A Typical Bank Holiday Weekend in Waterton Lakes National Park

If you want to know when it's going to snow or rain in Alberta, just look up the dates of the long weekends! Normally I don't bother trying to go camping at May Long Weekend, because it's a soggy zoo. This year I told myself not to be so cynical; I loaded a solo open boat onto the car and headed down to Waterton Lakes National Park with the Bow Waters Canoe Club.

And how did the weather repay me for my conversion to optimism?

Well, first it did this:

Four inches of heavy wet snow fell on the Friday night. My trusty Crux X2 tent has survived appalling conditions over the last ten years. The snow was so heavy (it was like a wet cement shell on the roof), that the flysheet sprang a leak, and dripped on me all through the night. But that did not stop us from paddling. Here's Tina looking a lot more excited about the prospect of paddling than Bosco the dog does. His day improved greatly when he returned from a beach-break and jumped into the boat carrying a severed, rotting deer's leg though. Good boy! :-)

Looking back, I have hardly any pictures from this trip; it was just too wet and cold! The weather got worse; it rained heavily on Saturday, while we paddled the St. Mary River. The access road became a mudbath that required one of the members to drag four other vehicles (trucks and SUVs, all with 4WD) up the hill using her offroad 4WD. Then I had a near-miss when a huge rock (several times my weight) was released by erosion, and bounced ten metres down the river cliff to land a few metres from my boat. The paddling itself was fine, but the weather really had it in for us.

Fortunately, the Belly River Group Campground has a cook shelter containing a large wood-burning stove. By cranking it up until the chimney glowed, we were able to turn the building into a huge sauna, and dry out all of our gear each evening. That was impressive given how wet things got. Without it, I'd have headed home on Saturday night!

Neil and Sue smiling despite the cold

Tina was excited about everything, as usual.

Tina and Bosco, minus deer.

Our trip down the Belly River was cold, but at least it had stopped raining. By Monday, when the few of us that still had the energy headed to the Waterton River, it was warming up. Here we hit another weather-related hazard though; a dam had failed, washing out the access road. Instead of driving to the put-in, we had to abandon the vehicles and run the dam outflow (watching for barbed wire and sweepers) until it connected with the river. That was actually a fun little diversion which involved lowering the boats over a small cliff, then some lining and rock dodging in soupy water.

Lining below the former dam.	More lining.
And a bit of paddling!

I went home exhausted. I was pleased to have got three days of solo paddling under my belt, and seen three new rivers, but my aversion to Alberta May long Weekend had been reinforced!