Soldun Lake

In late June, I visited Soldun Lake for the first time. Soldun is a small lake west of Stony Plain and just north of Highway 16 on Range Road 20. The map below shows the access points on the SW corner of the lake.

The blue arrow shows the parking spot. You could get two cars here but there is room to also park on the shoulder.

The red arrow is a floating dock. To access it, you follow a quad trail along the shore for three of four minutes. The footing is mixed and quite uneven right as you head down to the dock. 

I put in beside the dock (to the left in the photo below) and that was fine.

The mauve arrow is the other option, which is a shore launch with a short push through a reedy channel. Just walk 200 feet east on the road and you can't miss the access point. This was the better of the two options, I think.

The lake is small (maybe a 2km perimeter) so you could easily paddle it twice in an hour. The water was very clean except at the very north end where there was some vert blue algae.

There are no motorized boats on the lake and just a few cabins. There were lots of birds, including loons and grebes. The lake was over calm, be small, shallow, and sheltered. If you wanted a first attempt at a more rustic entry, this might be a good choice.

The map of the lake suggests there is an accessible northern basin. I pushed about 40 feet through the reeds until the tiny channel doglegged and I could not get my boat past this.

Overall, a lovely and quiet albeit short paddle on a lake I've never been on before.

This is close enough to Edmonton to make this a viable paddling spot for an evening.