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.