16 mile Creek (Oakville Creek)
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
route:
length: 5.0km, 1 day
difficulty: intermediate
organizer: Keith
participants: Jeff McColl, Keith Nunn,
report:
I took a half day off to try to take advantage of the warm weather and meltwater. Jeff McColl was game so we met at the put-in at 1pm. When Jeff got there he found Chris Mack there checking the level for a run on Wed. He would have been in, but unfortunately seems to have fallen off the email list. I've added him back on now (let me know if you get this Chris!). Chris kindly shuttled us so we didn't have to run it again after the paddle. The take-out is under construction, but seems to be accessible if you're bold. We parked in the church parking lot and nobody freaked. This probably wouldn't work on a Sunday. The water was apparently at 2 on the bridge guage. I didn't look, but I think that's what Chris said. it was ~1.5m on the Environment Canada waterweb page (OAKVILLE CREEK AT MILTON (02HB005)). The water was cold. Very cold. It can't have been much above 0C. I've never, ever paddled in such cold water. Alberta paddlers are probably used to it. Fortunately, the air temp was 14C so it was manageable. The flow created lots of wave trains, but the number of actual playspots was quite limited. There were a few good waves though in hard to identify spots and we certainly had lots of fun banging the rust off. 
The red car in the trash rapid (used to have a kayak hanging off the cliff) is looking pretty pounded from all the ice and there's a truck in the woods there now too. Jeff took a few pics. You can have a look at them by clicking on the image at right. I don't know how Jeff was doing, but my knees and ankles suffered a bit. Way out of conditioning. The park at the take out is under construction as well. There's a new bridge for Dundas going in. We took out at the top of the park because it looked like the embankment might grow as you get further down. Lots of construction stuff around, but noone challenged us as we walked through with our boats. | 
