We visited Wood Buffalo Park in July 2018.

It is an achievement just to get there. A long drive about 1400 km from Jasper to Fort Smith. The roads are good and paved all the way to Fort Smith. It’s a small airport in Fort Smith if you want to skip the drive, but you will need a vehicle to see the park. It’s a 120 km gravel road into the park center from Fort Smith.

We stopped on night in Hay River by the Great Slave Lake and two nights in Fort Smith. The drive from Hay river to Fort Smith goes the northern part of the park.

The park entrance is free. The visitor center is in Fort Smith. It was small, but informativ with helpful staff. We saw a great film about the park, 20 minutes, which explained its outstanding values.

The landscape is not as spectacular or scenic as for instance Rocky Mountains, but it still has some uniqueness to it.  It varies from boreal forest, karst landforms, salt plains to one of the world’s largest fresh water delta. The park is huge, Canada’s largest, 44807 km2 larger than Switzerland.

We chartered a float plane for an hour to see the salt plains and the waterfalls in Slave River (just outside the park, but very scenic). Unfortunately it was too far to go down to the freshwater delta within the hour. The trip was great, fantastic views of the salt plains with lots of colors.

The park is home for the last remaining free roaming wild Wood Buffalos in the world and is the only nesting area for the endangered Whopping cranes.

The park is also home to black bears, moose, foxes, lynx, beavers and Sandhill cranes. Seeing animals in such a huge park is by luck only. We were lucky and saw several buffaloes and even a small herd, 6 black bears, a moose, couple of foxes and sandhill cranes, but none whopping cranes which are rare to see.

There are several hiking trails in the park, but because of few hikers many of the trails are in poor condition – it’s not as in the Rocky’s. The bugs are also murderous so our attempt to go for a hike from Pine lake ended early, it was almost unbearable.

The Unesco plaque is located at the lookout at the salt plains. You can get there from the main road between Hay river and Fort Smith, it’s 11 km on a dirt road. There is a path down to the salt plains. We took a short hike further on – barefoot. It was so muddy, that it was impossible with joggers. Hiking boots are recommended. From the plain we saw that the area is huge and what you can see from the lookout it’s only a small part.

Another feature to the park is sink holes. Make sure to stop at Angus Sink hole just inside the park boarder from Hay river.                                      

When you’re in Fort Smith a visit to Northern Life Museum it’s worth a stop. It is free and gives a good impression about the life in northern Canada. We also recommend a trip down to the rapids in Slave River.

In Slave river there are four rapids. The white pelicans are nesting at the Mountains Rapids and fishing in the Rapids of the Drowned. The last one is close to town and easy accessible on a short hike.

We bought dinner and had picnic by the rapids and watched the fishing white pelicans. Very cool and the best thing: no mosquitos 😊

There are few dinner restaurants in town, none very good, but we found a good coffee place with an espresso machine, The Rusty Raven Gallery & Gift.

There are two hotels in town and few B&Bs. None are on Booking.com or Hotels.com. We didn’t pre-book, but we were able to get a room at Pelican Rapids Inn.

We had a great stay in the park well worth the effort to get up there.

# Randi & Svein