| Title | : | Alone Against the North: An Expedition into the Unknown |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0670069450 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780670069453 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 304 |
| Publication | : | First published October 6, 2015 |
| Awards | : | Legislative Assembly of Ontario Young Authors Award (2016), Louise de Kiriline Lawrence Award for English Non-Fiction (2017) |
When Adam Shoalts ventured into the largest unexplored wilderness on the planet, he hoped to set foot where no one had ever gone before. What he discovered surprised even him, and made him a media sensation.
Shoalts was no stranger to the wilderness. He had hacked his way through jungles and muskeg, had stared down polar bears and climbed mountains. But one spot on the map called out to him irresistibly: the Hudson Bay Lowlands, a trackless waste of muskeg and lonely rivers, moose and wolf, much bigger than the Amazon. Little of it has ever been explored.
Cutting through this forbidding landscape is a river no hunter, no explorer, no Native guide has left any record of paddling. It is far from any important waterways, even further from any arable land, and about as far from civilization as one can get. It was this river that Shoalts was obsessively determined to explore.
It took him several attempts, years of research, and two friendships that collapsed under the strain of Adam's single-minded thirst to explore this river. But finally, alone, he found the headwaters of the Again. He believed he had discovered what he had set out to find. But the adventure had just begun.
Paddling his way back to Hudson Bay, where a float plane would pick him up, Shoalts discovered something that seemingly shouldn't exist: a towering unmapped waterfall. He also discovered edenic islands, and braved rock-strewn rapids, but the waterfall captured both his imagination and the world's.
Adam did a single interview, with The Guardian, and once the story hit, he was a celebrity. He appeared on morning TV and was made the Explorer in Residence of the Canadian Geographic Society. What struck a chord with people was the realization that the world is bigger than we think. We assume that because we have mapped it from space, it must be exhaustively known. But it is wilder, stranger, less homogenous than we assume. We hardly know it. And, contrary to popular wisdom, it is certainly not flat. In other words, the age of exploration is not over.
Alone Against the North: An Expedition into the Unknown Reviews
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Loved the subject, loved the story. Shoalts' account of it, however, comes across as immature and narcissistic. His main literary device seems to be building himself up by making everyone else in the book appear as bumbling, less skilled, less courageous, less determined, less knowledgeable....you get the picture. He even manages to make his own father seem inferior. I thought perhaps that I was reading too much into his narrative but then I saw him on TV and heard him speak at an event. There's an arrogance and a lack of grace about him that makes him inaccessible; a shame because what he does is pretty incredible and I'd like to hear more about it. But I'd like to read more about the subject matter and not his mastery over it. The fact that he's a skilled woodsman and explorer is a given. That's why we're reading the book. We don't need to be reminded of it every 2nd paragraph. I can't help but compare him to Les Stroud who, while not an Explorer (a title Shoalts doesn't let us forget for long), does similar things and has comparable skills. Stroud differs, thankfully, in that he is able to tell a story and educate without arrogance or condescension. He's just a guy from Etobicoke who knows how to take care of himself. A little bit of Stroud's humility might serve Shoalts well.
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“A classic adventure story of single-minded obsession”
Shoalt’s luscious but chilling opening paragraph of the prologue will give an adventurous, outdoor-minded (and jealous, if I may say so) reader an excellent idea of the treats in store in ALONE AGAINST THE NORTH:
“Ahead of us lay the pitiless expanse of frigid ocean known as Hudson Bay. Behind us lay countless miles of windswept tundra, trackless swamp, and impassable muskeg. Half-famished polar bears roamed the desolate coastline. It wasn’t a place one should travel alone – or at all, really.”
ALONE AGAINST THE NORTH is a gripping story that discloses the heart, the mind, the obsession, the adventures, the exploits, the skills, the determination, the courage, and the achievements of a single-minded explorer determined to chart the length of an unknown river in the James Bay lowlands of Arctic Canada. The Again River was a route which might have been traveled on extremely rare occasions at some point in Canada’s past but that had never been documented or mapped in any way. It was also a river that would mercilessly eat up a canoeist with the temerity to attempt to do so who made so much as the slightest error in judgment.
As an experienced (and, I dare say, somewhat accomplished) outdoorsman, hiker, canoeist and camper in all four seasons, I can attest to the awesome difficulty of Shoalts’ achievements on this first-time descent of a terrifying river. Part biography, part adventure story, part environmental diatribe, and part natural science essay, ALONE AGAINST THE NORTH is all a page-turning and completely compelling story. Congratulations to Adam Shoalts on the outcome and the completion of a book that is easy to heartily recommend to both experienced and wannabe outdoor adventure lovers.
Paul Weiss -
There have been some complaints from readers about this author's ego; complaints that the book is about him, more than it is about the Canadian Wilderness. But, perhaps, all great adventurers are somewhat self-centred; what could possibly make them risk their lives the way they do if not for some deep inner ego-driven force. They clearly do it, not so much for the knowledge gained but out of a compulsion for adventure; their thirst for seeing what's around the next corner; their thrill in risking their lives, without thought of how that affects others. In other words, they are not like you and me. They carry an insatiable passion within and this passion benefits us all when they write books like this, detailing their adventures and those of other explorers before them. An unfortunate side to the risk taker's adventurous and careless spirit is their inability to understand and have compassion for others who have less compulsion than them; I found his somewhat derisive tone for his companion, Brent Kozah a bit harsh. He claims they are still friends; I wonder what Brent would have to say about that after his depiction in this book; Adam Shoalts could have been a little kinder. Nonetheless, this book was an exciting depiction of a great adventure and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
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The other 2-star reviews hit the nail on the head so I won't repeat them.
What I will add is that as a hiker I enjoy setting up artificial challenges for myself that might lead me to hike a couple of extra miles or hit some arbitrary deadline. For all the talk of the necessity of exploration and survival at all costs, I see this type of artificially inflated challenge figure prominently in Adam's adventures. There is nothing wrong with this but for two things: A) he's outsourcing risk to his would-be rescuers, and B) it conflicts with his insistence that his adventures are for the sake of exploration.
Two cases in point (spoilers):
If you review the map of his journey that he began with Brent, his original design (that he shockingly did not thoroughly read Brent into before setting out) was to portage 100 km over 2 weeks and explore the western tributary of the Brant River (pages 66, 85, 93). His second plan relates to the nameless river and he sells it to Brent saying, "We would have to travel upriver, against the current, wading through the water and dragging the canoe behind us for about a hundred and twenty kilometers" (93). Evidently, Brent was not sold. The third plan which they begin to pursue takes them down the Sutton River and then back up the Brant, but this plan was "so dangerous that I was reluctant to mention it" and yet Adam "wasn't sure whether [Brent] understood what the plan I had sketched out involved exactly -- and I was in no mood to explain it" (94). In my view, this is criminal as an outdoors companion and Adam should be ashamed rather than prideful of risking his friend's life without his informed consent. I disgress... Ultimately, when Brent leaves the trip, Adam executes plan #2 alone and drags his canoe upstream 120 km along the nameless river. Apparently, the nameless river was a worthy target of exploration after all, even though it was his preference to explore the Brant River tributary. However, if you inspect the map, the furthest upstream point he made on the nameless river is indeed ~120 km upstream from the Goose Lodge, but it is also only ~4 km (!!!) from the point the plane dropped them on Hawley Lake (with two lakes covering perhaps a third of that distance, and no especially challenging terrain that can be seen on satellite imagery). So basically, he lies to his friend about the necessity of dragging their canoe upstream 120 km because that was the only version of the journey that was sufficiently hardcore for Adam. It wasn't enough to canoe or "explore" the nameless river in a straightforward way at all, and also, I partly suspect that he wanted to scare Brent off as an excuse to be alone and increase the challenge and the scale of the tale he would have to tell.
A second more minor case in point, he canoes the Again River finally and yet neglects to carry sufficient tools to effectively document his discovery, despite this apparently being the only distinction between explorer and adventurer. So he must return...
I'm all for adventure and self-challenge for their own sake, but spare me the preaching and talk of fate and necessity. -
This is the most selfish and self-absorbed book I've ever read. Especially when it starts with: "I think I always knew I was destined to be an explorer."
Shoalts talks about no one other than himself. His dad makes a cameo because he helps Shoalts fix/build equipment, the guys who fly/boat him in and out of places are mentioned, and he bad mouths the friends who go with him. He just can't fathom why one of his friends wouldn't want to do a random canoe trip instead of being home while his wife is pregnant, and the other friend he basically bad mouths for not being keen enough (he knew beforehand that this friend could be a problem, so it's not the friend's fault, it's Shoalts's fault for not choosing his team wisely).
I usually enjoy tales of adventure in remote areas of our country. In this case Shoalts just succeeded in pissing me off with his condescension about 'adventurers' vs. 'explorers,' his bad-mouthing of journalists making minor mistakes (that he likely could have prevented by speaking with them more clearly), his slavish admiration for the many male explorers who went before him (only one woman is mentioned, and that's because she's the wife of an explorer who aims to finish his last trip. Also every quote at the beginning of each chapter is by men), and his pretentious wearing of a brown fedora - which he loses twice and has to note how sad he is about it.
He's also closely tied in with Canadian Geographic and the Royal Canadian Geographical Society. When he gets elected as a Fellow of the RCGS, he's over the moon about how only real explorers get to join. Dude, I'm a member too. And I worked in the High Arctic for four years. You don't see me dancing around about what a great explorer I am because I've been validated by the RCGS.
He also talks about the devastation of remote wilderness by industry. Well if he's really concerned about it, he might not want to be as entangled with CanGeo as he is, given their ties to oil and gas.
http://www.canadalandshow.com/oil-san... -
I received an advance copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways. When I first received the book, I figured it would be a bit of a slog for me. I vastly prefer fiction over non, am not even remotely an outdoorsy type, and thought the premise was perhaps a bit too thin to build a book upon. A whole book about some guy canoeing in the Canadian wilderness? It turned out to be a fabulous read. The book was entertaining, at times humorous, intelligent, and educational. The author and explorer is very knowledgable about a number of subjects (Canadian flora and fauna, history, wilderness survival, etc.) and weaves this into the telling of his story. I often took breaks from the book to do additional research on the internet to supplement the reading. The book itself was very descriptive and I often felt like I was right there with him while, at the same time, being greatly relieved that I was not.
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I've only recently started to enjoy non-fiction and they've mostly been stories of outdoor expeditions, excursions, and life altering and enriching experiences. This book I enjoyed all the more because of its Canadian content. I've actually been to some of the northern Ontario cities referenced in the book and ridden the Polar Bear Express. Enough of me! This book was well written and I enjoyed learning some history I was unaware of. Adam Shoalts has a love of adventure, the land, and a level of bravery not often seen. I especially was both encouraged and saddened by the short afterward that reminds us all of our responsibility to take care of the land and the earth we have. Good read!
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This is an incredible account of a real-life adventure story. Adam writes with intelligence and humour, drawing the reader into a world of unbelievable isolation and formidable challenges. "Alone Against the North" is impressive, engaging, and completely unique. It would make a great documentary.
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A little biography mixed with adventure and a dash of Canadian geography. Adam Shoalts has been called the "Canadian Indiana Jones", and it is clear why he earned such a moniker after reading "Alone Against The North."
The book follows Adam as he plans and executes a solo expedition to map an unexplored river, The Again River, in the Hudson Bay Lowlands of Northern Ontario. Adam does a wonderful job of describing the scenery and painting a clear picture of both the beauty and harshness of the landscape, for those of us who will never experience first hand.
Adam has a nagging, almost obsessive need to be outdoors and explore. The excitement he feels when planning a new expedition and the peacefulness he experiences whilst alone in nature is very well expressed and becomes almost contagious through his writing. This book made me stand over my canoe, which is currently hidden under a foot of snow, and yearn to be out paddling on an unexplored river.
This book is a must read for any outdoor enthusiast. -
I received this book through good reads first reads.
Definitely recommend this book. Well written. You feel that you are right along side the author on his travels on foot and on the water, along the uncharted waterways of the north.
Adam keeps you engaged. The short additions of history when he gets to certain locations is a nice touch.
Could not have imagined an adventure like this on his own, my fear for him when encountering bears , or mishaps on the water felt like being there.
As a parent I can imagine what his family goes through when Adam is on these adventures. I certainly would not recommend doing this alone. -
If you are at all interested in wilderness camping and canoeing this book is for you. Shoalts' idea of a canoe trip would make most people shudder.
He drags a battered canoe and some paltry equipment through some of the most difficult conditions imaginable in Northern Canada in order to explore a previously unknown river.
Not only does he have to drag his canoe up rivers to get to the headwaters he has to portage through the thickest spruce forests and boot sucking muskeg. All the while hounded by clouds of black flies and mosquitoes and threatened by massive polar bears.
It's the best "trip report" you've ever read. -
DNF at 75%
This was the most god awful book about outdoor adventuring I have ever read. The entire book is one long, pretentious ego boosting ramble. Roughly 2 chapters are actually about paddling, the rest is the author self-aggrandizing about being an “explorer” and roasting his friends for not being as experienced in the backcountry or outdoors.
It was awful. Don’t read it. -
wow what a courage , to go alone in the wild , with all danger it take gut and determination.
that a fascinating adventure . -
"What a blessing to be born in a land of almost limitless wilderness". Incredible story and wonderfully written.
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I do love me a good adventure story, even as I know that Shoalts would cringe at the word 'adventure' and correct it to 'expedition' or 'exploration'. Alone Against the North is his tale of updating the map for a river that, to his knowledge, had never been fully traversed. (At least, not by Europeans. By Shoalts's reckoning, it doesn't count if there's no written record.)
I enjoyed the adventure/exploration part of the book, but the tone is a bit off-putting at times. Shoalts ended up doing the bulk of his trips alone, because the one friend who had the experience and the know-how to go with him didn't want to commit to it; consequently, the friend Shoalts brought along as a last-minute replacement was, well, ill-prepared in almost every way possible. And...that's not the friend's fault...but Shoalts never misses an opportunity to drag him for being lazy, for being easily discouraged, for not knowing how to build a fire, etc. etc. etc. As far as I can tell, if anyone's in the wrong here it's Shoalts (for bringing along someone he knew full well was unprepared and expecting him to keep up), but he very much treats it as though the friend was in the wrong. Tries to present it as a 'there were no hard feelings; he never went into the wild again but we're still friends' sort of thing, which to me means—so it was such a terrible experience that Shoalts ruined the wilderness for him forever? And if they were still friends after the trip, were they able to remain friends after the publication of this book?
I'll probably still read
Beyond the Trees, because I'm curious, but I'll adjust my expectations accordingly. -
Warning: Reading this book may cause you to want to quit your job, leave your family and head off alone into the mosquito and black fly infested northern wilderness. The siren's call is strong and I say that as someone who has experienced first hand the awfulness of the black flies as a tree planter in Northern Ontario during my university days.
I feel that this book has been unduly harshly reviewed by a few critics. Yes, Shoalts does come off as a bit of a jerk in the beginning. He seems to me though to be someone who says what he feels even if most of us would be more likely to hold back. I took him to be someone with an extremely driven personality and let's not kid ourselves, you need to be that way to live that kind of life. This is not camping in Muskoka. I can't help but yearn to do what he does as I sit here in a crowded Tokyo train. Definitely worth a read. -
This book makes my bear story less exciting but I loved it anyway. Also, local author making it to the big time!
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I read this book in a single day. As an avid backcountry tripper where my trips are in mostly heavily populated Algonquin lasting 4-6 days in length, I truly appreciate the detail in this book. Blazing trails, triple portaging, the bugs and remoteness of what he has done is truly remarkable. The book is a great mix of nature storytelling, Canadian exploration history and facts about our landscape. It has to be next to impossible to truly depict what the Lowlands are like, and now I feel like I have experienced them. To those saying he is egotistical, I invite you to embark on a trip that is 1% as difficult as this and paddle your own canoe. I did not find him overly egotistical, but confident in his abilities in the outdoors. However, I do believe his approach to not scouting whitewater is quite reckless, his confidence in his own abilities and respect for nature are must in order to accomplish something like this. If you like the outdoors, this is a must read.
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Another excellent, true adventure story (my favourite thing right now!).
I loved that this one took place in the Ontario north, with references throughout to places that I know - Cochrane, Hearst, the Missinaibi River!
This guy is hardcore. To do those gruelling portages alone, and even to deal with the bugs he would have encountered, makes me exhausted just thinking about it! Although he discussed quite frankly the dangers and risks associated with doing something like this alone, I really hope that people who read it don't think that this would be a good idea at all. It was interesting to see his perspective on wood-canvas canoes - more as art pieces than as functional canoes - , as Camp Temagami uses them exclusively. I can certainly understand that for the purposes he was describing, a wood-canvas canoe would not have been ideal, but again, I hope that others reading it will not be of the same mind when it comes to the functionality of a beautifully hand-crafted canoe.
Overall, a great story of a modern-day explorer. -
Adam Shoalts is a man of my heart, his adventures are ones I would love to do. I had the opportunity to meet him when he released his second book. He does not disappoint. I hope he continuea to explore and write about it. Hey maybe he will take me with him.
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The book ends with a lament.
"When forests and wetlands are converted into farms, shopping malls, highways, or cities, we lose more than just the world's biodiversity - that bewildering blend of animals and plants that makes our world such a fascinating place. We also lose something that's deep in our collective psyches - the vast, forbidding, but enchanting world of untrammelled wildness, those critical "hunting-grounds for the poetic imagination."
Shoalts is an engaging and likeable author. The story is readable, entertaining and generally upbeat. He does tend to make the almost impossible seem only a matter of hardwork and perseverence. It is a credit to his humility, but the book may tempt some without a fraction of his skill to try their hand at such adventure. This kind of activity is only for the most hardened and experienced of explorers.
The book explains that despite all the technical equipment and know-how available today, all the communications and all-seeing sattelites, much of the world has either not been visited by humans, or if it has, there is no record of our passage. The area surrounding Hudson and James Bays is a good example, and includes hundreds of rivers and lakes without human report. Shoalts acknowledges that some might have been visited by aboriginal peoples, but probably not all. The need for survival limited opportunities to explore in such a harsh and unforgiving environment.
This book does not attain the level of Krakauer's writing and lacks the intensity of a book like "Annapurna" but it is very good and a joy to read. -
Loved this book but I enjoyed his "Beyond the Trees" a little more.
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What should be a fascinating overview of the exploration of North America and the rigours of movement and surveying in the remote wilderness is instead dominated by Shoalts' insufferable character and enormous satisfaction with his survival skills. The narrative jumps around frustratingly, from a flash-forward prologue (the cardinal sin of novel writing) to meditations on other explorers' efforts and from ruminations on Shoalts' work assisting archaeologists and scientists in other parts of Canada (he is, he keeps reminding us, doing a doctorate) to a series of failed expeditions, none of which had anything to do with the river Alone Against the North is nominally about and all of which failures Shoalts blames on his erstwhile companions. Worse than the disjointed narrative is Shoalts' reporting of his internal monologue on how disappointing, incompetent or unreasonable his companions are—one of them has the nerve to turn down a dangerous canoe trip into the hypothermic wilderness because his wife is pregnant. The cretin!
By the end of the book, having heard all about Shoalts' huge success upon his return, his instant celebrity and TV spots and interviews and being given a flag by the society of so-and-so, it is somehow unsurprising that despite all his glory no one wants to join him on his next trip. Did Wes, Brent and Dad really bail out because the trips were too hard, one begins to wonder, or because another day stuck in a canoe with this subarctic narcissus was just too much? -
Great, engaging read about Adam's desire and commitment to explore Canada's Hudson Bay Lowlands. He has several close calls while canoeing, incolving rapids and animal encounters. I would highly recommend, his writing style is very descriptive, almost making it feel like you accompanied him on his adventures.
