Highlights! Review of last year. Successful Planes, Portages & Paddles fundraiser with W.P.P.; Membership up to 174 Active members and growing. Five webinars. Working to protect portages and habitat on the Wabadowgang Noopming Crown landsForest near Armstrong. New Board members elected. Expedition Committee to provide new trip log format soon. Cartography Committee starting up. Phil Cotton Legacy Award goes to Debbie Doyle-Sargent for her long efforts supporting The Wabakimi Project being our Fiscal Agent and filling our Canadian map store orders.
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Our Webinar Videos are available on our web site.
--Planning Your Wabakimi Trip --Top Five Skills for a Wabakimi Trip --The Greenmantle River: A Wabakimi Gem Thanks to Vern Fish, Rob Kesselring and Mary Jean Blaisdell for their presentations. Work continues on the Wabakimi Canoe Routes Guidebook. Laurence Mills will talk about this on March 7th-our next webinar. Our Expedition and Conservation Committees continue to meet. Our involvement with the Wabadowgang Noomping Forest (around Armstrong) continues. We're actively working on map improvements (Vol 5 in particular) and figuring out how we produce these in the future. We'll soon be up on the Go Adventure Planning Guide (Toronto/Ontario) and we're working on our Virtual Booth for Canoecopia (March 12-14). The border is still closed as everyone knows. Will it open this year? Some of us in the U.S. will be ready if it does. Meanwhile, we encourage our Canadian members to Explore Wabakimi. (We're getting many Canadian requests for map books and planning maps.) Please Join Us! We're supporting and encouraging Wabakimi paddlers. Our conservation advocacy continues. Protecting Crown Land canoe routes. Advocating for Woodland Caribou/and wildlife habitat protection. Addressing the WPP Park Management Plan (a future project for sure). Working with Wabakimi Provincial Park to address cleanup issues and more we hope!) Presented by FOW President Vern Fish on Sunday, November 29th 60 participants!
Parts 1 & 2. This wild little river may lack girth and length but it is long on adventure and isolation. Hidden in the far northwest corner of Wabakimi Provincial Park, the Greenmantle River provides access to a huge swath of protected wilderness. Vern Fish, along with Ray Tallent, Dan Otto and Hank Ostwald explored the Greenmantle and Shabuskwia Rivers to their takeout on the Albany River, June 18-28, 2019. (Originally scheduled for Canoecopia 2020)
We’re excited to announce our two first Business/Sponsor (OGOKI) members. Phil Cotton envisioned developing corporate support for FOW. We hope to expand this program to help promote the Wabakimi Area as a world-class canoeing destination. FOW member Tim Eaton is the principal behind Canoeing.com. This is a major site which reaches a broad audience interested in paddling, canoeing and wilderness exploration. Currently, FOW President Vern Fish has some four trip reports that can viewed on Canoeing.com, and Board Chair Dave McTeague has one trip from 2019. FOW Maps on Canoeing.com! We now have a FOLDED Planning Map for sale on Tim’s site, which is termed the “Historic” planning map to differentiate it from the Park’s planning map. The FOW’s five Wabakimi Canoe Route Volumes are also listed for sale on Canoeing.com. PaddlePlanner.com is a popular site which provides an interactive planning tool for major canoe areas. Avid paddlers themselves, Ben and Aurale Strege, and Jay Harris, the principals, are based in Duluth, Minnesota. Currently, the site is used mostly for BWCA/Quetico, but also Woodland Caribou and a number of other well-known parks. Putting up the new Wabakimi map may take a while, but when done, PaddlePlanner will identify appropriate FOW Map Volumes necessary for lakes/routes in any charted routes. After completing a route, paddlers can upload pictures onto the planning map and share comments about portages and campsites; all useful information for trip planning. With these new OGOKI members, FOW is establishing partnerships which will help to expose the Wabakimi Area and Friends of Wabakimi to a much wider group of people interested in exploring the Wabakimi Area. Potential Business/Sponsors can join FOW online…or drop us a note at [email protected] This is a “bundle” membership, so your entity can have more than one person included as a FOW member. We’ll be prominently featuring our Business/Sponsor members on this website and in our newsletters. We're happy to explore mutually beneficial arrangements that promote our goals.
See us at Canoecopia 2020 March 13-15, Madison, WI. https://www.paddlers.com/canoecopia/page.asp?pgid=1001
A first draft of our Wabakimi Canoe Routes Guidebook will be there to review. This will be the first comprehensive Wabakimi area guide.
We’re planning a get together Sat. evening. So check in with us at our table. The FOW Annual meeting with be held Sunday morning, 9:00 to 9:45 a.m. (Enter the adjacent Clarion Hotel via the front lobby where you will be directed to the Voyageur Room.) Members in good stand can vote; but all interested person may attend. Vern Fish will present his President’s report on our progress. Please connect with us at this event! Please considering joining us! Two FOW board members are presenting seminars: Vern Fish and Mary Jean Blaisdell!
Have you been thinking of taking a wilderness trip alone or with others and haven’t done so yet? In this presentation, Mary will take you on her personal journey of completing a 6-night solo in the Boundary Waters by taking one step at a time and planning for success. By setting small goals to achieve each trip and identifying and resolving apprehensions along the way, she upped her game a little at a time
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