It’ll be the journey of a lifetime for a pair of friends from Kelowna, B.C.
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Andrew Benoit and Jett Carey will hit the North Saskatchewan River for an overland trek of more than 800 kilometres across Alberta.
“We’ll be travelling by canoe across Alberta on the North Saskatchewan River,” Benoit said. “It’s about 850 kilometres from our put-in to our take-out. It should take between four and six weeks depending on weather and what the water’s doing.”
Benoit said he has lived in Kelowna for four years after graduating during the COVID-19 pandemic and working remotely.
“I grew up in Lloydminster, but Jett grew up in Vernon,” Benoit said, noting they met through mutual friends.
The plan to canoe across Alberta was born as his interest in the route grew.
“I just thought it would be really cool to canoe all the way across Alberta,” he said. “I was looking into it one summer and was, like, ‘Wow, this is something that’s kind of feasible.’”
From there, the idea to support a good cause came into play.
“We’re doing this all to raise money for two charities: the Terry Fox Foundation and Ecotrust Canada,” Benoit said. “We decided we could easily use this to do something good and raise money for charity.”
In choosing the organizations, he said they knew they wanted to support an environmental effort, while the cancer charity hits close to home for Benoit.
“We knew we wanted to do something related to an environmental effort, which is Ecotrust Canada,” he said. “We also knew we wanted to do something cancer-related. My mother passed away from cancer a few years ago, so that was definitely something I wanted to do.”
He explained they have been planning the trip for a couple of months and are prepared to face the wilderness challenge head-on.
“We’re pretty used to multi-day, living-out-of-a-backpack trips,” Benoit said. “We’re both very used to being out there in the wilderness alone, so we’re pretty confident about our survival abilities.”
The first week will require extra attention as they first hit the water.
“The first week is going to be constant hyper-vigilance of water conditions,” he said. “It’s very close to the glacier — there’s a couple of glaciers that feed the river — but it’s very close to glaciers there. If we get a lot of hot weather in that area in the days leading up to our planned put-in date, then the rapids might be too intense for us to run.
“As we get further downriver, there are a lot of other obstacles, like rapids and logjams, that we might have to portage around.”
Their planned launch date is July 18, and they hope to be finished before Sept. 1. They have already been out on the water practising for the journey.
Each week, the pair will take a full rest day, with the goal of travelling 30 kilometres per day, camping along the way and stopping in major centres to resupply.
“We’ll have about seven to 12 days of food in the canoe,” Benoit said.
The pair have seen strong support already, raising $5,200 of their $8,500 goal. Benoit added they have also received gear donations from local Kelowna businesses. Those looking to donate can do so through their Charitable Impact page.
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