Together the the members of Canoe Ungava have 33 years of experience leading wilderness expeditions, with approximately 4000 collective days in the field. They all are certified as Wilderness First Responders. Their professional certifications include: a Maine Guides License, 2 ACA Level 4 Whitewater Canoeing instructors, a Level II Ski instructor, an ACA Whitewater Kayaking Instructor, an Intermediate National Poling Champion, one member earned 3rd place (out of three) in the Women's National Poling Championships. They are paddlers, gardeners, climbers, artists, musicians, sailors, bakers, tea drinkers, beer brewers, fisher(wo)men, wood workers, van dwellers, and some of them go bushwhacking on their days off. They are united in their thirst for challenge and adventure.
Beth Jackson
Beth grew up in south central Indiana. Her earliest memory was picking apart a squished turtle with her older brother. She learned to fish at the same time she was learning to walk. At the age of 2 she caught a three pound largemouth bass, her dad saved her just before the fish drug her into the pond. Later that year she sacrificed one of her new shoes when she threw it into the lake. She told her dad, "I catch a big bass." Camping was forever etched into her memory when her dad cut chewing gum out of her hair with a pocket knife when she fell asleep in a hammock.
At 16, Beth spent hours requesting brochures from Canadian outfitters that offered canoe fishing trips. She had never been in a canoe, but she did everything she could to convince her dad it was a good idea. He didn't bite. Then, Beth found Earlham College. She worked all summer at a science museum to save money so she could participate in a 30 day wilderness orientation program. In Wabakimi Provincial Park, in Ontario, Beth cut her teeth. She spent her 18th birthday doing 15 uncut portages and paddling 25km in the pouring rain. By the time she saw the brilliance of green and yellow flashing lights filling the sky, she was hooked, line and sinker.
Sitting in the Lily Library at Earlham Beth Googled "open solo canoe whitewater" at the recommendation of Steve Melamed. Within days of graduation Beth drove to Canada, and spent a week at Madawaska Kanu Center, a whitewater padding school. Twelve years later, there is nothing she enjoys more than teaching whitewater canoeing (well, except poling up river).
Those experiences turned into a career as a wilderness educator. Beth has worked with many different programs and schools all over the US, Costa Rica, Panama, and Brazil. She couldn't be more grateful for Hurricane Island Outward Bound. It's there, in the North Maine Woods that she found her place. Beth plans hard, challenging expeditions. She travels up river more than down river, loves to portage, and break bread. Challenge pushes people. And in the wilderness there aren't easy outs. Those moments, pushing oneself to go above and beyond, more than one ever imagined possible, that is at the soul of wilderness education. The weather will always change, the sun will come out again, the loons will sing. The end of the day reflections, the after rapids smiles, the tears of accomplishment after a portage; those moments are the magic of wilderness adventure.
When Beth began planing Canoe Ungava, the route evolved. It got longer, more remote, the navigation more complicated. 40 days will be Beth's longest expedition to date. She craves adventure and couldn't be more excited. Bears! Caribou! Musk Ox! Arctic Tundra! Northern Lights! No Plastic! Brook Trout! Arctic Char! Fresh Bread! And her best friends. She couldn't ask for better, more talented, up for challenge, and compassionate expedition members.
Beth would like to extend an extra special THANK YOU to the Hurricane Island Outward Bound Community and the Kellogg family. Without their support this trip would not be possible.
Beth grew up in south central Indiana. Her earliest memory was picking apart a squished turtle with her older brother. She learned to fish at the same time she was learning to walk. At the age of 2 she caught a three pound largemouth bass, her dad saved her just before the fish drug her into the pond. Later that year she sacrificed one of her new shoes when she threw it into the lake. She told her dad, "I catch a big bass." Camping was forever etched into her memory when her dad cut chewing gum out of her hair with a pocket knife when she fell asleep in a hammock.
At 16, Beth spent hours requesting brochures from Canadian outfitters that offered canoe fishing trips. She had never been in a canoe, but she did everything she could to convince her dad it was a good idea. He didn't bite. Then, Beth found Earlham College. She worked all summer at a science museum to save money so she could participate in a 30 day wilderness orientation program. In Wabakimi Provincial Park, in Ontario, Beth cut her teeth. She spent her 18th birthday doing 15 uncut portages and paddling 25km in the pouring rain. By the time she saw the brilliance of green and yellow flashing lights filling the sky, she was hooked, line and sinker.
Sitting in the Lily Library at Earlham Beth Googled "open solo canoe whitewater" at the recommendation of Steve Melamed. Within days of graduation Beth drove to Canada, and spent a week at Madawaska Kanu Center, a whitewater padding school. Twelve years later, there is nothing she enjoys more than teaching whitewater canoeing (well, except poling up river).
Those experiences turned into a career as a wilderness educator. Beth has worked with many different programs and schools all over the US, Costa Rica, Panama, and Brazil. She couldn't be more grateful for Hurricane Island Outward Bound. It's there, in the North Maine Woods that she found her place. Beth plans hard, challenging expeditions. She travels up river more than down river, loves to portage, and break bread. Challenge pushes people. And in the wilderness there aren't easy outs. Those moments, pushing oneself to go above and beyond, more than one ever imagined possible, that is at the soul of wilderness education. The weather will always change, the sun will come out again, the loons will sing. The end of the day reflections, the after rapids smiles, the tears of accomplishment after a portage; those moments are the magic of wilderness adventure.
When Beth began planing Canoe Ungava, the route evolved. It got longer, more remote, the navigation more complicated. 40 days will be Beth's longest expedition to date. She craves adventure and couldn't be more excited. Bears! Caribou! Musk Ox! Arctic Tundra! Northern Lights! No Plastic! Brook Trout! Arctic Char! Fresh Bread! And her best friends. She couldn't ask for better, more talented, up for challenge, and compassionate expedition members.
Beth would like to extend an extra special THANK YOU to the Hurricane Island Outward Bound Community and the Kellogg family. Without their support this trip would not be possible.
Steve Melamed
Steve’s fondest childhood memories revolve around exploring the woods and waterways of Maine. Whether it was sailing on the Penobscot bay in his dad’s small sailboat, jumping from rock-to-rock on the rugged coast line of Acadia National Park, or exploring his wooded backyard with a stolen kitchen knife to whittle with, he has always drawn strength from his time in the outdoors. At age 12, he paddled his first whitewater river (the East Branch of the Penobscot) and still vividly remembers the fear and exhilaration of the first rapid on that river. After that experience, Steve went on to go on more and longer expeditions into more and more remote parts of first Maine and then Canada. On one of those expeditions he canoed down the entire Allagash Wilderness Waterway, and then poled back up it! Although adept at poling now, he remembers just how maddeningly difficult it was at first.
Although whitewater canoeing was Steve’s first love, he decided as a teenager to try whitewater kayaking, mostly because he had no mentors to show him how to solo canoe. In a kayak, he progressed to paddling class V whitewater, and became an ACA certified instructor, but always felt that he wasn’t pursuing his true calling. When he began working for Hurricane Island Outward Bound, he finally got into a solo whitewater canoe, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Steve currently lives in Vermont very close to the Mad River, and paddles it regularly. He is a Ski Instructor at Stowe Mountain Resort in the winter, an Instructor and White-Water Canoeing trainer for Hurricane Island Outward Bound in the summer. He has a small business building furniture when he finds the time between those jobs. Although a lifelong dream, he has never been this far north on expedition before, and he feels privileged to be able to do so with such a fundamentally amazing team.
Steve’s fondest childhood memories revolve around exploring the woods and waterways of Maine. Whether it was sailing on the Penobscot bay in his dad’s small sailboat, jumping from rock-to-rock on the rugged coast line of Acadia National Park, or exploring his wooded backyard with a stolen kitchen knife to whittle with, he has always drawn strength from his time in the outdoors. At age 12, he paddled his first whitewater river (the East Branch of the Penobscot) and still vividly remembers the fear and exhilaration of the first rapid on that river. After that experience, Steve went on to go on more and longer expeditions into more and more remote parts of first Maine and then Canada. On one of those expeditions he canoed down the entire Allagash Wilderness Waterway, and then poled back up it! Although adept at poling now, he remembers just how maddeningly difficult it was at first.
Although whitewater canoeing was Steve’s first love, he decided as a teenager to try whitewater kayaking, mostly because he had no mentors to show him how to solo canoe. In a kayak, he progressed to paddling class V whitewater, and became an ACA certified instructor, but always felt that he wasn’t pursuing his true calling. When he began working for Hurricane Island Outward Bound, he finally got into a solo whitewater canoe, and he hasn’t looked back since.
Steve currently lives in Vermont very close to the Mad River, and paddles it regularly. He is a Ski Instructor at Stowe Mountain Resort in the winter, an Instructor and White-Water Canoeing trainer for Hurricane Island Outward Bound in the summer. He has a small business building furniture when he finds the time between those jobs. Although a lifelong dream, he has never been this far north on expedition before, and he feels privileged to be able to do so with such a fundamentally amazing team.
Eli Walker
Eli remembers learning how to spell the word "ptarmigan" at the age of 5. Plopped down in one of those tiny kindergartener-sized chairs, he was much more interested in the actual words on the Arctic Mammals coloring page than the 4 fatty crayons designed specifically for the clumsy fingers of a body still learning fine motor movements. Musk ox, ptarmigan, caribou. They were all animals familiar to him from his mom's Hood River canoe expedition slides. He grew up camping in the same Moss tent ("the tent design that revolutionized our relationship to the great outdoors...") his mom had used on the Hood.
At 16, he spent five weeks canoeing in Central Quebec with The Chewonki Foundation and fell in love. That was the summer he decided to make living outdoors part of his career and lifestyle. A decade later, he was invited on a 20-day expedition on the Coppermine River in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Despite being a bit strapped for money, he said yes without hardly thinking about it. Of course he would go! The trip was spectacular and left him wanting more- more days, more bugs, more wind, more caribou.
For Eli, excitement feels like an understatement. It's more like this incessant hum deep inside. What is he excited about? Pretty much everything. He has never done a 40-day expedition without any resupplies or support. He is curious to see how the reusable food bags hold up and how all the dehydrated food turns out. He loves that he can't just read somebody else's trip journal and know everything there is to know. He is stoked to have potentially some of the best and worst moments of his life with two mentor-turned-friends and his fiance. The list goes on. He is most excited about the unknowns- the things he does not yet know to be excited about or terrified of.
As an Outward Bound instructor, he loves going on adventures with his students. Some of his favorites include poling/lining up a river from sunrise until 3:00am in order to meet a ranger for a service project, paddling through a frigid and frosty night when there were no campsites to stay at, and hiking through the infamous Mahoosuc Notch during the October 2017 'bomb cyclone' that left 500,000 Mainers without power. For him, this adventure is simply fulfillment of the promise he has made to all of his students: that he will only impel them into challenging and value-forming experiences if he is willing to do so himself. So here's to a challenging and value-forming experience!
Eli remembers learning how to spell the word "ptarmigan" at the age of 5. Plopped down in one of those tiny kindergartener-sized chairs, he was much more interested in the actual words on the Arctic Mammals coloring page than the 4 fatty crayons designed specifically for the clumsy fingers of a body still learning fine motor movements. Musk ox, ptarmigan, caribou. They were all animals familiar to him from his mom's Hood River canoe expedition slides. He grew up camping in the same Moss tent ("the tent design that revolutionized our relationship to the great outdoors...") his mom had used on the Hood.
At 16, he spent five weeks canoeing in Central Quebec with The Chewonki Foundation and fell in love. That was the summer he decided to make living outdoors part of his career and lifestyle. A decade later, he was invited on a 20-day expedition on the Coppermine River in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Despite being a bit strapped for money, he said yes without hardly thinking about it. Of course he would go! The trip was spectacular and left him wanting more- more days, more bugs, more wind, more caribou.
For Eli, excitement feels like an understatement. It's more like this incessant hum deep inside. What is he excited about? Pretty much everything. He has never done a 40-day expedition without any resupplies or support. He is curious to see how the reusable food bags hold up and how all the dehydrated food turns out. He loves that he can't just read somebody else's trip journal and know everything there is to know. He is stoked to have potentially some of the best and worst moments of his life with two mentor-turned-friends and his fiance. The list goes on. He is most excited about the unknowns- the things he does not yet know to be excited about or terrified of.
As an Outward Bound instructor, he loves going on adventures with his students. Some of his favorites include poling/lining up a river from sunrise until 3:00am in order to meet a ranger for a service project, paddling through a frigid and frosty night when there were no campsites to stay at, and hiking through the infamous Mahoosuc Notch during the October 2017 'bomb cyclone' that left 500,000 Mainers without power. For him, this adventure is simply fulfillment of the promise he has made to all of his students: that he will only impel them into challenging and value-forming experiences if he is willing to do so himself. So here's to a challenging and value-forming experience!
Sage Waring
Exploring the outdoors has been a part of Sage’s life since a childhood of crayfish-hunting and creek-romping in his backyard in Pennsylvania. The New York Adirondack lakes introduced him to the canoe at age seven. Five years later he had the pleasure of paddling the Delaware and Susquehanna and the winding brown creeks of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Those short, three-day trips were what sealed the deal; from that point on, the need to be immersed in wild places has been etched into his being.
It wasn’t until he was 20 years old that Sage began embarking on extended, multi-week expeditions, first as an Outward Bound student on a 50-day backpacking, canoeing, and climbing course in North Carolina, and afterward as an instructor for the same organization. Seven years later he continues to instruct for Outward Bound, humbled by the opportunity to introduce people to the art of back-country living in North Carolina, the Florida Everglades, and Maine. While taking others on adventures is one of his greatest passions, embarking on his own adventures is a privilege he values equally.
From annual cross-country climbing trips, to disappearing into the endless lakes of northern Minnesota for weeks at a time, to maneuvering both downstream and up between the lakes of Maine, adventure is one of Sage’s core values. Until this point, he has never expeditioned without re-supplying for longer than a couple weeks. He has also never journeyed to a place as remote as the Ungava Peninsula; the newness of these experiences calls to him.
Challenge, physical and mental, drives Sage. Long days (sometimes continuing into long nights), trying weather, and deciding whether to portage or run the next rapid are the kinds of experiences that keep him coming back for more.
Sage wants to be pushed by the spirit and reality of the unknown, but above that, he wants to experience the new, the strange, and the beautiful. And what better way is there to do it?
Exploring the outdoors has been a part of Sage’s life since a childhood of crayfish-hunting and creek-romping in his backyard in Pennsylvania. The New York Adirondack lakes introduced him to the canoe at age seven. Five years later he had the pleasure of paddling the Delaware and Susquehanna and the winding brown creeks of New Jersey’s Pine Barrens. Those short, three-day trips were what sealed the deal; from that point on, the need to be immersed in wild places has been etched into his being.
It wasn’t until he was 20 years old that Sage began embarking on extended, multi-week expeditions, first as an Outward Bound student on a 50-day backpacking, canoeing, and climbing course in North Carolina, and afterward as an instructor for the same organization. Seven years later he continues to instruct for Outward Bound, humbled by the opportunity to introduce people to the art of back-country living in North Carolina, the Florida Everglades, and Maine. While taking others on adventures is one of his greatest passions, embarking on his own adventures is a privilege he values equally.
From annual cross-country climbing trips, to disappearing into the endless lakes of northern Minnesota for weeks at a time, to maneuvering both downstream and up between the lakes of Maine, adventure is one of Sage’s core values. Until this point, he has never expeditioned without re-supplying for longer than a couple weeks. He has also never journeyed to a place as remote as the Ungava Peninsula; the newness of these experiences calls to him.
Challenge, physical and mental, drives Sage. Long days (sometimes continuing into long nights), trying weather, and deciding whether to portage or run the next rapid are the kinds of experiences that keep him coming back for more.
Sage wants to be pushed by the spirit and reality of the unknown, but above that, he wants to experience the new, the strange, and the beautiful. And what better way is there to do it?
A Special Thanks to our Supporters:
The Hurricane Island Outward Bound Community
The Kellogg Family
Chris Rush, Alan Strit, Brad Bassi, Eric Nemitz, Lester Kovac, Marilyne Machand all veteran Nunavik paddlers who helped answer many of our questions
Tursujuq National Park
Carmen Garcia-Harris, website editor in chief
Marisa Melamed, for supporting Steve in his dream
All the patient and helpful cargo shipping representatives at Air Inuit
Watershed
Zpacks
Squishloc
Cabot Cheese
The Hurricane Island Outward Bound Community
The Kellogg Family
Chris Rush, Alan Strit, Brad Bassi, Eric Nemitz, Lester Kovac, Marilyne Machand all veteran Nunavik paddlers who helped answer many of our questions
Tursujuq National Park
Carmen Garcia-Harris, website editor in chief
Marisa Melamed, for supporting Steve in his dream
All the patient and helpful cargo shipping representatives at Air Inuit
Watershed
Zpacks
Squishloc
Cabot Cheese
