Day 6 - August 23: Rabbitkettle Lake

The original plan for us to get to our put-in on the Nahanni was to get picked up in a float plane at Blackstone, then fly to Rabbitkettle Lake, where the plane would drop us off and leave us to portage to the river.  There are several advantages to this plan, the biggest one being that we wouldn't need to spend any more time in vans.  Unfortunately, because the water on the river was getting fairly low, a float plane was not a possibility.  So instead, we drove to Fort Simpson, and 3 hours, 2 bison, 1 bear, and 1 ferry later, we got to the smallest airport yet.  We would be flying to the river in this plane:

Because there are two bush plane "airlines" in Fort Simpson, we got to take advantage of both, meaning we were able to fly us and all our stuff to the river in three planes, rather than having to make three trips with one plane, which is the normal course of action.  While in Fort Simpson, we also picked up Jaroslav, the last member of our group, who'd missed the flight to Fort Nelson the day before.

Luckily for us, it was sunny out.  This is good because:
a) The pilots need to maintain visual contact with the ground when they're flying Cessnas;
b) We didn't need to wait around in Fort Simpson for a really long time waiting for the weather to clear up; and
c) The view out the window was pretty incredible.

The flight out was about an hour and a half, after which we landed at a non-airport similar in appearance to this one (it was a gravel bar on the side of the river, but it was a very busy gravel bar; while we were there another plane and a helicopter showed up).

One distinct advantage of flying in on wheels was that we didn't have to portage everything from Rabbitkettle Lake.  Which was wonderful, since "everything" amounted to a LOT of stuff.
 
Once our planes took off, it pretty much instantly clouded over, and we made the short (12 kmish) paddle to our first campsite, right across from Rabbitkettle Lake.

Our first campsite had a biffy, since almost everyone who paddles the river ends up staying either there or at the site across the river.

Our trip was finally underway!  No more driving around in vans!