For many people, our love for adventure started close to home. Our imagination ran wild as we built tree houses, forts, swam, fished, and so much more all from such a small area we were able to roam. When we were young, this “big” world was only a few square miles, but as we get older, we learn that there is so much more out there to be explored beyond our backyards. Many people typically fly or drive thousands of miles to begin these grand adventures and see other parts of the world, us included.  But why can’t these grand adventures start from the very spots our initial love of exploring and the outdoors began? Our own backyard. 

For a long time, Jonathon Rau and Zach Fritz have dreamt of doing a long canoe expedition to further explore the waterways of the north, its wildlife, culture and so much more while these places remain wild and free. For the past decade, we have been visiting these far-off places for periods of time throughout the summer, but each year they continue to call us back for more.  For the last five years, Zach has been researching routes that would allow us to see and do more. A route that would take us to the most remote places left in North America and start from the very place where his love for adventure began. The “route less paddled” is a 4,400KM canoe route that starts in May 2024 from Zach’s favorite place in the world, his family cabin in Big Falls, Minnesota. This small, yet cozy cabin, which was originally built over 100 years ago by the lumberjacks of the area, now serves as a jumping-off point for his family’s adventures into Minnesota’s great Northwoods. This place has always been considered his “backyard”, where he developed a love for the last remaining wild places and adventure. 

This route retraces a combination of dozens of historic and little-known waterways. It travels north to the barren lands and to Chantrey Inlet on the Arctic Ocean over the course of 4 months. Many of these waterways are seldom traveled and hardly connected. 

Anyone who has paddled in the north has long heard stories and expeditions among the north’s hard-to-reach rivers of the Churchill, Cochrane, Thlewiaza, Meadowbank, Dubawnt, Kazan, Thelon, and Back Rivers. In awe that these rivers wind through some of the world’s last remaining undeveloped swaths of land, they have been sitting at the top of our list of places to visit while they are still untouched. Then we thought, why not visit them all at once? Create a route that encompasses some of the best paddling, wildlife, and adventure you can find on a single trip. From here, our route was created as a way to see these wild rivers together.