Naats'ihch'oh National Park Reserve

National Park Reserve Of About 4,850 Square Kilometres Established In 2014 At The Headwaters Of The South Nahanni River, Immediately North Of Nahanni National Park Reserve; Named For The Mountain The Shuhtagot'Ine Call Naats'Ihch'Oh · Tulita, Northwest Territories

Nahanni National Park Reserve protects the South Nahanni from Virginia Falls downstream. NAATS'IHCH'OH PROTECTS WHERE THE RIVER STARTS - about four thousand eight hundred and fifty square kilometres of the Mackenzie Mountains immediately north of it, established in 2014 after negotiation with the Sahtu Dene and Metis. The park is named for the mountain the SHUHTAGOT'INE, the mountain Dene, call Naats'ihch'oh, which is a place of great spiritual significance and stands at the head of the watershed. This is the country the classic South Nahanni paddling trips launch into: the Moose Ponds, the Rock Gardens, and a hundred kilometres of continuous whitewater before the river even reaches Nahanni's boundary. It is also Dall sheep, mountain goat, grizzly and woodland caribou country. THERE ARE NO ROADS, NO TRAILS AND NO FACILITIES, and visitors in a year are counted in dozens.

Headwaters of the South Nahanni River, Sahtu region, Mackenzie Mountains, Tulita, Northwest Territories, Canada

NO GATE, NO VISITOR CENTRE, NO TRAILS AND NO FACILITIES. THE SEASON IS ROUGHLY LATE JUNE TO EARLY SEPTEMBER, bounded by ice and by float plane operations. ACCESS IS BY CHARTERED FLOAT PLANE OR HELICOPTER, generally from Norman Wells, Fort Simpson or Watson Lake, and there is no road of any kind. PARKS CANADA REQUIRES REGISTRATION AND DE-REGISTRATION and a mandatory orientation for every trip. MOST VISITORS ARE PADDLERS launching a South Nahanni expedition from the Moose Ponds, which begins with roughly a hundred kilometres of CONTINUOUS WHITEWATER through the Rock Gardens - this is expert water and parties have come to grief on it. Licensed outfitters run most trips. Costs run well into the thousands. Confirm everything with Parks Canada's Nahanni-Naats'ihch'oh field unit long in advance.

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