Devil's Lake

In mid-July, we tried to beat the heat with an early morning paddle at Devil's Lake (also called Matchayaw Lake). The water was looking good despite the heat wave and the launch with pit toilets and garbage cans) was quiet and in good shape.

There was  bit of high altitude smoke that gave the light a weird cast.

The lake was glassy calm for our whole paddle.

There were lots of pelicans on the lake plus the usual waterfowl.

I was keen to try to get up the inflow of the Sturgeon but the weeds, water levels, and some debris meant that was a bust.

I fidget pretty close to some pelicans, though.

We decided to try the Sturgeon River outflow, despite the weeds in the NW end of the lake.

We made it about a kilometre past the bridge before paddling in heavy weeds became tedious and we turned around.

I did get into Kilimi creek but that dead-ended in a big beaver dam so we decided to just finish the circuit of the southern shore and head back. There were the first signs of an algae bloom along the western shore of the lake (particles in the water).

The other boat launch (in Bilby) looked servicable.

A pretty nice paddle. It was +26 when we got off at 10:30. What a heat wave!