Spring Lake

In early August, I drove out to Spring Lake on a whim. Access can be a bit tricky and there are detailed instructions here. The water level was down about 8 or 10 inches (probably a combination of little snow and evaporation during a hot July).

I looked at the usual shore launch and it seemed pretty mucky so I decided to try my luck on the dock that is about 100 feet to the north.

I'm not sure this was better since it meant almost a three foot drop to the water. Docks are my least favourite way to launch but, by using my paddle to pin the boat against the pilings, I managed to get in without getting wet.

It was overcast and smokey so no real scenery shots. I did see a tonne of birds. This tern was very annoyed I chased it off this grebe nest.

There were also lots of loons with young. And grebes with young. There were also half a dozen osprey fishing overhead.

The lake was pretty calm so there were some Monet moments.

 

I surprise this heron fishing off the island.

For whatever reason, this cormorant was just sitting on this stick and would not move no matter how close I got. Maybe wet feathers? I also accidentally pushed a loon towards the shore so it dove and cut across in front of my boat to get out towards deeper water. Loons move crazy fast underwater.

Having braved the dock once, I decided to try the shore launch to get out. It was not a bad as I thought and I got out dry footed after some poling and bumscooting.

This was a pretty good paddle on Spring Lake. I hope the water level comes up a touch next year. There were lots of places I was scraping bottom near the shore. The water quality was pretty good, though.

Dried Meat Lake, Tillicum Beach

In early August, we went to try our luck at Dried Meat Lake. While it looks like you could DIY an entry at the north and south ends, we opted for the boat launch at Tillicum Beach, halfway down the eastern edge.

The launch is pretty good, with a cement ramp that get deep pretty quickly as well as a dock and a gravel beach beside it. There is lots of parking and up the hill behind, you can find pit toilets and a playground (and garter snakes!). The end of the launch has a sharp drop off.

We went south down the eastern shore. The "beach" part of Tillicum Beach is pretty overstated. There is a sandyish part just south of the boat launch but the water was way too weedy to swim in (thick weed beds up to 100 feet from shore).

The weed beds were a real drag and we ended up paddling fairly far off shore to avoid them. The lake is 20km roughly north-south and even a modest breeze meant we had some good waves. The width varies from 500m to 1 km. We went south off the launch towards what looked like an estuary.

The eastern shore basically looks like this: rocky edge with a mix of forest and fields.

We went about 2.5km south to the opening of the creek. There were some birds. The creek itself was pretty weedy and we didn't get very far before we gave up.

After a quick snack, we ferried across to the western shore to try and get out of the wind for the grind back north. Again, the weeds made it very hard going and we ended up pretty far off shore fighting the wind (which was better than fighting the weeds).

Overall, a pretty so-so paddle and I probably wouldn't go back. To the west is Coal Lake and to the south and southwest you can find the Chain Lakes, Lacombe Lake, and Buffalo Lake, all of which offer a better paddle.

North Saskatchewan River, Dawson Launch

I paddle a fair bit on the North Saskatchewan but I don't blog about it much (pretty much the same all the time). In late July, I had an early morning run upstream out of out of Dawson Park to Louise McKinney and back that had great pictures.

The launch at Dawson is pretty shallow and I had to wade out beyond the end of the dock to get enough water to float. Then an easy paddle upstream to accidental beach. 

Here (near outflow 147), the current gets momentarily swift (this was a good hard paddle!) and then it was easy going again under the Tawatina bridge. The reflections were really great in the morning sun.

Then a lazy float back downstream to pull out and head home to start the day.

I don't do this section of the river nearly enough and it is very pretty.