We made it to Fort Smith on Sunday, with a warm welcome by some of our closest friends at the airport. It was nice to be back with familiar faces again. Much of our week was spent visiting friends and sharing a good meal or two with them. Simon brought his new film, The Burning Question, to the Parks Canada theatre for two showings, which were thoroughly enjoyed by all. Our timing was perfect for the Decadent Dessert night put on by the ski club; a night of all the desserts one can eat, with a silent auction as well. We came home with a special mug for making tea and an enviro-shopping bag from none other but our favourite MP, Dennis Bevington. I should have got him to sign it too!

Kevin and Rita offered to take us out with their dog team. Simon and myself each took turns on the dogsled, and the other followed in the snow machine. What I really loved about the experience is how quiet it is when the dogs are running; all you can hear is the sled runners gliding along the snow. At -25 we bundled up very warmly and about 2 hours was enough for us. Kevin even let me be the musher for a while beside the highway!

I was glad when he took over and I didn’t have to navigate through the gates to their place.

The girls also took their first snowmobile ride. Many thanks to them for their generosity that day!!

We journeyed up to the wilds of the Northwest Territories to show our girls their origins. Emily was born in Yellowknife, so we showed her around the city she first laid eyes on. She is also named after the Aurora, so we got to show her first-hand what that is all about.

I hope she’ll remember it better this time around. We stayed at a great B & B; the Blue Raven. The owners, Tessa and Mike Macintosh, are wonderful hosts and we would recommend this place to anyone. They have 2 great bedrooms that have lofts above for the kids. I wasn’t overly impressed by the lack of hardiness as my two year old refused to walk the 5km jaunt from Old Town to Downtown in the -30 temps, but a cab saved the day and brought us to our favourite northern culinary treat: Arctic Char Nigiri at Sushi North in Yellowknife. YUM!

Some time was spent hanging out with our friend, Franko, who just happened to be in town at the same time. We also made a visit to the Northern Cultural Museum, with highlights of the dress-up area for kids with an old trapper’s cabin and wall tent.

Welcome back to huntadventures.ca! It’s been quite a while since our last blog adventure; Australia in 2006 with myself, Simon and baby Emily. It’s been a very BUSY four years since!

It is now our focus to do some varied, interesting and most importantly FUN activities in the next while.

It’s always best to start close to home.

Eagle Pass Heli-Skiing made this dream come true, graciously offering us a day of heli-skiing for both Simon and myself.  Our good friend, Jordy Shepherd, was our guide in the morning, and we skied with one of the owners, Andy, in the afternoon. On a sunshiney winter day, after 60 or so centimetres of fresh powder in recent days; we found places where our grins were a mile-wide.

Simon tried out our new POV camera, lent to us by our sister, Sylvia. Got some great footage which Simon recently made into a video as a birthday present. Jordy also got some priceless photos including a stop-action crash by Simon, complete with a big smile as he was going down.

It was an amazing day, skiing with only two other skiers in the A-Star helicopter, definitely small groups are the way to go with heliskiing.  Thanks again to the owners and staff at Eagle Pass for making this day so special!

See the video Simon made from this day!