Trip Coordinator: Les Horvath
Pre Shuttle arranged with Marie Weingartshofer from the take out to the put in eliminating a shuttle at the end of the trip.
Meet up time: 10:00 a.m. at the put in, shuttled at 10:10 to take out at Okotoks Lions Campground. Met Marie at 10:30 and returned to the put in at 10:50. Trip started at 11:15 after Safety talk and ended at 3:20 p.m.
There were six participants in two tandem and two solo canoes.
Morning cms at 8:00 a.m. was 8.6. At 3:30 trip end the cms was at 9.9 rated at medium flow.
Weather was 10 Celsius sun and clouds for the first half of the trip and later in the afternoon it was clouded over with a slight rain fall and at the take out loading up vehicles.
The river was brown with silt and the flow was more than adequate and slowly rising as we paddled during the day. I verified this at home checking the daily flow rate event.
At the 8.6 cms to 9.9 cms I would rate this reach as a Class I/I+. Reading on the run was the emphasis of the trip finding rock features below the water surface to avoid them. There were only a very few shallow sections that we skidded over, route finding was a fun time picking channel flows with the greatest volume. The brown silted runoff made it impossible at times to read and avoid rocks hidden below the water surface in which case the canoe would hang up with no danger of flipping.
This windy river featured a moderate gradient, wood collected in various mid-river sections, a few sweepers fallen in off river banks. No portages or lining around the river wide ledge, instead of lining we all carried/slid the canoes through the grassy, bushy and treed area quickly and manageable with all participants helping out. Once the ledge was bypassed there were two options: to line the canoe or carry over boulders along the shore line, both options were utilized.
After the ledge the river had featured surfing and rock dodging in Class I/I+ wave sections.
Bird watching was also a high note seeing juvenile bald eagles, blue herons, King Fishers, swallows, geese and baby goslings and merganser ducks.
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