Hood River
The Hood River is the first tundra river I've paddled. In the arctic, spring comes later. We started in late June and only had a little bit of trouble finding a place to land. There was a bay on Cave Lake that was mostly free of ice and the pilots from Air Tindi landed there. The weather was beautiful, the days were literally endless, and there were no bugs (they came out about a week later and got bad in mid-July). We did have to get out quite often and pull the canoes over ice, sometimes for a few kilometers. If you are paddling with pakboats, you'll need a slippery piece of plastic to put under them while pulling. We had custom made "crazy carpets" that tied onto the boats and made them easier to pull. The regular canoes we had pulled very nicely. Also note that when the ice gets too soft to pull on and you have to paddle through it, the regular canoes work quite well. The pakboats stick to the candled ice and are extremely hard to paddle through it.
The Hood River starts with a series of lakes connected by short channels which often have rapids or falls. The first half of the trip was fighting through wind and ice on Cave Lake (the wide one), Lentz Lake and Esker Lake (the long, crooked one with sand at the end). At the outlet of Esker Lake is Skull Rapids, which is spectacular. Then the river starts.
The first bit of the river is mostly lazy and calm, punctuated with rapids and falls. We mostly portaged and lined these first rapids. Kinguanmiut Falls (at the end of a long portage) is in this section and is absolutely spectacular. I wish we'd spent an extra day here exploring. The Wright River Confluence is a few kms below Kinguanmiut and we did spend half a day exploring here which was well worth it. There was a large school of greyling in the Wright River near our campsite, but no one had the energy for fishing at that point. At the Wright River confluence, the river picks up and gets a little more bouncy. The pace increases and you can get a lot further in a day. Spray skirts are advised. There are a few tricky rapids with some necessary portages - always stop and scout.
The river gets faster and bigger before it turns straight north, as you get close to Wilberforce. Good whitewater canoeing and river reading skills are necessary - portaging here is unrealistic.
Finally, you get to Wilberforce Falls - the tallest falls north of the arctic circle, which is the star of this trip. Some people fly in just to see the falls. This was the end of our river trip.
Our end goal was the community of Bathurst Inlet, which required a 12km portage east to Portage Bay and then a couple days canoeing in the Arctic Ocean. That portage took us a grueling four days. Many people portage around the falls (river left) and continue north to a spot where a float plane can land.