Jerry and Sasha Kobalenko: Kayaking Canada’s Newest National Park
Thursday, February 1 – 7:30 p.m. – Max Bell Auditorium, The Banff Centre
$8 at the door
When they were dropped off on the far northeastern tip of Labrador last summer, Canmore-based writer, photographer, and adventurer Jerry Kobalenko and his wife Sasha were prepared for a month of kayaking among the rocky inlets of a near-undiscovered coastline. What they weren’t prepared for were the polar bears.
“There are a lot of polar bears up there and at one point we were dealing with three bears every day, and usually within about 15 metres of our camp, so it was quite stressful,” Jerry told CBC Radio.
On February 1, Mountain Culture at The Banff Centre will kick off the 2007 Mountain Culture Speakers’ Series with an engaging multimedia presentation by the Kobalenkos, tracing their wilderness kayak journey in Torngat Mountains National Park Reserve. Canada’s newest National Park, it’s a remote and rugged location, visited by Inuit fishermen, herds of caribou, and wandering polar bears. The Kobalenkos were the park’s first official visitors.
The 500-kilometre trip took them south along the coastline, much of it penned in by soaring sea cliffs, making it a challenge to find places to stop. Those places were often where the couple encountered bears. “It was like camping at the dump in Churchill,” Sasha says about the daily meetings with foraging and terrifyingly dangerous polar bears.
The Mountain Culture Speakers Series continues in 2007 with Nils Larsen: Skiing in the Altai Mountains, on April 24, and David Zurick: Himalaya in the Geographic Imagination, on May 17.
— 30 —
