Alberta is sold with a single image: mountains with a turquoise lake in front. Banff and Jasper take almost all the province's tourist traffic and make it easy to forget that 90 % of the territory lies in the other direction, and that something happens there that happens nowhere else on the planet.
In the far north, on the border with the Northwest Territories, sits Wood Buffalo National Park: 44,741 square kilometres, the largest in Canada and the second largest in the world. Inside there are around 3,000 wood bison and the only natural nesting ground left to the whooping crane.
01 Canada's largest national park
It is worth grasping the scale first. Forty-four thousand seven hundred and forty-one square kilometres is more than many European countries. It was established in 1922 and UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage Site in 1983.
That extent is not a brochure figure: it is the condition of the trip. A park that size is not toured, it is entered at specific points. The access settlements are Fort Smith, already in the Northwest Territories, and Fort Chipewyan, inside Alberta, and there are commercial flights from Edmonton.
One secondary fact worth keeping in mind: since 28 June 2013 it has been the world's largest dark-sky preserve. If the trip includes nights out in the open, that is an added reward and it costs nothing to arrange.
02 Three thousand wood bison
The park was created for one specific purpose: to protect the world's largest free-roaming herd of wood bison. The wood bison is a distinct subspecies from the plains bison, larger and with the hump set further forward.
The current population is estimated at around 3,000 animals, and its history has an awkward chapter worth knowing: in the 1920s plains bison were introduced into the park, and the resulting hybridisation reduced the pure wood bison population.
For the visitor that means seeing bison here is not the same as seeing them in a fenced park. These are animals that move across a territory the size of a small country, and a sighting depends on the road, the season and luck.
03 The only place in the world where they nest
The other reason for the trip is rarer still. Wood Buffalo contains the only natural nesting habitat left to the whooping crane, an endangered species. It is not one of the places: it is the place.
The story of that flock is what gives the park its meaning. The same birds that nest in the wetlands of northern Alberta spend the winter on the coast of Texas, and cover that distance twice a year. The park protects one end of a four-thousand-kilometre system.
It is worth being honest about expectations: the nesting areas are subject to strict restrictions and are not visited like a viewpoint. The value of the trip is not photographing the nest, it is understanding why the species depends on this precise point on the map.
It is not one of the places where the whooping crane nests: it is the only natural one it has left.
04 The delta almost nobody names
The physical reason both species are here has a name: the Peace-Athabasca Delta, formed by the confluence of three great rivers and considered one of the world's largest freshwater deltas.
An inland delta of that size produces exactly what a wading bird nesting in wetland and a large herbivore grazing wet meadow need: shallow water, abundant vegetation and very few people. The rivers that feed it come down from the Rockies, at the other end of the province.
It is the same chain that orders the whole of Alberta. The mountains on the western edge collect the water, the rivers carry it 1,500 kilometres to the north-east and at the end of the run they form the wetland where the two species that justify this trip survive.
05 And an alternative two hours from Edmonton
If the north is beyond your time budget, there is a reduced and very accessible version: Elk Island National Park, east of Edmonton. There is bison there too, and with a useful difference.
Elk Island keeps the two subspecies separate, and seeing them one after the other is the best way to learn to tell them apart: the plains bison has a flatter back and a less forward hump than the wood bison. It is an exercise you cannot do at Wood Buffalo.
It does not replace the north, but it solves a day and fits well into any itinerary passing through Edmonton, which is also the departure point for flights to the big park.
06 How the trip is put together
Eight to twelve days allow the north to be done without rushing. Edmonton as the entry base, Elk Island on the first day to calibrate your eye, and then the long move towards Fort Smith or Fort Chipewyan, by road or on a commercial flight.
The season rules. From July to September the province's southern figures give 314.1, 284.0 and 207.0 hours of sunshine and highs of 23.5 to 18.3 degrees, and in the north the summer is short but workable. June, by contrast, is the wettest month of the year, with 112.7 millimetres over 14.5 days.
What makes this trip different is not the wildlife itself, which can be seen elsewhere. It is that here a single park protects the largest free-roaming herd of one subspecies and the last natural nesting ground of an entire species. Going there means accepting that the rare thing is far away and that the reward is not guaranteed.
