Watching this again, and it's just as incredible an expedition as the first go round. It's cool that they went back in 2011 to try again, but sadly didn't make it due to weather, although they did get a fair bit further on the second try.
I'm also struck by how the so-called controversy over these trips is a perfect example of self-serving alpha-hotels hiding behind the guise of environmentalism when really their motivation is pure self-interested greed, wringing their hands over "environmental damage!" because some vehicles drove on a ROAD. Oh no, look at these tire tracks on this ROAD. The clown who owns the hunting lodge was also whinging about the underside of their vehicles being washed and that being "left in the river" after the water crossings - oh, you mean the mud? The tiny, tiny amount of mud that might be stuck to the underside of a 4x4? What about when the river shifts and millions of tonnes of earth and rock completely reshape the river's flow, and the subsequent bank erosion? That's like complaining about spilling an eyedropper full of coffee in the pacific ocean and worrying about the fish. Either pure idiocy or pure gaslighting, one or the other.
It also annoys me when they act like nature is SO fragile that if you just breathe on it you've destroyed it forever, when the fact that the Canol Road has been effectively devoured by nature, despite millions and millions of dollars and millions of tons of equipment and 20 months of backbreaking labour were spent to carve it out in the first place, proves otherwise. Another example of this is Anyox, BC. Once the site of the biggest smelter on the west coast of NA, a town of over 3000 people, and so toxic due to the pollutants from the smelter that the creeks around it were literally deadly cyanide, and nothing grew in a circle several kms in diameter around the town. Now? So completely enveloped and overtaken by the forest that you can barely tell there was ever a human settlement there.
Of course, we all agree with tread lightly; of course the kind of devastation created by Anyox's smelter is horrific and should never be repeated, but there's zero evidence to suggest the BC Roverlanders did anything wrong or unconventional, or left any trash behind, and freaking out because they left tire ruts and marks on a ROAD is beyond absurd. Nature is far more powerful and enduring than these late-sipping fake environmentalists think.
Anyway, it's aggravating that so often the only voices heard are the hand wringers like the hunting lodge owner, and nobody in the media calls out his obvious ulterior motive of not wanting to lose his $30,000 a pop cash cow.
Guess recent events in the world have me in a fighting mood. /rant over.
