Petawawa River
Friday, June 28, 2002 to Monday, July 1, 2002
route:
length: 4 days
difficulty: intermediate
organizer: Chris and Cline
participants: Caroline Owen, Chris Mack,
offsite report: http://kapn.pointclark.net/gallery/album05
OR try the Wayback Machine
report:
A few of us paddled the Petawawa River from Traverse to McManus over the long wknd. We put in first thing Saturday morning and reached the take out by noon on the Monday which left lots of time for swimming and exploring along the way. The water level was high for July and the bugs were as thick as I remember them, we still had blackflies thru the day along with sadistic deer flies and horse flies and at night we were treated with hoards of mosquitoes.
Note to self...buy a bug jacket!!!
I felt people were a little nervous as the various meals were divided up among the group, Cline knows my passion for living on power gells, but it turned out to be one of the finest group of meals I can remember. We had veggie burgers, chips and salsa, egg mcmuffins ala Cline & Sandy, avocado/veggie wraps, a delicious thai noodle dinner, crumpets and jam, oatmeal, curried split pea casserole and lots of deserts...what can I say!!
Dehydration was one thing we had to watch cause it was sunny the whole time, Cline was always there to remind us all to drink up.
We had the luxury of taking my abs prospector and Cline's shiny yellow caption and switched boats along the way so all could feel the 'distinct characteristics' of each model. Ok, the prospector with packs just fills to the gunwales going thru just about anything over class 2 but Kevin and I managed to still make it down clean and to the safety of our eddies in the end. The Caption on the other hand actually rides up the waves and over them and with the right lines you can make it through just about dry, very sweet boat, it was my first time in one, and it has been a looong time since I have paddled with Cline in the bow. I must say I was stunned by how well we could get that boat moving, we had a lot of fun and I am now on the long list of people looking for a used caption.
We only had one mishap on the trip, Cline and Sandy decided to run Big Thompson in the Caption and made it through the main drop real well but got trashed by a wave as they were ferrying over to left and ended up going for a bumpy swim.
We saw lots of critters, numerous moose and deer, one bear, woodpeckers, Osprey, bank beaver but mostly millions of BUGS!
Check out the pics, you can find them on the VVCC photo gallery (Link at top of page.).
Cya
Chris |
