Travelers build and ride canoe down Stikine

A pair of French travelers made their way down the Stikine River to Wrangell from Telegraph Creek using a homemade dugout.

Both in their early twenties, friends Theophile Bouton and Karl Panchout have spent the past year exploring the Northwest, and their 11-day trip down the transboundary river was just one of a series of adventures.

This part of the story begins in the Yukon, which Panchout hitch-hiked across Canada to reach from Quebec about 11 months ago. "I met a friend of my uncle there," he explained. Bouton joined him there two months later.

"We are both from the same part of France,"...