Crawling Valley Reservoir

In early July, we put in at Crawling Valley Reservoir. The easiest access was at the Crawling Valley Campground on the SW corner, just a few kms north of Bassano and northwest of Brooks maybe 40 minutes. There was no fee to launch but there was a bit of paperwork at the main office (mostly trying to control the spread of invasives through an inspection).

We launched off the main beach, which was lovely. All the usual beach amenities were there and there was a roped swimming area. We carried about 50 feet over the sand. The water looked great. The alternative was to use the old boat launch just beside the beach (pictured below).

This was our first trip so we turned left off the beach, paddled past the marina entrance and campground and into a swampy area on the west side of the lake. Then we worked our way up the lake and into an old coolie.

The lake bottom was a mix of sand and weeds and we saw a lot of cattle on the shore. There was no real wind near the shore. The reservoir is huge and had an enormous shoreline to explore. Despite a a constant parade of boats out of the marina on a Saturday afternoon, we hardly saw anyone on the lake.

The submerged coolie went quite a ways back into the surrounding ranch and, again, we saw a lot of cows plus shore birds.

We eventually turned back and let the slight wind blow us back to the beach. And an easy alternative would have been to paddle across the face of the dam to the east side and explore the islands there.

Overall, one of the nicest paddles of the summer and I would definitely go back again the next time I'm in the area.