From Wawa to James Bay by snowshoe: reflections on a 72-day journey

It's a 72 day hike from Wawa, ON, to the shores of James Bay.

Dave and Kielyn Marrone, who run a travel adventure company called Lure of the North, led a team of eleven snowshoers through the wind, ice and snow of northern Ontario to complete the trek, starting in January and finishing on icy shores near Moose Factory in early April.  

By foot, the group covered almost 700 kilometres across traditional Indigenous routes, enduring temperatures that plummeted to -40 overnight.

Dave said the last half of the trek was easier than the first, as the January sun turns the snow "nice and crusty," making for an easier journey by snowshoe.

"We were getting up at 4 a.m. and it takes us a couple of hours to just sort of wake up, pack up sleeping bags, get breakfast cooked, and then knock down the tents and clean up the site and pack up the toboggans," Dave said.

After striking the campsite, the team would head out, usually walking for 6 hours through temperatures that for the first half of the journey, rarely rose above -20 degrees celsius.

"As the weather started to get warmer, we were finding that in the afternoon the snow was starting to get quite soft," he said. "Travel was just much, much easier during the colder morning, the start of the day."

But it was in these early mornings that the team encountered a daily highlight of the expedition, Dave said. 

"Every morning, around 6:00 am, we would start in the dark and walk into these spectacular sunrises."

Then around noon, the team would stop to set up camp – a three hour process that included searching for and splitting standing dry firewood. 

The group even followed a Lure of the North tradition– on a warmer day, the team would chip out a hole just big enough to dunk themselves in.

"It started as a learning experience, to show people to take some of the fear away from going through the ice and to show people that you don't instantly turn into an ice cube and die," Dave said. "You do have some time to react."

"But we realized it's just a lot of fun as well."

The team's final destination was the shores of James Bay, which took them through Moose Cree First Nation land. 

"The river had been quite quiet, although traditionally people would have travelled all up and down the Missinaibi River," Dave said. "But most of the sections were now quite quiet."

"As we got on into Moosonee, then we saw more people traveling, people fishing on the river. We saw signs of people trapping."

"That was definitely a very neat part of the experience for us," he said. "To see other people living and traveling on the land."

[Nature] is going to give whatever she has to give, and it's up to you to work within her terms'- Kielyn Marrone, Lure of the North Adventures

The 72 day journey to the sea eventually ended just beyond Moosonee. 

Kielyn Marrone said finishing the journey on the shores of the frigid James Bay coast was an "incredible" way to wrap it up, as the days became longer and the sun helped bring temperatures above freezing.

"The week leading up to the last day was gorgeous," Kielyn said. "It was just pristine, bright, sunny, clear days. And so a lot of times we were wearing sunglasses, sunhats, and t-shirts."

But nature had other plans.

"That last day, the wind was howling," she said. "It was such a whiteout that if you had to stop to [urinate,] we had to stop the whole group and say, I've got to [go], because if they kept walking, you would lose them."

The whiteout eliminated any visual reference point for the travelers, which could be panic-inducing if they got separated from the group, she said.

"It was a good reminder of what we had come through, because the whole month of February was pretty brutally cold and the slush was deep," she said.

"So to have that final week, just being blissfully warm and beautiful…then that last day of crazy whiteout storm was a really good reminder of what we accomplished and what we dealt with all winter." 

Even with the extreme conditions, Kielyn said the dramatic finish was another highlight of the trip.

"We got back into our tent and we all just started laughing because it was so wild," she said. "You had to be on guard. You had to protect yourself the whole way, and you wouldn't dream of setting down your mittens for a second because they would just blow away."

"You would put your mitts down for a second to get a snack and they would fill up with blowing snow, almost immediately," she said. "It was certainly a wild end to the trip and definitely a highlight."

The Marrones, who live off-grid outside of Sudbury, are now planning for their next trip, an expedition to the northern tip of Baffin Island to guide people through a Narwhal-sighting tour.

Kielyn said she expects people who undertake the adventure to share some of the same qualities as her snowshoe team. 

"A willingness to basically give yourself over to the experience and having that flexible attitude," she said. "Of being able to handle whatever comes your way."

"Because with any good adventure, you have really no control over what it will become. Because nature doesn't care whether you're there or not."

"She's going to give whatever she has to give, and it's up to you to work within her terms."