Flood Time :-(

We managed a couple of trips the weekend before last - a day on the lower Kan and another on the Castle Junction to Banff run, both with BWCC members. The weekend before that, we ran Ghost Dam to Cochrane. I think that's seven trips for me so far this season. All of them have been great fun, although for the second time in eight months, the run into Banff was horribly windy and the end of the trip was deluged with rain. This time, however, I had my group shelter, and the rain quickly gave up when it realised it couldn't win.

I have various photos from the trips, and am gradually resolving the problem of running out storage, courtesy of Paddington, who has lent me his email account. Good boy; I knew he must have a use.

Unfortunately last week was characterised by heavy rain, which has raised the rivers to flood stage. This was pretty amazing to watch, but scuttled our chances of paddling, and stole several MTB trails in Fish Creek forever. The picnic sites don't look so great, either.

Of course, with the two main rivers in Calgary closed by the Fire Dept and the third running at 90 cms instead of its usual 1 cms, it was inevitable that our new paddles would arrive.......only to sit unused in the basement.

I managed to get out on the road bike last night, as the weather cleared, before taking the Fish Creek pictures on an evening walk. It was lovely out there, but the guys I was riding with were pretty fit, and I was hard pushed to keep up. We averaged 25.5 kmph over 37 km, with 500 m of ascent. I need to get riding more often!

A little closer

I feel like my whole life is becoming about this trip already....get up, go to work, think about paddling all day, spend lunch time eyeing the dehydrated food at Sobeys, then head to the shops, looking for solutions to the varius problems we have to resolve. Tonight's job was a trip to Candian Tire to look for a roll-up aluminium table. They were out of stock, but I managed to come home with a food dehydrator, a folding washing up bowl, some wood for the stove (needs cutting up), cutlery, clear garbage bags, a skillet, and multiple plastic bottles for spices. And I thought we had everythig! I agonised over fishing rods. There was one for $20 that might have done the job, but then I noticed that the kids' rods next it (fluorescent orange and green plastic) were $10, and decided that there must be a catch (forgive the pun).

We've spent all evening talking about dehydrated food (and whether a whisky platypus looks a bit desperate). Six weeks to go......

Paull River Trip Post 1

We're getting pretty excited about the forthcoming summer trip to Saskatchewan. "What? Do you like, like....wheat?" is the standard response from anyone I say that to. So I have to explain that while the southern half of the province is perhaps best known for Corner Gas, and Canadian Football fans getting smashed while wearing watermelons on their heads, the northern half is pristine Canadian Shield wilderness, and an entirely different ballgame. So in July we'll be driving quickly north past the population centres, via the odd Dog River lookalike, to Missinipe, where six of us will load a float plane with three canoes and a ton of gear, and fly north for an hour to Paull Lake. From there we'll be on our own for ten days, paddling back to Missinipe via a series of river reaches, rapids, and lakes. The rapids vary from class I riffles to a class VI ledge; we're planning on a minimum of seventeen portages, and a lot of Class II-III water. Or maybe thirty portages and a lot of class II.....we'll see! It's a reasonably well-known trip, but not likely to be busy. There are a few accounts of doing it in shorter time scales than we're aiming for, e.g. this one, but we plan to enjoy it, and be able to take a day or two off if the weather is good, maybe play in some rapids, etc.

I was meaning to record the preparations as we went along, but am only just starting, with six weeks until the trip. Not to worry. So far we have identified the odd risk: bear, cougar, moose, mosquito, blackfly, leeches, whitewater hazards, drowning, too much sun, cold and wet weather, snow, all the usual camping stuff, plane crash, etc....and started to plan for a few of them. Some you just have to try to buy your way out of - e.g., we have bought fancy new bug jackets. Some you can engineer out with careful preparation and good camp habits - bears in particular. Others are going to take a little more effort....like getting our paddling up to scratch. As a cheat, we ordered new paddles from the US almost eight weeks ago, but they have yet to show up, which is rather disappointing. Apparently the US Olympic team paddles all snapped and the guy is working full time on supplying them. I'm not sure why I should care about that though...

So while we waited - and waited - for the paddles, we caught up on a vital skill set this weekend - four of us who are headed north have just spent two days qualifying as Swiftwater Rescuers (Level II) with Rocky Mountain Adventure Medicine. The course was held on the Lower Kananaskis River, an hour from home. This was great for us, as we'd like to paddle sections of the 'Racecourse' on the lower Kan, and now we've swum several of them, so they've become less intimidating. The water is 4C all year, as it sinks to the bottom of Barrier Lake before discharging via a sluice - dry suits make a massive difference, but people were still pretty cold by the end of the weekend - in fact Lou had to sleep for an hour when she got home; she's just got up and headed to the bath to warm up some more. She did fantastically well in the swimming; for someone who hates getting her face wet in the pool, she excelled at swimming the big water - and had fun doing it.

We had a great time - normally throwing yourself into a river above a 1.5 metre drop followed by a big wavetrain would be viewed as foolhardy, but on this course, that's exactly what you have to do in order to pass. Oh - and then swim the rapid, adopting various swimming positions, such as aggressive, defensive, and 'barrel roll'. Plus you throw bags of wet rope at each other, and tie a lot of knots. Even better, you're taught to dive into the fastest parts of the flow making the biggest belly flop possible. It's like being in Scouts all over again, albeit without the chain-smoking leaders and their strange literary tastes.....but you still get a badge for it. I swallowed half the river today; to fight off Guardia and Cryptosporidia, I may have to indulge in a medicinal whisky soon. :-)

So what's next? Well, we have a massive list of equipment to be tested, packed, unpacked, repacked- or discarded - and generally balanced around the boat. I had envisioned taking two barrels and small pack. At the last count we had two 50 L barrels, two 60 L dry sacks, two 40 L dry sacks, two 30 L dry sacks, one 35 L dry rucsac, four 20 L dry bags, a dry document case, a dry day bag, a double-walled ijnflatable camera dry bag, and a bunch of stuff like chairs, axe, etc that won't go inside anything. How did this happen?! I had to re-outfit the boat completely to accommodate the gear. Since it's not a very long boat (16.75 feet) we will be well loaded!

Next weekend we're off to Waterton Lakes National Park to paddle three rivers in three days, and test some gear for the summer trip. Let's hope we come back still liking the whole idea....

Summer's Here - Kind of...

This will be a funny summer. There's so much snow in the hills that the melt will take months. It's unlikely that some of the higher scrambles will come clear of snow at all. Fortunately we have too many pastimes these days to do any of them well, so we'll just be putting that to rights. So far this season I've been on the road bike a few times, just for short (28-42 km) rides, and we've enjoyed some great trails in Fish Creek on the mountain bikes. Plus, of course, it's going to be a great paddling season. Various pictures from May are posted here.

From May 2011 Miscellaneous

How the winter ended

....slowly? It did seem like the cold and snow lasted a while this year, but on the plus side we are now enjoying sunny weather with temps in the twenties, and the local bike trails are dry. The mountains have record snowpack in many locations, so paddling this season will be good for longer, but the hiking season may barely happen before it's time to put on the skis again.

My tally for the winter, for the record: no days of ice climbing, one day slowshoeing, and fifty outings on skis of one sort or another. Perhaps a little unbalanced, but it has paid off, as we've done our first ski tour (just a small overnight trip to Mt Bryant), and started skiing double black diamonds on a regular basis.

It's May now, and I intend to post more frequently, but am considering a switch to a different blog location, as the Google limit of photos is causing me grief. We'll see. So far this spring we have been easing into the alternative activity schedule (i.e. no skiing). We've biked in Fish Creek a couple of times and found some previously unexplored single track (see photo), been out on the road bikes a couple of times, and been on the lower Kan, the Bow (Ghost Dam to Cochrane), and the Elbow (Sandy Beach to Inglewood). Last year our stats were something like 'paddled 15 times, no swims'. My stat so far this year is'paddled three times, with two swims'. I'd like to say that we're trying harder, but I think I'm just getting clumsier with time.

Right, back to work. Occasionally we do that, too....