Finally going down some whitewater with Keiran (and friends). Four days of doing whitewater in and around Barker Lake. The Churchill River was in flood, and we deemed that Donaldson Channel was too dangerous. It was.
Highlight of the trip was the huge struggle to get out of the toilet bowl eddy in corner rapids. Fun times and swimming were had by everyone.
Getting There
We left Saskatoon Tuesday evening and spent the night at Emma Lake. This gave us a chance to pick up the canoes and to get everything ready. Kaylam provided a big Toyota Sequoia, so we had lots of room, for gear, people and canoes.
Day 1 – Across Devil
We arrived at Devil Lake noon-ish and paddled across to Mosquito and set up camp. LUXURY. I have never had a picnic table before. And the abundance of firewood and grills for the fire was awesome.
Day 2 – Around Barker and Murray
In the morning, we played in the haystacks below Mosquito. Everyone tipped and swam at least once.
In the afternoon, we portaged up Mosquito, then paddled the circumference of Barker Lake. We also dragged up the shelf and ran it. Intimidating until you have done it once. Then down Murray Rapids. I really don’t want to swim down Murray unintentionally. No-one did.
The weather had gotten dark and gloomy and we were happy to get back to our campsite before the skies opened up. It got darker, but the rain held off for our dinner. By the time the rain did hit, we were ready for it, with a tarp set up over the cooking area, and a snug, mosquito proof shelter. We played Wizard as the skies opened up.
Late at night, Kaylam and Ian had to move their tent out of the path of streams of water. This was done in the rain and dark.
Day 3 – Portaging up Devils Rapids
We ended up doing TWO 1 km portages, instead of the anticipated single 2+ km big one. These portages were knee deep mud much of the time. We made it just fine, and other than the letdown when we discovered that we still had another one to do, all was good.
The Donaldson campsite had been significantly changed by time and knocked down trees. Regardless, it was a great place to be. The fishing did not meet expectations.
Day 4 – Whitewater and Corner Rapids
In the early morning, it looked like it might be a nice day. But, that quickly changed to rain before we got our hopes up. Breakfast was eaten under a tarp in the rain. At this time, we also decided to cut our trip short by a day. Easy to do, and the only thing we would lose was lazy time.
Donaldson was deemed to be too dangerous, so we headed over to the Sluice portage instead. This time, the 1 km. portage seemed easy, but the beach at the bottom of Sluice was still a welcome sight. We met up with Brian, and encouraged him to join us as we spent the rest of the day doing whitewater.
We looked at the bottom of Donaldson and were very glad not to have attempted it. VERY big. Now it was time to run some rapids with loaded canoes. The shelf was (almost) easy.
Everything was easy EXCEPT for the whirlpool at Corner Rapids. We (foolishly?) chose to go into the eddy river-left. It was very hard to get out of it. Canoe #2, with a variety of paddlers on board made 7 or 8 attempts. Many swims later with the current spun us around, we finally made it out after 45-ish minutes. One of the surging whirlpools sucked Kaylam down for a few seconds, just long enough to take his hat away for good. Brian had taken the sensible river-right option, and so got to observe the rest of us recirculating in the giant eddy.
We were happy when all canoes made it down Murray Rapids with no problems. Harder with fully loaded canoes. The final paddle across Devil Lake and 5 hour drive back was uneventful.