Reflections from the Wild: Paddling the Hess River, Yukon

I've spent years guiding others through the wild places of Northumberland, Scotland and Europe. I love watching people surprise themselves. Still, nothing quite prepared me for a small red inflatable canoe, shot gun, food barrel and few more essentials and the Hess River in northern Yukon.

Twelve days downriver. No phone signal, no markers, no sign at all of human life. Gravel bars for camp, spruce for windbreaks, cold glacial water doing its old, patient work. The river set the pace and changed each day. I learned to follow.

The Silence That Speaks Volumes

When that float plane took off from porter lake, I knew it was all on me now.

The quiet was different on the Hess. Not empty - alive. The hush of current on cut banks. The soft drip off a blade. A raven somewhere downriver, laughing at nothing I could see.

On the third morning I sat on a cobble bar with my wooden coffee cup and realised my shoulders had been up around my ears since we launched. Steam lifted off the rim. My nervous system finally exhaled.

Grayling dimpled the eddy line. Fresh moose and bear tracks stitched the wet margin - big, clean, heading upstream like a quiet note left for whoever came next. For a long time I didn’t move. The river didn’t need me to.

Learning to Be Small Again

The Hess taught scale by repetition: bend after bend, each one promising an opening and delivering another long sweep of water, spruce, sky. The map felt too small for the place in my hands.

I counted strokes, then stopped counting. Read the tongues, slipped across eddy fences, ferried to check a braid for sweepers. The current did most of the work when I let it. There was no rush. There couldn’t be.

Days settled into a steady rhythm: break camp, paddle, stop to scout a blind corner, push again. Land and water and weather, in conversation. Me, mostly listening.

At the end of day 2, I had an encounter that got my heart racing: two grizzlies - a mum and her cub - appeared on the far river bend. I spotted their outlines. After snapping a few photos, I was ready to move on, but the bears had other ideas and lingered stubbornly on my route or should I say me on their route. I fired a shot into the air, and that seemed to do the trick. Both bolted off into the willows, leaving me with adrenaline pumping and a story to tell.

Day 3 the river picked up pace into white water grade 3/4 rapids. Day 4, I nearly lost my boat - and all my equipment - when the current caught me out. I met another solo paddler called Joel; he spotted my runaway canoe and managed to save it before it floated off into more big rapids. Not long after, I rescued Joel’s boat when he had a close call too. Good job we had each other's backs out there, we made friends for life after that day.

The remainder of the journey was full-on: stunning canyons, incredible wildlife, and evenings spent catching Grayling where the river slowed. After the big portage on Day 9 around the mighty Frazer Falls on the Stewart river, I stopped in a wilderness cabin - which was a lifesaver. The current was painfully slow, the heat was intense, and having solid shelter for a night made a real difference.

The Gift of Discomfort

I won’t romanticise it. The river asked for attention. A cold headwind one afternoon turned kilometres into hours. We lined the canoe around a tangle of cottonwood sweepers, boots sliding on slick clay. Rain came sideways. Then hail.

Discomfort simplified everything. Food. Fire. Dry. Warm. The list got short, which made decisions easier. There’s a relief in that kind of clarity.

One morning the world was rimmed with frost - thwarts filmed with ice, water bottles crusted, the river breathing mist. I packed on a gravel bar with numb fingers: roll the bag, drop the tarp, cinch the food barrel , slide the drybags into the hull. No drama. No bargaining with the weather. Just the next right task.

At some point I realised I wasn’t fighting the conditions anymore. I was moving with them.

Rediscovering Presence

Back home in Northumberland, my head runs in parallel threads: safety, weather, group dynamics, kit, routes. It’s good work. It keeps me in planning mode.

On the Hess, that habit loosened. I noticed small things again. The colour shift in the water where a silted tributary joined, tea-brown to slate. A beaver’s tail-slap at dusk. An eagle’s shadow sliding over the gravel like a moving hole in the light, at dusk, a driftwood fire the smell of smoke on my clothes. None of it was forced. Presence arrived when I left space for it.

What the Wild Gives Back

People ask what I got from the trip. The truth is, it took things away. The urge to make the river go faster. The itch to control what didn’t belong to me. The low hum of urgency I carry without noticing.

What stayed was simpler: patience, attention, a quieter kind of confidence. On the Hess, good decisions were small and timely - eddy out, stand up, look, talk it through, set safety, walk if in doubt. No heroics. Just respect, one silly mistake could be your last!

Coming back to signal bars and schedules felt too bright, too quick. That faded, as it does. But the reference point remains.

One thing the Yukon teaches you fast is just how much the wild puts life into perspective.

After my close calls, big water days, and nights surrounded by pure silence, I found myself thinking about how much I want to share these moments with my family. There’s something about being out there - swapping stories, navigating together, looking out for each other - that makes you appreciate loved ones even more. Next time, I want my family with me to see, feel, and connect with the wild in their own way. These kinds of experiences remind you who matters most.

Bringing It Home

When days get loud now, I think about reading a line through moving water: breathe, look where you want to go, commit, make small corrections, keep paddling.

That’s what I try to make room for in my work at Northern Outdoor - on our rivers and coasts closer to home. Not adventure as spectacle, but time and space to notice, to adjust, to let the place do some of the teaching.

The Hess keeps running, indifferent to my plans. Somehow, that feels like a gift.