The Nahanni and Headless Valley

Real deaths and disappearances in a canyon system reachable only by air

Nahanni National Park Reserve covers some 30,000 square kilometres of the Mackenzie Mountains in the Dehcho Region of the Northwest Territories, about 500 km west of Yellowknife. Its heart is the South Nahanni River, Nahʔą Dehé in Dene, the river of the land of the Nahʔa people. It is an antecedent river: the mountains rose slowly enough, and it ran strongly enough, that it kept its old meandering course and cut four canyons through them as they came up, with walls reaching some 1,000 metres. At Virginia Falls, Náįlįcho, it plunges 90 metres, twice the height of Niagara, around a spire of rock named for the canoeist Bill Mason, and the mist feeds a pocket of boreal orchids. Granite towers of the Ragged Range rise in the Cirque of the Unclimbables, and Mount Nirvana, at 2,773 m the highest peak in the territories, stands in the park.

Gold brought the legend. Prospectors bound for the Yukon fields or hoping to strike it rich on the Flat and South Nahanni rivers came through, and around 1908 the headless bodies of two Métis prospectors, Willie and Frank McLeod, were found. Their gold was said to have come from a lost mine somewhere in the park, the Lost McLeod Mine, and in the years after, the mysterious deaths of other prospectors fed the stories. The map still carries them: Deadmen Valley, Headless Creek, the Headless Range, the Funeral Range, and the park's old nickname, the Valley of the Headless Men. No significant gold was ever recovered.

The Dene have used the land in and around the reserve far longer. The park was created in 1972 under Pierre Trudeau, who came to see it with the explorer Jean Poirel, and in 1978 it was among the first four natural sites UNESCO inscribed on the World Heritage list, for its wild river, deep canyons, waterfalls and limestone caves and its wolves, grizzly bears, caribou, Dall's sheep and mountain goats. Since then it has been greatly enlarged in agreement with the Dehcho First Nations.

Only some 800 to 1,000 people come each year, almost all to travel the river. The practical way in is by floatplane or helicopter, usually from Fort Simpson, where the park has its main office; overnight stays must be reserved, everyone registers on entering, and recreational drones are banned.