Wapusk Trail 2025

About four years ago, in the midst of a global pandemic, two young birders began bandying about strategies of seeing Rock Ptarmigan in Ontario along the world’s longest seasonal ice road, the Wapusk Trail. For only a few weeks each year, a roughly 700 kilometre glorified snowmobile trail connects Ontario’s most northern communities to the rest of Canada. Starting in northern Manitoba, the road winds through the vast muskeg of the Hudson Bay lowlands, providing a vital lifeline to the towns of Shamattawa, Fort Severn, and Peawanuck.

This March, a group of us will be tackling the Wapusk Trail in search of Rock Ptarmigan, a species considered by most Ontario birders to be nearly mythic. Despite historical records in Ontario dating back to the fur trading era, there is limited information on their distribution in far northern Ontario, a knowledge gap we are hoping to fill! Ezra Campanelli has an excellent blog post detailing the trip here: How to See Rock Ptarmigan in Ontario. There is of course no guarantee of finding the species, but the trip's overarching goal will be to blaze some form of path for future winter birding expeditions to the area.

Since we will be passing through the communities that build the ice road year after year, we could think of no better way to show our support than by fundraising with True North Aid through which we hope to raise $1000 for the areas of greatest need. All proceeds will go directly to True North Aid in supporting these communities.