Paddling Episode 5

 We've paddled Lake Eugenia more than once, but it's been fun every time.  I'm going to show you an air photo first for a change, and try to explain where we went, but you can just skip that if you want.  The air photo below shows a mix of farmland, cottages, the lake and marsh.  If you've read my last few posts you'll know that we didn't bother paddling across the open lake - what fun is that?  Instead we explored the marsh and the shoreline.

Lake Eugenia was created in about 1905 when Ontario Hydro purchased the low-lying valley and built a dam in Eugenia, flooding a wide area of farms and piping water from the lake to the edge of the escarpment.  Even today this provides the highest drop of water for hydro production east of the Rockies.

Looking at this air photo you can see the dark water of the lake, a shoreline that is sometimes marsh (the very light colours), and a white line across the top.  That white line is the causeway, and we kept all our exploring south of that.  We put in off the dock of a friend's cottage in about the centre of the photo, and paddled south.  Eventually we attempted (mostly unsuccessfully), to explore up the Beaver River where it enters in the southeast corner of the photo..  The white lines in that area are simply property lines.  Let me know if you find this sir photo interesting.

Here we are putting in off the dock, my friend in his kayak, and my one-person canoe waiting while I take the photo.

  Blogger is really messing up my spacing today!

At this end of the lake the tree stumps were simply left, and the shallower water here means they are exposed.  Makes for an interesting paddle though!

We headed for the marsh first, but found it was way up over our heads from the vantage point of a canoe.

So we headed south where we could find our way to where the river flowed into the lake.  My canoeing buddy had a thing for exploring these narrow creeks.

It was very similar to exploring the creek that flows into the Robson Lakes, where we ran into frequent logjams.  Here you might think we were stuck, but we wiggled around the far left side of these logs and continued on.

You could watch the current as the aquatic vegetation moved in the water.  This story is obvios=usly going to take more than one day, so we'll return to this tomorrow.

The Coulonge River

The Coulonge is in Quebec, and runs southward into the Ottawa River, roughly parallel to the Noire which was my first northern river canoe experience.  In my memory the Noire flowed through sandy country (and was therefore fairly forgiving), but the Coulonge ran through rocky country, (and was therefore fairly unforgiving)!

We had to use a shuttle for this one, driving a bumpy backwoods road, pulling a trailer loaded with our canoes to get to our chosen put in point.  We were aiming for a seven-day trip.  Again there was lots of gentle whitewater, so I had an intense learning experience.  When you're heading fast toward a bit of whitewater you don't get much time to sit and ponder your options!

This was a trip with actual waterfalls, and one memorable portage that involved roping the canoe down a vertical slope to the water below!  Glad there were other more experienced folk to take charge of that one!  I also recall seeing half a canoe sticking vertically out of the logjam in front of a portage!  But the most interesting thing one of our members found was a name carved into the rock in large letters, mostly covered in moss, presumably the name of a lumberjack with time on his hands.

By the end of this trip, my third with this group of friends, I was beginning to think I knew how to handle things.  And each trip was incredibly interesting!