It was a grey and miserable morning in Whitehorse. Having got up unnecessarily early, fuelled on nerves, our stomachs knotted with the pancakes we had hoped to relish as our last good meal for a while. We must have looked a sight, sitting in the otherwise respectable hotel foyer, expedition kit littered at our feet. After the events of previous few days our egos had been suitably chastised and we weren't taking any chances in missing our ride up to Mayo.

How confident we had been in Vancouver airport 37 hours before. Watching our bags loaded onto the plane and casually commenting to each other that it was surprising we hadn't been called to board yet. Top tip for anyone catching an internal flight out of Vancouver - they don't call you to board, the information boards seem to be there for fun as no information will appear on them, the "Gate C" sign doesn't actually mean you are at Gate C, only that you are getting warmer, and oh yes, the announcer to page missing passengers only can be heard the other side of security. It still makes me feel a little bit sick to think of it now, but sure enough we arrived just in time to see the plane door closed. So having arrived at the airport 3.5 hours early we still missed the flight! Parting with a transfer fee and having to pay the luggage overage fees all over again hurt the budget sheet but not as badly as dented pride. We had 10 hours to contemplate our stupidity waiting for the next flight, half of which was spent staring at a conveyor belt, waiting for our bags to come back.

All in all our arrival in Whitehorse wasn't all that we imagined and we would have been just glad to hit the hay and sleep off a bad day. There was one last surprise for us though. In our haste to create a third bag to avoid additional charges I had accidentally packed the 1kg of plaster of Paris loose. We had had grand plans of using it to cast bear tracks. It had plans of it's own though including covering all our waterproofs and footwear. Our heads just about exploded at this point. How on Earth did we think we could carry off an ambitious wilderness journey if we couldn't even pack properly or get on a plane!? It was raining. Mixing plaster and rain would be bad. We decided to deal with it in the morning!

So you see, having spent a lot of the previous day trying to recover the kit and generally feeling pretty stupid, we were not the excited bunnies we should have been waiting for the outfitters to pick us up. Fortunately the pace was about to pick up. Out of the gloom appeared the van complete with bright red canoe on top and we were off. 

Coming from the densely populated diddy British Isles the space and distance in North America is consistently extraordinary. When we were planning the trip the distance between Whitehorse and Mayo didn't look like much - a short hop. Six and a half hours later we pulled up at the jetty belonging to Black Sheep Aviation.

Everything about this scene shouted at us that we were finally living the expedition we had dreamed about for so long. Beaver aircraft looking resplendent on the placid water framed by spruce covered hillsides. Before we knew it the boat was lashed to the undercarriage and we shoehorned ourselves in.

This was the first time either us had been up in a float plane and I found it amazing how short the take off was. Soaring through turbulent skies we snapped away at the incredible scenics between slightly unnerving drops in altitude caused by the turbulence over the mountains.

Sometimes ignorance is bliss, and it may have been a co-incidence, but I did get a little nervous when Harry, the pilot, reached for the Spot Tracker (beams out GPS position in event of a crash) on the dash to make sure it was working after a particular bumpy bit!

Our first glimpse of the Wind River was really special. Sunlight glinting off its braided channels it appeared like liquid silver draining through the wild landscape. As my heart began to float to poetical places so it plummeted as Harry banked hard to bring us in over Lake McClusky. Trying to stay professional and keep the cameras rolling I couldn't help but glance over at our able pilot to make sure he had meant to throttle back to pretty much the point of stall. This was a man who knew his business. Despite the cross winds, and the lake being the size a postage stamp, he executed the most perfect landing I've ever experienced. The really show off part of it though was, having switched the engines off on landing, the plane just smoothly floated under momentum to stop perfectly by the dilapidated jetty.

Some of the best white water sections of the Dart Loop

http://vimeo.com/65338800