The Beaver River, Again - Episode 10

We've visited the Beaver River before, several posts back, but here's another route higher upstream that's very interesting too.  It meanders slowly through a huge Silver Maple Swamp, dodging logjams and encountering wildlife.  It was the closest easy paddle to our previous home.  And it was a designated canoe route, with safe access points.

The reflections were striking in early spring or 2015, the leaves just emerging.

I really like this picture, showing what paddling through a swamp is like.

These are the sorts of logjams you encounter.  In this case we were able to slip through by ducking under some branches.  Free Spirit Tours runs canoe trips on the Beaver River, so they make sure logjams aren't completely blocking the river.

We saw occasional Canada Geese; if they didn't call and fly quickly away you knew a nest was nearby.

We also passed one beaver lodge.

And surprisingly saw several Egrets.  Can you spot it?

After an hour or so, the scenery opened up and forest cover was a little less dense.

Double-crested Cormorants roosting in a tree.

You could spot ice damage on the lower trunks of nearby trees.

And another Egret standing along the shore.

In fact, as we approached the bridge and the take-out point, I counted four Egrets together on the bank.  This is a very peaceful and easy three hour paddle, but quite interesting at the same time, particularly if you combine it with the lower section which I've already described.

The Burnside River

The most distant and challenging canoe trip I joined my group of buddies on was the Burnside in the Arctic.  The Burnside is a typical Arctic River, well beyond the tree  line, bouncing down a constant gradient providing almost continuous Class I, II and III rapids.  There are very few portages, but one giant one, six kilometres long, over a significant hill!  It's been described as the 'Burnside Death March'!

We flew in from Yellowknife heading over 400 km. northeast until we could land on a lake that wasn't still frozen solid - Kathawachaga Lake.  From there it was just bouncing downstream until we came to the killer portage around the Burnside Falls, to emerge at Bathurst Inlet, a tiny hamlet with access to the Arctic Ocean.

The Burnside is known as a wildlife river, with guided expeditions speaking of Muskox, Grizzlies, Wolf and other species, but we saw few of these - only a grizzly at a great distance as we started the portage.  However, we did pass a narrow point of the river where the local Caribou herd migrated.  With Inuit hunting at that point we did find a significant pile of Caribou antlers and bones.

The paddling was great. the current was so constant that we really didn't have to paddle for momentum, rather we had to paddle to avoid boulders!  So it was often the bow person's job to be on the lookout and pull the canoe sideways with a draw stroke or two!  I was kept on my toes, but enjoyed it immensely.  I won't describe the 'portage from hell' in detail, suffice it say it was three times as long as any other portage I've done, as well as being uphill in part - a big long hill!

This was the only trip where we took a large tent we christened the 'tundra tunnel'.  It was large enough we could all gather inside, away from the bugs that swarmed around once we stopped to camp.  It got us out of the wind too; the low end helps prevent the tent from being blown away!.  It's the big blue tent in this picture.

We did make it successfully to Bathurst Inlet, to find no-one there, so we set up camp on the airstrip, and waited for pickup and our return flight to Yellowknife.  All in all the most exciting canoeing I'd ever done!

 

The Saugeen River Again

As I've said, the Saugeen is a popular river for canoeing in these parts.  The Conservation Authority has arranged access points up and down the river, with good maps posted and available online, so it's easy to access the water and plan your outing.  I haven't seen any other river where canoeing is promoted so well.

This time we're paddling the main Saugeen, a little further up the watershed, starting east of Hanover and finishing some distance downstream from Walkerton.  

For the most part it's an easy-going river, and the paddling was pleasant.

We went under several old railway bridges, this one from the Wellington Grey and Bruce Railway, built in the 1870s but long since decommissioned.  The pillars are original but the bridge itself has a new deck, suitable for biking and hiking.

We portaged around the small dam in Hanover, and sat in the shade for lunch.

We went back in a few weeks and started again at Walkerton.  Soon after you come to this tall sweeping sandbank, lining a large bend in the river.  The current speeds up here and you need to be careful going through the only real whitewater you'll encounter.

High on the vertical bank are these homes of bank swallows.

The water is a little choppy here, but you could stand up anywhere if you needed to.

We found a gravel bar for lunch, 

And I found this bright purple Vervain, entangled with the white blossoms of Wild Cucumber.

This is the sort of map that's posted at every access point.  Makes it pretty easy to see where you are.

They're posted at all the access points, with a few parking spaces and a way to get down to the river.  All in all this was an enjoyable paddle, spread over two days.

The North Saugeen

The Saugeen River occupies a widespread drainage basin, with many branches; it drains into Lake Huron.  The North Saugeen is one of the smaller branches, and wilder than most.  It moves through a mostly forested corridor, and is a pretty exciting river to paddle for this area.  We've canoed it three times, and got started on a fourth.  

That 4th trip we didn't get far before one of the canoes got hung up on a logjam and in rescuing things, one of the ladies broke her wrist!  We had to take a GPS reading and head out through the forest to the nearest road, dragging the canoes behind us!  That was a trip to remember!

The route starts at McCullough Lake, at this big culvert.  A good current to carry us onward.

This river has lots of fallen trees leaning over the river, or actually in the water.  You wouldn't think we could get through here, but there was a narrow channel we could use among the branches.

Other parts of the river looked like this, a beautiful easy paddle.

The water was incredibly clear; this is two or three feet deep..

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Along the way we passed several patches of wild Blue Flag, the wild Iris.

But more logjams too!

My favourite was a small patch of Cardinal Flower, its bright red blooms standing out among the green.

On our last paddle here there had been a fairly serious flood earlier that spring.  The entire river channel had been re-arranged, with new gravel bars and places where the canoe could not get through because of shallow water.  We expected to wade in places.

And wade we did, especially in the first kilometre downstream from the lake.  We were out wading about 7 or 8 times, which is really no problem if you are expecting it and plan for it.   You need your bow and stern ropes in this situation, or the canoe is quickly sideways!

In a river like this (or any whitewater river) I should point out the safety issues if your canoe gets sideways.  Even though the water may be only a foot deep, the current may be very strong.  A canoe that gets sideways and flips from the water pressure, especially if it's against a log jam, can get destroyed quickly, or worse still, someone could drown.  In situations like this, having good bow and stern ropes can enable two people to keep the canoe going straight.

Again I'm adding the air photos as at least some of you said you enjoyed them.  McCullough Lake is in the upper right of the first photo, surrounded by cottages.  You can follow the river through a forested corridor down to the concession road.  The same road appears a short ways down on the second photo, and as the river winds its way west you can see where a few houses back onto the river.  It goes under the road again, bending north, then west under a north-south road, where the end point is found.

The Bloodvein River

The Bloodvein River is in far northwestern Ontario, and is an ancient canoe route, in use for millennia, watched over by nearby Indigenous communities.  It is one of very few joint World Heritage Sites in Canada, designated for both its cultural and its natural heritage values.  Notable on the cultural heritage side are numerous Ojibwe pictographs.  The entire area is traditional Anishinaabe territory, largely occupied by two provincial parks, Woodland Caribou Park on the Ontario side and Atikaki Park in Manitoba.

Getting there involved a flight, then a long drive to get to the put in point west of Red lake Ontario.  This was a spectacular trip, two weeks long, with lots of white water.  For me it was good practice putting to use the skills I had learned on previous trips.  One of our group could only come for one week, so was flown in to join us in a small float plane for week two.  Talk about dedication!

What I remember are the pictographs, a sample shown above. and realizing that you were camped on spots that had been used for perhaps 6000 years!  It really made you feel part of both the landscape and the culture.

Massassauga Provincial Park

Oh, I have to apologize!  The week just got away from me and I haven't posted since Monday.  Wednesday and Thursday are my busy days, sorry!

I do have pictures of two of the northern canoe trips we went on, after I'd switched to digital photography, so here's one of them, dating from 2011.  This trip was to the Massassauga Provincial Park, just south of Parry Sound on the eastern shore of Georgian Bay.  It's not a river, but an area of lakes, rocks and pine trees almost entirely wild.  There are a couple of old fishing lodges that we never saw.

Once you re close to Parry Sound, you find you're on the granitic rocks of the Canadian Shield.  It's that classic northern canoe country.

You register at Oastler Lake Provincial Park, where I was taken camping as a child, and then you follow a winding road through the bush to the docks on Three-legged Lake.  After paddling for half an hour or so, to the farthest corner of that lake, you arrive at the portage.

Packs slung onto our backs, and canoes overhead, we trundled down the path to the other side, at Spider Lake.  Usually canoe owners prefer to hoist their canoes themselves, and a portage usually takes two trips.  Spider Lake where we've arrived, is the heart of the park, large, ragged and with several deep bays, shaped sort of like a spider.

Guess what Massassauga Park is named after!  We found a campsite, beached the canoes, and got our tents put up.  In fact I think it was the next day when I was walking up the short path from the water that I noticed this pattern in the leaves and pine needles, a metre or so off the trail.  I stood very still!  This looked like a mature Massassauga Rattlesnake, but if you don't bother them, they won't usually bother you.  

Not far away, in the water between the beached canoes, was this enormous Snapping Turtle!  I expect previous campers had inadvertently trained it to visit for food scraps.  Not everyone is careful about their washing up.

Sunrise on Clear Lake - As our canoe group was aging, we picked some gentler trips.  This was one, with no whitewater at all, just flatwater paddling, but plenty of different places to explore over ten days.

This was sunrise on our final day, camped at a different spot on Spider Lake.  No-one wanted to leave!

It's February 1st!

Here's a winter interlude, interrupting our summer canoe trips for a moment.  Today is February1st, and here in the north, it's a brilliant sunny day.  If you take my word for it, you could actually feel the warmth of the sun outside, the first triumphal hint of spring to come (though we have to get rid of a lot of snow first)!  

So here's the view out our back window, though as with all these photos the editing doesn't remain true to colour in such bright sunlight.

The unhealthy Sugar Maple out in the golf course still looks good, with two small recently planted pines beside it.

And here's a view you don't often get, taken from the kitchen window.

It was sunny, but still cold, so I wasn't seeing any melting snow, though I tried to convince myself that the snow on the back of the chair was melting.

I'm intrigued by how these plants get buried.

The drift off the roof at my front window is hanging down a good two feet now.

And the snowstick is almost completely buried.

Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, widely celebrated in the northeast and here in nearby Wiarton.  Will he see his shadow or won't he?  Will we have another six weeks of winter, or won't we?  Checkout Wiarton Willie, Punxsutawney Phil or Shubenacadie Sam tomorrow to see the results!

A Note on the Editing.  In extremely bright sunlight like today my camera automatically darkens the picture to try to balance the light.  It's a problem whenever you take pictures in a snowy landscape.  But editing to try and get the photos back to being bright again distorts the colour.  You can see above, snow often looks bluish, and the sky sometimes looks almost turquoise.  But they're close to correct colours if not perfect!