Paddling the Karst

I'm taking you out on a very unique ephemeral lake this time.  Wodehouse Creek is just a little stream, 3 or 4 feet wide most of the year.  It drains down into a sinkhole and disappears, only to emerge again in springs partway down the escarpment.  Every spring when runoff is high, the creek floods though, as there is too much water to fit down the sinkhole.  Then it backs up, forming an elongated lake.  After I realized this, the next spring I planned a paddle to explore it.

I'm hopeful a couple of air photos will help you understand this karst system.  These are photos I took myself.  I paid for a two hour flight in a tiny Cessna, got lucky with the weather, and flew down over Wodehouse Creek on a day when the creek and sinkholes were flooded.  This is the creek upstream from the area that floods; you can see that it's a typical small stream winding through its valley.  Beyond that is a round millpond, and beyond that you can see the flooded fields and woodland.

This photo, taken as we round the south end of the stream valley that had flooded, shows the route we paddled.   The dark blue water covers not only the valley, but the sinkholes, and the water overflows onto the fields below.  You may be able to pick out the sideroad where we started, almost at the top of the photo.  The extension of the flooded area to the right, extending into the woodland, is not a sinkhole, but a 'perched pond'.  It's only source of water is the spring flood.

 It was a little surreal paddling through the fencerows at first, where we knew there was a shallow creek below us.

We continued south, down passing through narrow gaps and across the broader open lake.

Until we emerged out onto the largest part of the ephemeral lake, right above the largest sinkholes.

We turned at that point and paddled east into the perched pond.

Then through the old fencerow and out onto the shallow flooded field.  At this point the walking trail through here is about 4 feet below us!

Then we were out over the flooded fields, and another large sinkhole, just about under that red kayak.

Eventually the water in the field got too shallow to paddle over,, and we turned back, paddling over the fencerow again and into the perched pond.

The perched pond looked like it had been dropped here from northern Ontario, all aspens, spruce and pine.  I could not believe how being here at this time of year made the entire geology of this place understandable.

We paddled back across the ridge between the perched pond and the big sinkhole, out into the open lake.  The water where those little trees and shrubs are is only about 4 feet deep; beyond that over the sinkhole, it's over 20 feet deep!

We paddled back up the flooded stream and eventually got ourselves back to the sideroad.

 The Temagami

I'm losing track of the sequence in which we paddled those northern rivers. but I don't think it matters now.  Temagami is a tiny village on the main highway to northern Ontario, beyond Sudbury, up into more mining country.  It's a very popular canoeing area, especially the beautiful Lady Evelyn Smoothwater Wilderness Park, to the northwest of Temagami.

Sadly, this is the trip I remember the least.  Old age does that to you I suppose, and all the other trips are frankly more memorable as places go.  In Temagami we met on a small tributary, and then paddled southwest out into Temagami Lake itself.  This is a huge but convoluted lake with numerous islands and channels, and designated campgrounds.  It was typical northern Ontario country of rock and pine trees.

We eventually reached a small sideroad where we could call for a shuttle as I recall, and the trip was over.  I guess sometimes they don't stand out any more than that.