Field & Stream and QUAD Ice Out Adventure

Doogie

• August 14 2009
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ATV adventure in northern Manitoba Photo: Mike Calabro

Quad Magazine contributing photographer Mike Calabro recently went on an epic fishing and ATV adventure in northern Manitoba with the guys over at Field & Stream Magazine (one of our sister publications). Calabro reported back that the trip was absolutely one of the most difficult trips he’d been on in recent years. Between all the issues with their equipment, the super-remote location, and getting stuck every five feet in  deep mud…well, actually, it is sounding exactly like a regular Quad Magazine adventure…We’re working on the story for our next issue, but in the meantime Nate Matthews over at Field & Stream put together a really cool online piece that’s worth checking out (link to full story after the excerpt below).

Ice-Out by Ice Road: Fishing Backcountry Manitoba by ATV

The town of Lynn Lake is the farthest up northern Manitoba you can drive during the summer. Lynn Lake is where the pavement ends and the muskeg begins, which means it’s a gateway to the best walleye, lake trout, and trophy northern pike fishing in the world.

Most visiting fishermen fly out of Lynn Lake from a floatplane base near the airport, heading for high-end trophy lodges you can only reach using wings. There is, however, one road leading north out of town. It is called the winter road, and it’s open only in January, February, and March, when it’s covered with ice thick enough to support the tanker trucks that carry fuel from Lynn Lake to a remote reservation town called Brochet.

The rest of the year, when the ground is soft, this road becomes an impassable swamp. It is little more than a trough in the taiga, a 250-kilometer bog that’s home to nothing but ducks, wolves, beavers, bears, and blackflies. Over the years a few locals have tried to reach Brochet on the road during the warm season, just to see if the trip could be done. They’ve tried it with trucks, with quads, and even with 6-wheeled ATVs. None made it farther than the first 5 kilometers. Until we arrived … (Read the full story on Field & Stream)