Travel planning

You’ve booked your trip and scheduled it into your calendar.  Travel planning should be part of the adventure. Here are some resources to help you get ready:

• Find out how we live comfortably and safely in the wilderness—from sleeping arrangements, to the menu, to your comfortable wilderness toilet system
• Learn about the activities and how you can get ready and in physical condition for your trip
• Find out what to pack
• Start getting to know more about the region and the river:
  • Learn about the region and it’s people
  • Help protect the Magpie
  • Find out what to do in the area before and after your trip
  • Discover the local cuisine with this guide to eating in Sept-Îles
  • If you’re into fishing, dive into the world of catching speckled trout on the Magpie

• Start getting ready
• Plan your travel to and from Sept Îles
• Check your passport expiry date (if you’ll be travelling from abroad)
• Purchase medical and trip cancellation insurance
• Consider a carbon offset

Start getting ready

These checklists will help you get organized in advance so you’re ready to go. Rest assured with our Peace of Mind Policies.

90 days before your departure

• Send us your menu choices (view a sample menu), medical, emergency contact info, and anything else you’d like us to know (we’ll send you a form to submit this info once you join)
• Book travel if you haven’t done so already
• Start getting ready

6 weeks before your departure

• Join the optional Q&A video conference with your guides (we’ll send you details)
• Review your packing list, let us know if you have any questions.

1 or 2 days before departure

• Get packing!
• Give family, work, or friends our toll-free number 1-866-242-9383 and email info@borealriver.com in case they need to reach you during the expedition—our guides will check for messages from the Boreal River office by satellite phone each day.

Travel day

• Let us know if you run into any delays
• Meet your Boreal River Adventure guide at the airport. They’ll be waiting for you wearing a Boreal River shirt and hat
• You made it—enjoy your adventure!

Contact us anytime if you have any questions at all.

Plan your travel to Sept Îles

Our trip starts and ends in Sept-Îles, Quebec. Your Boreal River guides will pick you up and drop you off at the airport. If you are driving to the region or arriving on an earlier day, we’ll meet you at Hotel St. Arnaud on Day 1.

Our travel specialists will be happy to help you plan your trip to Sept-Îles, and we’ve prepared a handy list of things you can do in the region before or after your trip with us, but here is some general info to get you started.

Purchase insurance

Guests on Boreal River trips need to have appropriate Medical insurance and Medical Evacuation insurance. Any evacuation costs will be billed to the person that is leaving the trip. Insurance should cover emergency air evacuation from the river to a local hospital (this can cost $10,000 CAD or more), medical treatment within Canada, and repatriation to a medical care facility in your home region.

We also strongly recommend obtaining Trip Cancellation insurance, which will reimburse you for the unused portion of your Boreal River trip if you must cancel prior to departure or leave your trip early due to illness, accident, or family emergency. If you have insurance coverage from a credit card or an existing plan, please make sure that it will cover you for the above mentioned emergency situations and that you are covered while participating in whitewater activities and remote wilderness travel.

For an insurance package that will cover you for the specific situations encountered on our trips, we recommended something similar to what World Nomads offers.

Read about cancellation policies

Consider a carbon offset

We’ve calculated a carbon offset for your Magpie River Adventure and we buy offsets on the whole group’s behalf that accounts for everything — food, travel, helicopter, hotel, getting our gear and staff to Sept-Îles and more — once you’ve arrived in Sept-Îles. We worked with carbon offset experts to find a meaningful offset. Find out more about carbon offsets.

For your own travel to and from Sept-Îles, we encourage you to consider purchasing your own offsets from your airline or Carbone Boréal.

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