National Parks Traveler

In Search Of Wood Buffalo's Northern Lights And Whooping Cranes

By Carol Patterson

Wood Buffalo National Park is Canada's largest national park at 44,807 square kilometres (17,300 square miles), straddling the border of the Northwest Territories and Alberta. It’s smaller than the United State’s largest park, Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve in Alaska, but bigger than Switzerland. The park is the world’s largest Dark Sky Preserve, and it has a beaver dam so large it’s visible from space.

When the application was made for UNESCO World Heritage Site status, the park had six world heritage values to justify the designation, yet only about 4,000 people visit each year. I wanted to see why so few ventured into this park and whether my husband and I could find some of the best-known attractions — northern lights, wood bison, and Whooping Cranes.

We had been warned the chances of seeing Whooping Cranes on their breeding grounds were slim. These tall birds are remarkably skittish and won't tolerate people within hundreds of metres. But the odds of viewing some of the park’s 3,000 bison are good, as is the likelihood of witnessing the aurora borealis. Fort Smith, the 2,300-person community in the Northwest Territories (NWT) on the edge of the park, boasts that visitors have an 85 to 95 percent chance of seeing the northern lights on a clear night.

You have a good chance of seeing the aurora borealis, aka the northern lights, in Wood Buffalo National Park/Carol Patterson

Getting to Wood Buffalo takes planning. Flights to Fort Smith are frequent, but there are no rental cars once you arrive. And this is a park with vast distances to cover. There's no public transportation, and accommodation is sparse (two small hotels, a guest house, cottages, and a few campgrounds at the time of this writing). There is summer programming and tours offered by the town to see pelicans or learn about the community, but most people explore this park independently.

Many people fly to Yellowknife and rent a car or RV to drive eight hours south. My husband Colin Stallknecht and I drove our truck and camper 1,400 kilometres (860 miles) north from Calgary, Alberta. Services in the north are limited, so pre-planning is important. Gasoline stations can be found about every two hours on northern roads so we didn’t need to carry extra fuel, although we did.

We camped at Lesser Slave Lake Provincial Park (Alberta's version of Point Pelee National Park for birders) and at NWT’s Hay River Territorial Park to keep each day's driving distance comfortable. Insects in the north can be relentless in summer months, so we timed our trip for early September when we hoped cooler temps would reduce their numbers. Campgrounds were still open (territorial campgrounds close mid-September), and it got dark early enough for star gazing.

One of the park's 214 bird species is this Northern Hawk Owl/Carol Patterson

Early on the third day as we approached Wood Buffalo, a Northern Hawk Owl blinked from a charred tree trunk. One of the park’s 214 bird species and hard to spot, this rare bird focused its gaze on an early breakfast and then dove into the stunted spruce forest. Reflecting on my birdwatching luck, I contemplated that none of my nature-loving friends had visited this special place. Most had confessed they'd like to, but weren't sure how to make it happen or if it was worth the effort. I hoped to answer both questions.

We continued along Hwy. 5, the smooth pavement stretching 272 kilometres (168 miles) from Hay River to Fort Smith and the park’s visitor center. About 104 kilometres (64 miles) from Hay River, we stopped at the distinctive green-and-white Park’s Canada sign marking the park boundary. There was no one to greet us. A smaller sign nearby described a petition by the Northwest Territory Métis Nation to redress their traditional rights.

The Angus Sinkhole has interpretive signs and a chain link fence to keep people safely away/Carol Patterson

A little further down the road another sign pointed the way to Angus, a large sinkhole with interpretive exhibits and a chain link fence to keep people from getting too close. Sinkholes are characteristic of karst landscapes, a geological formation where water dissolves porous stone into deep holes. Some of North America’s most extensive karst landscapes are found here, along with extensive salt plains, and were one of the six reasons for Wood Buffalo's UNESCO status. (The other five were that it’s the only remaining nesting ground of Whooping Cranes, the Peace-Athabasca Delta, Great plains-boreal ecosystem, wolf-wood bison relationship, and concentrations of migratory wildlife.)

Sinkholes can change rapidly — the park’s well-used Karstland Trail was closed in 2021 when a sinkhole opened up dangerously close to the path. Pine Lake, popular with astronomers and beach goers, was created when three sinkholes merged.

Back in the truck, we stopped several times to admire bison resting in the sandy wallows along the ditches. The park contains the world’s largest free-roaming herd of wood buffalo in North America. A century ago, bison from the now-defunct Buffalo National Park in Wainwright, Alberta, were transferred to here, bringing cattle diseases including tuberculosis and brucellosis.

Wood Buffalo National Park has the world's largest free-roaming and self-regulating herd of bison/Carol Patterson

The shaggy brown creatures looked healthy to us but the population is considered diseased. Animals that wander across the park’s western boundary are killed to prevent contamination of bison at the Mackenzie Bison Sanctuary. And recently, Wood Buffalo officials detected anthrax in bison in remote areas. No action is taken unless carcasses are discovered near high-use areas.

Pondering the plight of the park’s most visible wildlife, we stopped at the Salt Plains Viewpoint with a panoramic view of salt plains and marshy wetlands, another critical feature of the park. We looked for Whooping Cranes but saw nothing. For decades, scientists couldn’t find Whooping Crane nests. Flocks were seen migrating above Saskatchewan grain fields in fall, and striding through Texas wetlands in Aransas National Wildlife Refuge each winter. It was a sharp-eyed pilot, Don Landells, and forestry officer, George Wilson, on their way to a forest fire in 1954 who spotted what they suspected were Whooping Cranes in Wood Buffalo. Biologist William Fuller confirmed their observation and finally solved the crane mystery.

Writer Carol Patterson's husband Colin Stallknecht explores the salt plains/Carol Patterson

Looking across the golden grasses and white salt pans ringed with red samphire plants, I gave up my birdwatching and followed the short but steep trail down to the salt plains. Red sand flexed under my feet as I approached the white salt crust, remnants of an ancient seabed. As I crossed the crunchy white surface, it cracked, dipping my shoes into water as I scrambled to Parks Canada’s distinctive red Adirondack/Muskoka chairs.

We had parked for two hours at the trailhead, cooking lunch and downloading photos with nary another visitor to be seen. Now, on this short hike, there was a flurry of activity as a couple from Fort Smith wandered by, trying to find a trail from their last visit years earlier. Two other tourists, one from France and another from Delaware, headed in the other direction. Many of the park’s visitors come from Europe, Canada, and the United States. At the tiny visitor center in Fort Smith, shared by Parks Canada and the Town of Fort Smith, we would see signatures in the visitor log from Croatia and Switzerland as well as from the United States and western Canada.

As the afternoon ended, we arrived in Fort Smith, stopping at the lookout over Slave River. American White Pelicans stood on rocky islands among the fast-flowing rapids. The Slave River Rapids are a designated National Historic Event and in summer kayakers test their skill on the rapids, the best competing at the Slave River Paddlefest each August. The four sets of impassable rapids (Mountain, Cassette, Pelican and Rapids of the Drowned) between Fort Fitzgerald and Fort Smith, 10 kilometres (6 miles) downstream, are the only navigation obstacle between Lake Athabasca and the Arctic Ocean.

Berro's Pizzeria in Fort Smith claims it serves the best pizza in the north, and it is fabulous/Carol Patterson

Dene and Métis have hunted around and fished along Slave River and its tributaries for centuries, and in 1872 the Hudson’s Bay Co. built an outpost at Fort Smith. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police then set up their northern headquarters, and from 1911 to 1967 Fort Smith was the NWT’s administrative capital. Today, Fort Smith or Thebacha (the Chipewyan name meaning “at the foot of the rapids”), is an important staging area for people exploring Wood Buffalo and the surrounding areas.

The town offers much of what a traveler needs but not the variety or convenience found further south. It’s Sunday night and as we searched for a quick dinner, we realized options have disappeared faster than earth worms in front of a robin. Two restaurants have closed for the day, the only gas station has a Tim Horton’s franchise and a line-up so we opted for take-out at the Northern store, where we could buy beans at $3.50 per can or a dirt bike for $3,000, shipping extra.

Back at camp we set the alarm for midnight and went to bed. I peeked out the window every two hours looking for northern lights but clouds hid the sky. I woke the next morning tired and disappointed but ready for more explorations.

Colin Stallknecht stands among some of the park's glacial erratics/Carol Patterson

We drove south, crossing into Alberta as we followed Pine Lake Road, a gravel throughfare to Pine Lake and Peace Point in summer, and part of an ice road network to Fort Chipewyan in winter. We knew Karstland Trail was closed because of a sinkhole but the trail to Grosbeak Lake was rumored to be one of the best in the park. That’s not because of Grosbeak bird sightings but because roughly 1,000 glacial erratics dot a salt pan along the shoreline

A short 1.2 kilometre (.75-mile) trail through an aspen forest led us to hundreds of rocks, a rainbow of red orange, brown, and black hues dotting red earth, white ribbons of salt wrapping around the boulders, blue lake water sparkling in the distance. The erratics were unlike anything I’d seen before and I was disturbed to know this park is increasingly under threat. UNESCO has been monitoring its status since 2016 when external effects from hydropower dams, oil sands activity, and climate change had experts considering whether to give the park an “In Danger” inscription. Parks Canada has led the development of a multi-year action plan but the situation remains serious.

Writer Carol Patterson made the long drive north to see if Wood Buffalo National Park was worth the effort. It was, she concluded/Colin Stallknecht

Pushing aside our dismay, we ventured onto Pine Lake and the site of the annual Thebacha and Wood Buffalo Astronomical Society’s Dark Sky Festival. We ambled past two rental cabins, a large grassy area with a lake view and a sky circle, a large wooden platform designed for long periods of upward gazing. People can recline against the back of the circular bench and rest their neck as they search for constellations.

Determined not to miss what was rumoured to be the best pizza in the north, we returned to Fort Smith and Berro’s Pizzeria. The restaurant was empty as we were late for the lunch crowd and too early for dinner but we ordered up a medium Berro’s. It was as tasty as I’d heard, better than almost any I’d eaten anywhere. Satiated, we headed back to camp to download photos and prepare for another evening of sky gazing.

At midnight our necks were sore as we stood in the forest, mesmerized by the North’s best nighttime entertainment. Ribbons of green and mauve light rippled across the sky, fluttering like hidden winds were fanning the vivid colors. We watched until clouds brought an end to the show.

To protect the Whooping Cranes, the writer doesn't want to share a photo of the birds she saw, but does share this crane signage/Carol Patterson

The last morning, we made a final attempt to spot Whooping Cranes. We stopped where I could scan a long distance with binoculars. My heart fluttered when I saw a pair of cranes far, far away. They were stalking across the park where their species staged a rebound from extinction.

Tired from nighttime searches for Northern Lights and daytime searches for everything else, with this parting farewell from the birds I had a new spring in my step, and realized Wood Buffalo had plenty of attractions to make a journey here worthwhile. I hoped resource managers, Indigenous nations, scientists, and interested citizens could keep it healthy until those visitors arrived.