36"X48"  Acrylic on canvas on deep stretcher bars. No frame needed.
Price $4,200.00
Title: "Near Heaven's pass"

"Muskwa Kechika" by Wayne Sawchuck......an extraordinary photographic record of the Muskwa Kechika.

I had the pleasure to be invited back to the Muskwa Kechika this summer with wilderness guide and photgrapher, Wayne Sawchuk. (All the photos on this page are credited to him).

I also was honored to be in the company of three  friends on this trip, Nettie Wild, a film maker. Jason Lee, a wildlife biologist  and Andy Kadziolka, an optometrist.
Our task was to take a dozen or so packhorses from Muncho Lake over the mountains and valleys into a tiny remote place called Mayfield Lake.

I had flown by float plane into Mayfield lake last summer and had a terrific time with a group of artists exploring by foot as well as horses... so I had only a tiny bit of experience with the horses and the process of how to get the show on the road with the packhorses. My role was basically to stand and watch Wayne and stay out of his way as much as possible!

On this trip I wanted to try and pull my own weight as much as possible and not be a burden on everyone else. At the same time.... I hadn't a clue how to tie up a horse or bundle up the packs properly so that they didn''t unravel as the horses pushed and twisted their way through the bush or over the steep mountain trails and through the river crossings.

Wayne would patiently show us....... for the hundredth time ..........how to tie this or that knot. He got us out of so many situations, fixing a bridle with a tiny repair kit or showing us how to hand stitching a saddle that had come undone, as we sat around the campfire after a very long day.

It was an amazing adventure. The first two days were much too long..... and I have to admit that I wondered if I was up to the task. At the end of every day, we had to unpack everything from the horses and set up camp. There was no time to rest. We would get into camp, unload the horses and packhorses, set up a campfire, set up the tents, and then cook dinner, wash the dishes, wash ourselves in the stream and do the dishes and crawl into bed. I was exhausted and I needed my sleep:)
The next morning would be everything in reverse.... make breakfast, pack a lunch, pack all the  gear up and there was a ton of gear for the horses as well as our gear and food supplies. Sometimes one wondered if it would just be best to do away with the horses and travel lightly on foot..... but the advantage of the horses makes up for everything. They really did carry their own weight. Not like me!

The horses are so powerful.  When you see how much they pack and how they got us up from the valleys below up into the alpine in a relatively short time. They also made river crossings possible and we crossed rivers a hundred times. We counted!
Many times on steep slopes we would walk as well. But the horses really did make things happen. We travelled over two hundred kilometers.

We saw so much wildlife.  One day it would be a grizzly coming down the valley joining us for lunch and other times it was all of us struggling to haul one of the packhorses out of a hole in the river for an hour. We had good and bad weather but mostly good. One night we got as far as we could and it was getting very late at night and a howling wind was shaking the trees so much that they were crashing down with no logic. This one area had been hit by a forest fire and so the trees were all standing but they were black and dead and unstable. But we had to  set up camp anyway and so we did. The storm died down and we slept feeling fairly safe. The next morning we packed up everything and as we left one of the horses brushed up against a tree and it came crashing down among all our horses. Luckily it landed on the higher packs of the packhorses and narrowly missed hitting Andy.... but our group was then split and the horses at the back were spooked and wanted to catch up with the others on the other side and so they just bolted...with us along for the ride. My horse bolted down the entire length off the fallen tree and all I could do was try to avoid getting jabbed and speared by the sharp, hard ends of each branch..... I was like Jackie Chan Karate chopping my way down the entire length of the tree. Funny now but not then:)

So everyday something like this happened and we were rewarded with a developing friendship among our group and great scenery.

Some parts of the trip were slogging through bush and very uneven trails. The horses would constantly be sliding and bucking as they tried to keep their feet in the bog and mud. It was not a picnic ride. The trails were rough and very steep. The  rivers were swollen and some places were actually very scary. When we steered our horses into deep river crossing we put our trust in Wayne. He is someone who takes chances but his choices  are  based on a solid background of experience.
Things do go wrong and when you are in the middle of nowhere you feel that vulnerability but that is what makes it exciting too.

All in all ....it was a trip of a lifetime and I expect to get a handful of  paintings out of this trip. My advice is to get one of these paintings as they become available because they will be rare and exceptional.