Gregg Lake, William Switzer Provincial Park

In early August, we stopped and paddled Gregg Lake in William Switzer Provincial Park, about a half hour north of Hinton on Highway 40. The easiest access was the day-use area, which included a boat launch, floating dock, playground, pit toilets and picnic tables. You can park right beside concrete ramp and either go in that way or off the shallow and firm gravel-sand bottom beside it.

There are boat rentals here if you arrive without your own. The lake is about 3km north-south and 500m east-west and takes about two hours to paddle at a moderate pace.

We went off the ramp and then turned left (north) and followed the western shore (a concession to the slight wind when we started out).

The shoreline is basically this all the way around the lake, sometimes with a screen of reeds at the shore.

We saw a couple of deer while we paddled and lots of birds, including loons and eagles.

There are a handful of small islands and then one much larger island (eastern shore, half way down).

At the north end, one of the swampier sets of islands is covered with nesting boxes. These are small and I think for swallows.

The wind had died off by the time we got to the north end and the whole run down the eastern edge gave us beautiful reflections.

The sun is obscuring the image below a bit, but in the distance is a beaver lodge on the bank in shallow water. What I was trying to illustrate was one of the deeper channels (dark area) that the beavers had dug out through the shallows so they could get in and out under the ice. The whole shallow delta here was covered in a network of deeper channels.

Fiddling with camera settings.

When we got to the south end, we could see that the water was high enough to get into Jarvis Creek and go upstream a ways. The map below shows the boat launch (purple arrow), the entrance to Jarvis (blue arrow) and how far we got (the pond at the orange arrow). 

Jarvis was pretty wide (6 meters?) at this point, compared with further upstream where it is maybe half or less this width. It has been a wet summer and it rained two days before, so the creek may not always be navigable.

We basically wound our way up about 1 km (20 minutes?) to a small pond I saw on the map. As we got close, we hung a left and went down a smaller grassy channel into the pond. We could have gone further upstream but we were pooped and decided to float back.

There were a few obstructions along the way, in the form of trees hanging low or submerged and this part of the creek is not recommended for paddling (there is a stretch upstream designated for this that I posted about last week).

When we got back to the launch, it was hopping (noon on a Saturday!) but there was still room to park.

Overall, an amazing paddle on a lovely lake. The water was clear and swimmable the whole time and there were lots of shallow parts on the western edge where you could wade out a long way.