ADVENTURE SUGGESTIONS
Sundogs guests engage with the forest and lakes of the southern edge of the great boreal embraced by the season of snow. The million-acre wilderness of Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan, Canada, is not a backdrop but rather the context for the adventures.
Choose your experiences from this imaginative collection crafted by Sundogs to make your multi-day trips.
Contact us for details on each of the adventures below and how to combine them for a Boreal Forest Winter - Exposed!
Where Beaver Rest & Where Otter Play
Wildlife Tracking
World Beneath The Snow - Snow Caves & Small Mammals
Lake Ice Secrets
How To Build A Fire and other Essential Winter Skills
Night Sky Watching Boreal Style
Bannock & Tea With The Local Folk
Still Sit - Quiet As a Vole In The Big Silence
Dogsledding Excursions - half day to overnight
Overnight In The Backcountry Under Canvas
Read on to get the real flavour of
Boreal Forest - EXPOSED!
Sundogs Sled Excursions
Box 212 Waskesiu
Saskatchewan CANADA S0J 2Y0
306.960.1654
Copyright (c) 2017 Sundogs Sled Excursions
Group size is a from two to a maximum of six, depending upon the activities selected. No experience is necessary, just a desire to try new ways to engage yourself with the forest. We provide guests with all insulated winter outer wear and gear required.
When not in the forest or on a lake, guests enjoy relaxing at the Elk Ridge Resort and take in all this 4 star resort has to offer. Rates determined by adventures, transportation and duration chosen by guests. We are happy to provide these details upon request including sample itinerary.
Embrace the dynamism that is a frozen, boreal lake. You’ll cut a hole through the ‘crystal skin’ of the lake and peer into the world beneath the ice-locked waves. The mysteries of lake ice, its formation and how wildlife adapts to this force of nature are exposed. And top it off with a sip of something special from a lake-ice goblet that you will create!
How can you tame the cold in classic fashion? Warm up to winter with rosy cheeks and a snowflake on your nose. Enveloped in towering conifer forest, gather and split an armful of jack pine firewood. Strike flint to birchbark tinder. Woodsmoke wafts. Sense the heat of a hundred summers. Released it warms you for hours around the campfire.
This is the biggest ecoregion in Canada. For as much as it is forest it is also waterways. What life-ways allow wild animals to make this their home in winter and the other five seasons? That’s right. There are actually six seasons in this ecosystem. Guests learn how to recognize and respect the six seasons just as wildlife does to survive.
What might it feel like to be a river otter, glissading across the snow and ice? We’ll help you find out.
Put yourself in the shoes of some boreal wildlife to find out, why a grey wolf ‘at odds’ with the snow and how a lynx ‘evens those odds’?
Tune up your ears during a ‘still sit’ in a forest of aspen and spruce. Being ‘quieter than a mouse’ has its rewards for not only humans but for fox and owls as well. The sounds and incredible serenity of winter’s silence will welcome you.
Follow the tracks and signs of wildlife large and small. You might even need to ‘follow your nose’ while encountering the fox or wolf’s scent posts! Each snowfall leaves behind clean, white pages where paw prints and feather marks tell their stories. You’ll learn how to ‘read’ these stories and understand nuances of winter.
By understanding the patterns of wildlife movements, and through advance scouting, we do our best to select the most likely routes and locations to find interesting winter phenomena and the boreal’s wild inhabitants, as well as their tracks and signs.
This is the realm of the wolf, moose, river otter, red fox, elk, grey jay, red squirrel, great grey and barred owls to name just a few. You will discover how both iconic and lesser known species make their way in the ecosystem that is the boreal.
We can’t tell guests what Labrador tea from the muskeg tastes like so they’ll make for themselves and share a cup along with a bannock - a menu staple for some, a wilderness comfort food for others. Gather around the kitchen table with a few local people whose background on the land and stories about wildlife are fascinating. Some have worked for national parks others have spent a lifetime in the forest living with the land.
Crawl into a ‘quinzhee’ or snow shelter and appreciate that snow can actually be cozy, for as cold as it might seem! A tiny vole or mouse might not be able to expound upon the ecology of snow but try a visit to its world beneath the snow. You’ll learn how it may thrive or perish by the snow’s depth or dirth!
We can also include a very special focus on grey wolves. Prince Albert National Park, on the southern edge of this country’s great boreal forest, is wolf country. Undoubtedly, it is some of the best in the world for learning more about wild, grey wolves, and other fascinating wildlife which are the essence of this natural environment.
Elusive and wild, grey wolves are seldom seen but their tracks, signs and howls confirm their presence, perhaps days or only moments earlier. We never guarantee wolf sightings. The animals are just too elusive and the land too vast! What we will guarantee are unique opportunities to get closer to the real nature of the wolf and grasp an understanding of their niche in the boreal.
Are they masters of the landscape or simply another interesting boreal denizen? There is science about grey wolves and there is the sentiment about these wild canids. Along the boundary of the two are human perceptions and values.
Our guides, over years of traveling the boreal on our own and with guests have had many encounters with wild, grey wolves. We’ll share stories of what we’ve seen, heard and learned and ponder with you about what we have yet to learn.
Run with the ‘wolf’s cousins’ on a guided dogsled excursion. Snuggled in the warmth of your parka and toque, you slide down the trails with the sled dogs in the heart of wolf country. You’ll use props, demonstrations and natural artifacts to compare and interpret the physical and behavioral characteristics of domesticated sled dogs with the wolf in the wild.
