East Pit Lake

In late May, we went out to East Pit Lake, which is about 1km north of the Wabamun Village exit on Highway 16. This is a man-made lake over an old quarry (the whole areas looks to have been strip mined about 25 years ago).

There is a small parking lot about 1000 feet from the lake. You can slide your boats under the gate and follow a trail leading west. The trail forks after a short distance; stay on the northern (right) footpath as it passes an outhouse and climbs about 50 vertical feet to the crest of a hill. From here, it is about 100 vertical feet down to the water.

The entrance is a small "beach" which was a touch grotty. The water, however was lovely and clear as soon as we were off the beach. Definitely suitable for paddle boarding.

The lake itself is about 1.5 km long and maybe half a km wide. We did a full circuit in about an hour taking our time.

The lake was very calm, being down in a bit of a hollow. There were a tonne of birds to be seen and lots of fish jumping

This was a very beautiful paddle. The only people on the lake were a couple of folks fishing from the shore.

There were also some beaver, an osprey, loons, mergansers, and lots of red-winged blackbirds.

Getting the boats back to the car was a bit of a chore. The pictures below give you a sense of the climb. 

There is a bench about half way up and you can detour to see one of the scrapper buckets (about the size of a small garage) used on the site.

Overall, a pretty positive trip. The carry was long than usual but not too challenging.