immediately resumed but to this day no further trace of him has ever been found. This region of North America's Great Divide, known as The Nahanni had added yet another unexplained event to its history.
 

Today, from an aerie seat, I look down upon Two Cones Mountain and beyond it I can make out the ill-fated valley of Moose Creek. Little has changed in the last thirty four years. It is late July and The Nahanni region's weather is by contrast in a passive mood.

The mysteries of this locale did not begin with that lone Cessna pilot. They began with and centre on the reason that brought him and his partners to the region. That reason was gold and more importantly the legendary 'Lost McLeod Gold'. Indirectly it is that same gold that has brought me here too. Not to find it but to see with my own eyes this remote corner of a distant place, a 'gold-field', which I only became acquainted with by chance. However, my coming here seems to be wholly characteristic of the obsessive behaviour that this bewitched region regularly inspires in people. For I have already flown nearly six hours today in a single engine aeroplane to get this far; just to see a wilderness with my own eyes. But what a wilderness I have seen.

My journey proper, began on a British Airways '747' out of Heathrow Airport bound for a family holiday in British Columbia Canada. At Fort St John, some eight hundred miles to the north of Vancouver there was a Cessna for hire. Its owner, a bush pilot himself, had not been particularly alarmed when I had informed him that I wanted to fly four hundred miles north and then into the mountains for one hundred and fifty miles along the South Nahanni River. He had just checked me on the aeroplane and said, "When were you thinking of going?"

My plan is to fly from Fort St John to Fort Nelson, a leg of two hundred and twenty miles. It is then on to Fort Liard, topping tanks again before embarking on the adventure proper. My first turning point of which is Nahanni Butte, where the Liard River is joined by the South Nahanni River, at this point I turn west to follow the river back into the mountains as far as Rabbit Kettle Lake before turning south towards Twin Cones Mountain and thence down the Flat River to Direction Mountain, which is situated at its confluence with the Nahanni. From here I plan to retrace my course back to the Butte to arrive overhead after three hours in the mountains with another estimated hour and forty-five flying time back to Fort Nelson for fuel and finally Fort St John.

For a while it looked as if suitable weather and aircraft availability factors are not going to coincide during the time available, but the gods eventually smile and a little after ten o-clock on a sunny Monday morning I lifted the 'one seventy-two' from Fort St John's seven thousand foot long runway '22'.…
 
 

The weather is perfect with a light southerly breeze and temperatures set for the low thirties as I turn right to follow the Highway away from the town. To my left, the Peace River runs a dirty brown, still in spate due to a late spring thaw and the spilling of water from the Bennett dam seventy five miles upstream. This area is familiar to any eye accustomed to human industry, with its ample indications of man's habitation and exploitation of the countryside. Fields and boundary lines are drawn out on the ground and converge in density towards the square patched urban sprawl typical of Canadian habitation. To the north suburbanisation peters out to farmland and to the west, fifty miles or more away a ragged saw-tooth horizon marks the start of the mountains. I follow the Highway as it initially heads north-west before turning its overall direction north to Fort Nelson. Beneath me as I climb to altitude lies the long expanse of Charlie Lake, the largest in this area. The land that has been broken for agriculture gives way to forest and muskeg, slashed here and there with the cut-lines of the surveyors and seismologists. In places a small clearing marks the site of a well-head, because this is black gold country. Every fifty miles or so there is a cluster of habitation on the highway, usually around a gas station and motel. More frequent are the dirt roads that snake off into the bush, some to the mountains that are now beginning to creep closer to the highway and some towards logging clear-cuts where trees have been scalped from hills by the timber industry. To the left of my track, I can make out the low humped ridge of Pink Mountain, which at five thousand eight hundred and sixty three feet elevation only claims to be in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, but it impresses all the same. Beyond it to the west the mountains become more serious in their demeanour and their jagged tops gleam white in the sunshine. The late Spring this year having left in evidence, more white in the snow-caps than one would normally expect to see.

I have ascended to six thousand feet and directly beneath me, the terrain here is now over four thousand feet. The wind is still light from the south, but this is only told by the rare clouds of dust that rise from the forest as an anonymous vehicle drives a lonely dirt road.

I am captivated by the size of this land, the size of nature, and the thought of its history. Sixty years ago this highway was not even here, one hundred years ago and the land was not even mapped with any accuracy outside of a few people's minds. It is an interesting diversion to ponder the origins of some of the, often enigmatic, names on the chart, those given by the pioneers, explorers or their patrons to the land's topography. What exactly I wonder, happened at Deadhorse Creek, and who was the Bertha that had a Mountain named after her?

The Highway rolls on and I follow. Here and there the original route wanders from the present straightened or levelled trail of tarmac. The Sikanni Chief airstrip, six thousand feet of clearing used originally in the road's construction but now marked with crosses, slips beneath me. The settlement is about ten miles further on and perched on a bluff that the Highway winds down and around before it crosses the Sikanni Chief river as it winds eastwards through an impressive sandstone gorge. This river drains the plateau of high ground that emerges for fifty miles or so from the mountain's foothills providing the highest ground on this sector of the journey at around four thousand two hundred feet. I leave the plateau following the Minaker River valley to join the meandering Prophet River whose broad valley the Alaska Highway eventually follows for the last fifty miles to Fort Nelson.

The town of Fort Nelson was founded on the confluence of the Muskwa River, Prophet River and the Fort Nelson River (which the Sikanni Chief has become). These were the communication routes of the North for many years until the recent past when the roads came, so with the establishment of a Fort and trading post here, it was bound to grow and become a successful community. This town is now one of the largest in the area and is important to industry because of its position on the Alaska Highway. Today it boasts a population of two thousand five hundred souls and provides full amenities for modern living. One such facility is the airport whose Air Traffic Controller clears me for an approach to runway zero-two. I land and taxi for fuel.
 
 

My original plan had been to camp here for a night, but the weather is perfect and as I wander, amongst a myriad of fat grasshoppers leaping chirruping from all around me, to the Flight Service Station in the control tower, a change of plan begins to form in my mind.

The air is hot windless and dry. There are no clouds in the bright blue of the sky and the temperature has already hit thirty degrees centigrade. The Air Traffic Controller confirms that the weather is forecast good for today and with this dry air mass, afternoon Cu-Nimbus formation is unlikely. The present high pressure will begin to slip away over the next couple of days so this is the best it can get. I file my flight plan after deciding that this afternoon will do for a first attempt, and head back to refuel the plane.
 
 

I had already read the literature and quizzed experts about mountain flying. The former prescribes strict rules, the latter urge common sense, but both agree on one point, 'Do not fly in the mountains in strong winds' and twenty knots of wind-speed seems to be the agreed comfortable limit.

The weather system today is moving, albeit very slowly, towards the east and although I cannot guess what the cloud will be like in the mountains I will be flying into the weather and can turn about if I am not happy with its looks. In any case I will not be flying below the minimum safety altitude marked on my charts for terrain clearance. The mountains demand respect and will receive mine.

My flight itinerary will take me north again along the Liard Highway to Fort Liard where I plan to land and top the tanks with fuel. Official sources state that there is no fuel there so I am carrying forty four litres in cans to give the reserves I require.

At 1320 hours local time, I take off and climb away from Fort Nelson over the small but square-scored town and head west along a ridge of hills. After twenty miles I come to the place where the Liard Highway branches off from the road to Alaska. I alter my course to the north and follow. This dusty gravel road stretching three hundred miles to Fort Simpson is to be my navigation aid for the next hour. The landscape here is low lying, seldom rising to more than two thousand feet above sea level. This is the Liard Plain, a desolate and largely featureless landscape that stretches for hundreds of miles to the east and north. There are few landmarks charted and after I have crossed the Fort Nelson River as it wanders west and north, the road itself becomes annotated as an "approximate alignment" on the chart and is actually miles away from its marked position in places. The cut lines, dead straight swathes of cleared trees and scrub, one Caterpillar bulldozer's width, still evident in places, are becoming ever more widely spaced. They mostly travel in due north-south or east-west directions and provide a useful reference for navigation. At these latitudes the magnetic variation is twenty nine degrees east of true North and mistakes could be costly. I keep my track close to the highway. So far I have seen only one vehicle and the dust-cloud it set up gave me a strange link with the humanity at its controls, providing an odd bond of company in this isolation.

Maxhamish Lake, a five mile circle of water, passes to my left and soon I can make out the Petitot River that accompanies the highway to Fort Liard. This settlement is the seasonal home to around four hundred, mainly North American First-Nation people and is located at the confluence of the Petitot and Liard rivers. Its airfield is a single strip of gravel three thousand feet long set in a cleared area of forest. As I touch the wheels of the Cessna on the runway I am pleasantly surprised by its smoothness. I exit via the single mid-point taxi-way and follow it a few yards to park outside the log-cabin 'Terminal Building'.

 
 

Fort Liard was, at the turn of the present century, the home of the McLeod brothers, Willie, Frank and Charlie. Their father was the Hudson's Bay factor at the trading post and the boys had been raised in the community. One day, as young men, they had learned from an Indian befriended by their father, of gold on a tributary of the Flat River. That knowledge began a fatal fascination which led them on a quest that would ultimately end with two of their deaths, an unsolved mystery and the legend of a lost gold field.

It was the spring of 1904 when their expedition eventually reached the place in the mountains that the Indian had described, it was one hundred and fifty miles north-west of their home and they immediately named it Gold Creek. The three brothers promptly found gold and worked the claim with enthusiasm but did not extract a great deal of the precious yellow metal, only enough it was said, to fill a 'toothache remedy bottle'. Excited all the same, they built a boat to float down the Flat River to the Nahanni River and home. Unfortunately, fate intervened and the craft was wrecked at the first rapids of the 'Cascade of the Thirteen Steps'. They lost almost all of their outfit, including the precious remedy-bottle, saving only a rifle and thirty shells. Undaunted they walked the twenty miles back to Gold Creek and set about finding some more gold and building another boat. This time, no doubt having learned from their previous experience, they made it back safely to Fort Liard. These were gold-rush days however and gold-fever was still endemic in the North Lands. No doubt spurred by the thought of another 'Klondike' find, two of the McLeod brothers, Willie and Frank set off again for Gold Creek together, some say, with a Scottish engineer known as Wier or Wilkinson. Time passed and nothing was heard from them. Eventually in 1908 Charlie McLeod started out with a search party. He found the grizzly remains of his two brothers in their camp on the Nahanni River at a place which he named that day, Deadmen Valley. The bodies were minus their heads which were never found. Reports have it that one brother was in his bed face up, with the other three steps away face down with his arm outstretched in a vain attempt to reach his gun which was leant against a tree only a yard from where he had fallen. Both, the story says, had been shot. Nothing was missing from the camp, although there was also no sign of the mysterious third man or any gold. Supposedly a split sledge runner was found with the pencilled message, 'We have found a fine prospect.' Rumours abounded and the legend has been told with many variations. Tales have it that the third man was seen at Telegraph Creek with $8,000 in gold or in Vancouver with $5.000. Despite investigations at the time it was never actually established beyond doubt that the third man had ever existed; whether or not the McLeods had actually been murdered or if there was any fortune in gold at all.
 
 

Having topped the Cessna's tanks I depart after a pleasant half-hour in the balmy, pine scented heat of the afternoon. Climbing out, I turn right over the wide brown Liard River and begin to follow it north. This is the start of the expedition proper. With brim full fuel and a five hour flight in prospect, I am on my way.

To my west lies the Liard and Kotaneelee Ranges of the Franklin Mountains rising to around five thousand feet from the river's level of seven hundred feet. For twenty five miles the Liard River takes a straight northerly course, carving multiple routes and leaving large islands in its stream. To its east and always within two miles, the highway clings to the low ground of its shallow valley. Further away the ground rises gently to level off into a huge low lying plateau of wrinkled creeks and small rivers couched in forests of pine and muskeg wilderness. After Flett Rapids the Liard, now over a mile wide, begins a series of enormous sweeping bends. Here I get my first sight of the Nahanni mountain range. It is a strange and exciting feeling to have come so far to see a landscape that had only previously arisen for me from the pages of books. Then, at last, I can make out the magnificent form of Nahanni Butte rising to four thousand five hundred and seventy nine feet and standing as a guardian to the mouth of the Nahanni River as it flows into the Liard. Flying a straight route across the wandering waters I approach the final meanders of the South Nahanni itself.

 

To my right is the small airstrip and the Nahanni Butte settlement of fewer than one hundred people. It was here that the author who unknowingly introduced me to the Nahanni lived. Dick Turner wrote marvellously of his love of the River and life in two of his books, Wings of the North and Nahanni. He was a fur trapper, river-trader, prospector, bush pilot, magistrate and overall adventurer who lived in and explored the Makenzie district during its heyday of romance.
 
 

I turn north-west to follow the blue-grey river that emerges from the mountains, here are the twenty miles of river delta called the Splits, tortuous multiple channels and dry snyes that twist and twine like vines as the river slows at the end of its long journey. On either side the mountains are beginning to crowd in. To my right the Twisted Mountain, an anticline of stratified rock, faces Mattson Mountain to my left. With only a few miles between them they make an imposing entrance to this enticing region.
 

Ahead a seemingly unbreached mountain range gives, at this distance, no indication that it might be cut through by a mighty river. In the foreground Yohin Lake glints and glistens in the afternoon sun. At first sight it has a greenish tinge and set, as it is, in a pock marked swampy array of smaller lakes it seems unappealing, but it is a haven of life in this broad sheltered valley and the place to which rare Trumpeter Swans come in summer to rear their young. The green surface is caused by masses of waterlily pads. As I pass over the nearby Yohin Ridge, I note that forty minutes has elapsed since take-off and I have climbed to seven thousand feet. The air is still smooth to ride. High above me is a benign trace of Cirrus cloud and ahead fair-weather Cumulus clouds dot the sky over the beckoning mountains.

I am still following a wide low lying valley. From the south Clausen Creek drains the Tlogotsho Plateau, but ahead now is the staggering spectacle of the First Canyon. Here the Nahanni River issues forth from the mountains, through a huge gorge, whose angular walls rise up steeply for three thousand feet and more from the river's edge. This angular rent in the limestone of the Nahanni Plateau is the deepest canyon in all of Canada and for twelve miles the waters wind their serpentine way through this brutal rift in the hard rock.

The First Canyon ends abruptly at a place called George's Riffle, a particularly hazardous river current where a man called George Sibbeston had a near miss in a canoe earlier this century. Here the landscape opens out into a valley, ten miles long and ten miles wide. This is the mysterious Deadmen Valley. From the south, Ram Creek, together with Sheaf Creek (that Raymond Patterson named after a British pub, the Wheatsheaf) and the Meilleur River, all spill their waters into the South Nahanni. From the north it is entered by Dry Canyon Creek, Prarie Creek with its vivid white fan-delta, and Headless Creek at its north western end, which is where the McLeod brothers made their last camp and where their bodies were ultimately found.

The valley provides a sub-tropical environment for the many species of flora and fauna that abound, including the larger mammals, Bear, Moose, Lynx, Caribou, Wolf, and Dall Sheep. Even in the winter when temperatures regularly fall to minus forty degrees Celsius and below, the Chinook wind can blow to bring overnight changes to clear blue skies with temperatures of plus ten degrees. On my day Deadmen Valley was a green and pleasant landscape, a haven amongst tempestuous peaks and all this with a pale powder-turquoise river, serenely lazing through its midst. This is one of our planet's secret valleys; a place of wonders with a magical allure that calls loud to the adventurous spirit.

I have reached eight thousand feet by the time I cross the Headless Range which forms the western wall of Deadmen Valley and is cut by the river to become the Second Canyon. The river sits deep in sheer vertical walls and has two impressive oxbows, The Great Spur and Big Bend, where it wheels back on itself before deciding upon its next route. The exit from the Second Canyon and the entry to the Third is marked by a modest moderation in the valley's steep sides, whose features have already become quite familiar to me. However it is in the nature of the South Nahanni to impress one ever more with each turn it takes, and so I come to the Third Canyon as it makes its way through the Funeral Range. Now you might think that this is taking the McLeod legend a little to far, after all, a valley, a creek and a mountain range have been named after their misadventure and now this? But Funeral Range has another simpler but no less morbid origin to its name. It is a name which reflects the high number of aeroplanes that, in the last seventy years, have terminated their journeys against its rocky sides. Here, in this canyon, the river has carved out another wonder. Called, 'The Gate', it is where the waters have doubled back upon themselves and cut a sheer slot said to be a thousand feet deep and only a few hundred yards wide. In the middle of this stands a parallel sided sentinel column three hundred feet high. It is an amazing sight.

To the west the Funeral Range slopes steeply down to Mary River, four thousand feet below. This water is named after Mary Field who with her husband Poole camped here whilst searching for 'Jorgenson's Find'.
 
 

Jorgenson had been Poole's partner, who in 1910 had headed alone into the Nahanni to search for the elusive McLeod Gold. After two years Poole received a message from Jorgenson saying to come quickly as he had "found some good stuff". Poole and Mary set off on a two hundred mile journey only to find Jorgenson's cabin burned to the ground and his bleached bones laying nearby. No gold was in evidence. Accounts of the scene vary. Some say that he had been shot in the back whilst running for his rifle, another that his rifle was by his side with two spent cases showing he had fought for his life, yet another that he was found without his head and with his rifle and even vice-versa. Poole remained convinced that Martin Jorgenson found the same thing as the McLeods and that his death was in some way connected with theirs. Whatever the circumstances another mysterious death had been added to the history and folklore of the region.
 

From the Mary River I can see the confluence of the Flat River and the South Nahanni, where Jorgenson's cabin was sited. Here the Third Canyon ends and the valley spreads out a little to provide a slightly more hospitable terrain. Direction Mountain to the west of the confluence, dwarfed as it is by un-named peaks that surround it, is almost a disappointment at three thousand feet. It is likely that it received its name in the Thirties from the famous, World-War-One and then bush pilot, Wop May as a landmark en-route to the McLeod 'Gold-fields'.

My altitude is close to nine thousand feet and the cloud, although almost forming into streets over ridges is still lightly scattered fair-weather Cumulus. I am now just over half way from Nahanni Butte to my turnaround point at Rabbitkettle Lake and the flight has already turned into a dream come true. Despite my preoccupation with flying, navigating, photographing and Dictaphone-log keeping I can still revel in the absolute majesty of the place. It is easy to share in the profound wonderment of a place that has touched the enthusiasms of so many people with its spirit.

Ahead I see a patch of brilliant white iridescence shining from the river and realise that this is my first glimpse of the mighty Virginia Falls. This is the highest major waterfall in Canada and with its drop of three hundred and sixteen feet, is higher even than Niagara. Below the falls the water boils down the rapids of the Fourth Canyon but this is a mere nothing compared to the falls themselves. The river begins its plunge by accelerating down Sluice Box rapids before smashing into the massive Mason Rock to be parted in a virgin-white catastrophe of foam that tumbles over the brink into the chaotic maelstrom below. It is an overwhelming display of unchallengeable energy, typifying the strong heart of a Nature whose spirit has the power to create, nurture or destroy with an incomprehensible whim.

To the north of the falls is Sunblood Mountain, named by a pilot for its startling colours displayed for him in the last rays of a setting sun. It towers a mile into the sky as a magnificent backdrop to the cataract. This mountain gives me the worst turbulence so far; nothing severe, just a firm shaking combined with a soon passed, six hundred feet-per-minute descent that serves to remind me just how good the sky has been to me so far today.

The valley widens and below me the river becomes lazy. Its colour is now a pale blue green, caused by the flour-silt of glacier melt-water which it carries in suspension. The South Nahanni above the falls has idled along in indecision for aeons of time, apparently not knowing which way to turn next as its meanders take it this way and that.

My attention is suddenly caught by a small lake brilliant with deep cobalt blue waters lightening to a pure white rim that puts me in wonderment at its striking beauty.

The river here is serene and so am I. Gone is the anxiety of uncertainty over weather and the possibility of turbulence in the mountains, leaving me with the unadulterated pleasure of flight and a satisfying oneness with the creator of this place.

I can now see ahead to my next turning point at Rabbitkettle Lake, beyond it are the nine thousand foot peaks of the Ragged Range Mountains thrusting hungrily upwards like broken teeth. At Rabbitkettle there are hotsprings, which as the name implies were said to be hot enough to cook a rabbit. It was near here in January 1936 that Joe Mulholland and Bill Epler came to trap Marten for their fur. When in the spring they failed to return to brother Jack Mulholland's trading post at Nahanni Butte a search was begun. Their cabin was discovered burned to the ground and no trace of either of their bodies has been found to this day.
 
 

The South Nahanni was once the home to the Naha Indians who ranged the whole river from their base camp at Prairie Creek in Deadmen Valley. The Naha themselves believed in a protector, Ndambadezha, The Good Giant Spirit who was supposed to dwell in the Rabbitkettle Hotsprings. They were a ferocious tribe who raided and fought widely. It was this reputation that brought about the legend, still commonly held at the turn of the century, that told of a people, hostile to strangers, who were apparently dominated by a woman of partly European origin. Reputation also had it that they had killed a number of white pioneers. However, they were eventually chased out of the area by the peaceful Dene Indians in the 1880's who still inhabit Nahanni Butte Village and Fort Liard.

This country certainly has a presence, of that there is no doubt in my mind; and as I look down, I can not help myself wondering whether it is still old Ndambadezha himself, forever being great and good.
 

I am now one hundred and fifty miles from Nahanni Butte and it is one hour and forty five minutes since my takeoff from Fort Liard. I take a couple of photographs of Rabbitkettle Lake and almost reluctantly turn around, towards the south-east, on the next leg of my navigation, towards Two Cones Mountain along the deep glaciated valley of Irvine Creek. To my left are several beautiful lakes set in steep valleys amidst dense vegetation. For some inexplicable reason they cry out to be visited and I promise myself that the next time I come this way I will.

Irvine Creek is another of this region's marvels. It flows through a 'U' shaped valley a little less than three miles wide and almost a mile deep, with mountain peaks on either side rising to over seven thousand feet. Its features were carved millions of years ago by the glacier that divided the Ragged Range to the south-west from the Mount Hamilton Gault to the east. The tumbling waters of the creek appear to be little more than a diminutive feature on the chasm's floor, when set against the amazing scale of the towering cliffs either side.

Ahead of me Irvine Creek joins the Flat River (ironically known to the Dene Indians as White Boiling River). Here I turn right to follow the river west for a few miles to a place that I particularly want to see. The valley spreads out and ahead I see the perfectly described form of Two Cones Mountain. In the foreground is the Flat River Canyon, the Cascade of the Thirteen Steps of old, and beyond is McLeod Creek twisting down from the far off McMillan Lake in the east, passing as it does the fateful valley of Moose Creek.

My blood stirs; for this is by reputation the Gold Country.
 

It was from here that the McLeod brothers, by their own admission, worked the gold found on their first trip to the region and it is here that the several mini gold-rushes of the past ninety years have been focused. It is true enough that gold has been found here over the years but not in any significant quantity and certainly not with sufficient value to repay the energy that men have expended toiling over it. But the legend goes on still, because the ardour of a hungry gold prospector is not damped by failure, there is always another, whispered tale, hunch or bend in the river to be followed.

Albert Faille first came to the Flat River in 1927 and spent the second half of his life trapping and prospecting from his winter cabins on the Caribou River as well as those on Irvine and Borden Creeks. Faille ranks with Field, Patterson, Turner and Kraus as one of the great men of the Nahanni. Fiercely independent, he was able to live in the wild country for years at a time and never succumbed to the depressive illness known to Northern people as 'shanty rot' or 'cabin fever' that blighted and in many cases killed, so many others who tried to live in isolation.

Faille firmly believed that the lost gold-fields were to be found, not on the Flat River but on the South Nahanni at a location he knew as Murder Creek. Others were equally adamant that the site was at Bennett Creek. This is the next creek, a few miles, up the Flat River from McLeod Creek and was the one originally called Gold Creek by the McLeods. However, it seems likely from interpretation of various personal accounts that the lost gold of the Nahanni is not to be found on McLeod Creek at all but on a creek much closer to Virginia Falls. This would make sense of the location of Jorgenson's cabin and back up the beliefs of Faille, Field and Kraus. The argument goes on interminably amongst mortals but in the end it is likely that the South Nahanni has kept its mysterious secret.
 
 

I just gaze around, lost in the atmosphere and history of the territory.

Small lakes dot the broad, verdant river-valley and glisten from a sun still high but already beginning to slant towards the west. This is not a place of broken dreams, because for many who come here it is a palace of discovery, not of their fortune perhaps, but certainly of themselves. It becomes and is, spiritually, very special.

Regretfully for me, my time to leave this north-land of enchantment and head downstream with the cascades of the Flat River back to its joining with the South Nahanni, comes all to soon. I follow the broad valley back past Irvine Creek and on. With Jorgensen Creek under the port wing I can see ahead the deep cut bounds of a triangular valley around the broad grey delta at the mouth of the Caribou River which sweeps out of the mountains from the south. From here I deviate my route away from the river to cross the mountains to the north and take one final look at Virginia Falls before retracing my course down the South Nahanni.

The sun is behind me and its early evening light brings new life to the mountain slopes and canyon walls with a relief of dark shadows. I fly south of the river watching its course as the scenery about it changes continually. Once again Deadmen Valley opens before me, inviting and challenging as before, a gateway to adventure. Too soon the First Canyon is beneath me again, then Yohin Lake and the Splits. I imagine the feelings of returning Pioneers emerging from the First Canyon and safely crossing the rapid called Lafferty's Riffle, the last significant river hazard on their way back to civilisation at Fort Simpson. They must have been filled with contrasting emotions, the sadness of parting combined with a thankful air of deliverance. In the distance beyond Twisted Mountain I see, as they would have done, the magnificence of Nahanni Butte.

I have been airborne now for a little over three hours on my flight of a lifetime. From the Butte I turn south to follow the Liard River upstream. My planned route will take me over Fort Liard and on to Fort Nelson for a night stop, a further hour and a half flying time. I glance back to the mountains, a little hazier now and as I look 'up-sun', they have a tranquil appearance. Soft in the cream light of evening they become again the dream that once rose from the pages of a book in the dark nights of a Cornish winter. It has been a day of coinciding chance so far, one that was meant-to-be; given perhaps by Ndambadezha or some other good great spirit. But the Northlands have not yet finished bewitching me, there is something else they want to give me to take away.
 
 

Practicalities intervene in my reflective thoughts. Mindful of fuel economy I have maintained altitude and am still at nine thousand feet in the now cloudless sky. Fort Liard appears below and although Fort Nelson is still over a hundred miles away, I decide it is worth giving them a call on the radio to let them know I am still safe on my flight-plan. They come back with a Sig-Met report, a weather warning, telling of thunderstorms with squalls gusting to forty knots, which are lying in a storm front across my route. I make an easy decision and inform them of my intention to stay at Fort Liard for the night.

The heat of the day has passed as I park once again outside the terminal-log-cabin. A haze of northern mosquitoes rush to greet me as I open the cabin door and stretch myself. I set up my tent beside the Cessna and feast on the remainder of my packed lunch while I await the promised storms. The wind and rain never come. One active cell passes to the west and into the mountains towards the Nahanni, but other than a flurry of wind and some patchy cloud the airfield remains dry. And I, after a stroll around the village retire, tired but contented, to my sleeping bag.

I am awoken at three thirty in the morning by a sound that will live with me forever. It is an eerie, yet beautiful noise that is called, by inhabitants of these parts, the Song of the North. From the woods all around the airfield and village come the chorusing howls of Coyotes and Wolves that rise and build into a continuous sonorous wail. Occasionally there is added the nasal call of one of the deer family. I listen awhile to these incredible night sounds before falling contentedly asleep once more.

In the morning I make an early start for the hour long flight back to Fort Nelson. A few large spats of rain hit the windscreen as I climb out and turn south-east to follow the Petitot River. The visibility is good and the patchy cloud is soon behind me as I continue my climb to five thousand feet. The vastness of the plain engulfs me as I follow the ribbon of khaki gravel in the trees. In seemingly no time at all I am following the ridge of hills to the west of Fort Nelson. Air-traffic clear me for a straight in approach and I touch down on a puddly runway, still wet from the previous night's storms. They are still talking about them in the tower, including the condition of the duty Controller's nerves after enduring three lightening strikes to the tower during her watch.

After forty minutes on the ground I have filed my flight plan and refuelled and am off again heading south down the Alaska Highway. Rivers and trees pass beneath, the mountains edge up to my track from the west and recede again and soon I am back to the signs of agriculture and mankind's management of the landscape. I am filled with the curious sense of returning from another world. As I fly over Wonowon truck stop I can see Charlie Lake in the distance. Fort St John is just a few miles further on and my journey is drawing to a close. By the time my wheels touch the tarmac I have flown, since yesterday, ten hours and fifteen minutes and covered a distance of one thousand and seventy five miles. This is nothing amazing in terms of a statistic, it is barely noteworthy in fact, except for what it means to me, as a meridian of experience and a personal goal achieved. I had planned for and set off, more in hope that expectation of seeing anything of the great Northland or the South Nahanni, but a kismet of diverse circumstances coincided to leave ajar a door to another place. I peeped in and caught an infectious spirit, or perhaps it was after all, that the native spirit which the Naha embodied in old Ndambadezha had conspired to catch me.

I will no-doubt, return one day and walk those bush and forest trails, navigate the waters of the South Nahanni, and share in the dream of the McLeod Gold that others sought, because I too have been trapped in the same snare of enigma and enchantment set by Nature in that far away region of the Mackenzie Mountains.

But what of that gold and of the tales of mystery and intrigue. I leave you with a quotation of Raymond Patterson from the foreword, written in 1953, to his excellent book Dangerous River which recounts the tales of his travels in 1927.

'If certain passages seem a little vague as to topography it must be remembered that we went into the South Nahanni not primarily to trap but to prospect, and what we found there, or did not find, must, for some time yet remain our own secret.'

Raymond Patterson has passed on, so whatever secrets he did discover have returned, like loans repaid, to the beautiful River he borrowed them from: The South Nahanni.
 
 

James Woolford. Copyright 1996.

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Photographs Copyright James Woolford except Virginia Falls, Nahanni Ram Tourist Association.

Page updated 10th October 2002