Athabasca River is marked by rapids, impeding navigation southwest of Fort McMurray. The Athabasca River travels before draining into the Peace-Athabasca Delta near Lake Athabasca south of Fort Chipewyan. From there, its waters flow north as Rivière des Rochers, then joining the Peace River to form the Slave River that empties into Great Slave Lake and discharges through the Mackenzie River system into the Arctic Ocean. The cumulative drainage area is . Numerous communities are located on the banks of the Athabasca River, including Jasper, Brule, Entrance, Hinton, Whitecourt, Fort Assiniboine, Smith, Athabasca, Fort McMurray, and Fort McKay. An independent study has
Boats of the Mackenzie River watershed Landing north of Edmonton to the Slave River rapids, the only significant obstacle en route to the Mackenzie. In 1886, the S.S. "Wrigley" was launched on the other side of these rapids, at Fort Smith, and for the first time a steam-driven vessel operated on the Mackenzie River as far as Aklavik in the river delta before it spilled into the Arctic Ocean. A series of small portage trails were established between Smith's Landing (later Fort Fitzgerald) and Fort Smith to skirt the 16-mile rapids - this was later upgraded into a full road in the 1920s. In 1898 the