Norfolk man completes 3,400-km Arctic journey
Adam Shoalts paddled and hiked his way from Long Point to Nunavik
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Modern-day explorer, author and public speaker Adam Shoalts knows how to travel light.
Starting from Long Point on April 24, Shoalts of St. Williams recently completed another trip to the Arctic. He hiked and paddled the entire three-month 3,400-kilometre journey from Lake Erie to Kangiqsualujjuaq, an Inuit village on the east coast of Ungava Bay, Nunavik, carrying enough dried food in his canoe to last up to one month.
“For this recent journey to the Arctic, I simply mailed the bare essentials – granola bars, dried fruit, some freeze dried meals, spare batteries, extra socks – to a few Canada Post offices along my route,” Shoalts said in an email. “Canada Post will hold the packages for two weeks, and I simply picked them up. I selected post offices that were right along the water, such as on the St. Lawrence River, so that I could easily leave my canoe on shore and walk to the post office.
“I travel as light as possible, so other than the fish I catch, I only eat one packed meal a day – usually something like pasta, rice, dried vegetables, that sort of thing.”
Over the years, Shoalts has completed many expeditions across Canada. In total, he estimates about 80 expeditions in Canada’s wilderness, many for the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and other organizations, as well as many personal trips just to satisfy his own curiosity and love of nature and adventure.
It’s a passion he developed at a very young age.
“I pretty much spent my childhood in the woods. Every chance I had I was out in the forest. With my father and brother, we used to make canoes and take them on trips.”
Most of his trips are solo journeys, but not always. His most recent authored book, The Whisper on the Night Wind, is about an adventure he did with a friend to try to find the ruins of a old fur trade post deep in Canada’s wilderness and solve a mystery connected with it.
“When I do solo journeys, it can be a little lonely at times, but I enjoy the solitude too. It really gives you a chance to appreciate the sheer majesty of truly wild places, how awe-inspiring and vast they can be.”
A solo journey across the Arctic in 2017, from Yukon to Hudson Bay, took Shoalts nearly four months.
“The distance of this year’s trip (3,400 km) was actually less than my 2017 solo canoe journey (4,000 km), so I just motivated myself by saying it’s not as far as that expedition. Plus, I had the benefit of the things I learned doing that (2017) journey, which made this one a bit easier. I also had better gear in many respects than I did five years ago.”
Most of his expeditions are in Canada, but he has also travelled in the Amazon jungle and elsewhere.
While in the Arctic he has encountered everything from bears to wolves, caribou and falcons – sometimes relatively close.
“I crossed paths with animals pretty much every day, which is nice when you’re alone for months to have some company. I take all the standard precautions around bears, but most of them I find don’t cause me any trouble. Lots of wildlife on my journey, right from the start at Long Point all the way north.
“Having an arctic wolf approach me and look me in the eye is one memory I’ll never forget.”
His 2022 Arctic journey was inspired by viewing migratory birds.
“I was at my house in St. Williams when I saw a peregrine falcon fly over the cornfield across the road. I thought to myself, ‘Wow, it’s amazing those falcons, and many other birds, migrate each spring all the way from Long Point to the Arctic. Why not follow them?’ So that’s what I did. I got out my canoe and on April 24, set off from Lake Erie to try to reach the Arctic coast.”
Navigating unexplored northern wilderness has its challenges, said Shoalts, especially when the weather is bad.
“Navigating can be a challenge sometimes, especially on misty or foggy days. On this recent journey, there were a few days in northern Labrador where the mist was so thick I could barely see five feet from my tent. Since the rivers there are full of dangers, like rapids and rocks, I had to wait for the mist to clear up before I could push on, or else just cautiously edge my way along the shoreline.”
Shoalts uses both old-fashioned maps and compass and a GPS. There are advantages and disadvantages to each, he said.
“In those remote locations, a GPS takes a while to load, since it has to reach a satellite orbiting the earth. When you’re paddling alone and battling wind or current, that can be a problem. You can’t take your hands off the paddle in strong wind or strong current to fiddle around with a GPS. In those situations, having a paper map is much better.”
Shoalts, 36, has lived all over Ontario, including three years in St. Williams, southwest of Simcoe. He has four published books (available through Amazon and Indigo) and is now writing a fifth book based on his recent Arctic journey, which he hopes will be published in 2023.
“They are all about exploring, although not always my personal explorations,” he said, noting his first book was published in 2015. “A History of Canada in 10 Maps is about bringing the past to life through the stories of explorers like Alexander Mackenzie and David Thompson.
“I think we’re all born with the urge to explore,” Shoalts summed up. “It starts with our own backyards, and goes from there. I began doing canoe trips when I was kid with my brother. By the time I was a teenager, I was doing solo trips, and by 2011 I was making a career of it the best I could. I’ve been fortunate that my books about my adventures and presentations I do on them has let me earn a living.”
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