Although Anglican Bishop Isaac Stringer travelled often throughout the North, he was famous for one particularly gruelling trek in 1909. Bishop Stringer set out from Fort McPherson in the fall of that year with fellow missionary C.J. Johnston and an Indian guide. The Bishop journeyed between Dawson and McPherson almost every year, but this time the guide fell ill. Stringer and Johnson turned back, but were overtaken by bitter winter conditions before they could re-cross the mountains known as the Rat River Divide.
The men fashioned crude snowshoes from willows and strips of hide. They headed towards the divide but became lost.
