Little Beaver, Big Beaver and Miquelon Lakes by Camrose

In mid-June, I put in to Little Beaver Lake, just SW of Camrose at the village of Ferintosh. There are two public access points on the eastern shore, the campground (yellow arrow) and a day-use area (green arrow). I chose the campground because it had a washroom (flush toilets! pay showers!). There was also a playground and picnic tables.

You can drive down to the boat launch, drop, and then come back to the main picnic area to park. I just parked and walked the 100m.

There is a cement launch but it was easier to go in on the left side of it where the bottom was soft and the slope was gentle.

The water was very Mountain Dew but didn't smell at all. There were lots of critters in the water so I would not swim here.

The lake is about 9km around and takes about 2.5 hours. It is very similar to most of the valley bottom lakes between Edmonton and Red Deer to the east of Highway 2 (so First and Second Chain Lake, Magee Lake, and Lacombe Lake). Basically some bullrushes along the edge (but also some exposed bank) that gives way to shrubs (willow, dogwood, wild rose, high-bush cranberry) and eventually a deciduous forest.

The most interesting thing I saw was on the eastern shore when I noticed what looked like fur among the leaves (middle of picture below).

I circled back and woke someone up. Bigger than a house cat but not bigger than my 75lb lab. No idea for sure what it was as it cleared off pretty fast.

The north end of the lake was very swampy with lots of birds.

I went down the western shore and saw a beaver and, later, a heron being harassed by two red-winged black birds.

The southern end of the lake is more open. Coming back up the eastern shore is the day use area by what I think is the village pump house. A school trip in canoes were loading out.

There is a dock here. If you are in a kayak, you'd be better off to try through the reeds on the far right of the photo below (where there is a lake level gauge). 

Big Beaver Lake

Since I was down here, I tried to find access to Big Beaver Lake (which is immediately north and east of Ferintosh). Some looking on google earth suggested trying the SW or NE corners.

The picture below is shot from the SW corner (red arrow). While you could access the lake here, you'd have to cross fenced private land and splash through a boggy creek. That was a no for me.

The NE end is more doable. Range Road 211 abuts the lake (blue arrow). It may be that a portion of the pitch is private land (and maybe not) but it is not fenced.

It is quite a drop to the lake and edge of the lake has bullrushes and what looked like a muddy perimeter. The only parking is on the edge of the gravel road. There's lot of room but sometimes the RCMP will ticket parking like this (I doubt they're randomly driving by, but someone might phone and complain).

I dunno. The lake is pretty much a repeat of Little Beaver Lake so I'm likely gonna take a pass on this.

Miquelon Lake Provincial Park

Since I had some time on my hands and was in the area, I cruised by Miquelon Lake. The park is lovely and well maintained but the lake has shrunken significantly since the last time I was here (maybe 2017?).

It was almost 600m from the parking lot to the water by the main beach, which is maybe 200m further than it was in 2007--maybe more. The water quality was terrible and you'd have to trudge out a long way to get deep enough to float.

I drove up to the old hand launch site. This is a shorter carry (maybe 50m) but the same launching issues exist here.

The last time we were here, I think we launched roughly where the picnic table is in the photo below.

The lake gauge (the bottom of which is about 60cm above the current lake level) really tells a tale.

There are lots of interesting things at Miquelon Lake, but it isn't really a viable paddling destination at the moment.

Miquelon Lake

We drove out to Miquelon Lake provincial park today, about 70km SE of Edmonton (near New Sarepta) for a paddle. The last time we were here was maybe 11 or so years ago.

The lake is melt-water fed (so salty) and shallow and today had hundreds of pelicans nesting on the west side. We came at the lake from the south off Highway 623 (through the campground) and put in at the boat launch (about two-thirds of the way down the east side of the lake). The boat launch has pit toilets and lots of parking! The whole park has this feeling of being way over built for the modest lake it sits on.



The launch itself is a good carry (maybe 60 or 70 feet) down an easy embankment. The water level looked lower than the last time we were here. I had to wade out about 15 feet from shore through some mildly stinky mud to get enough water to float my kayak with me in it.

Once on the water, we had a lovely time. There was a decent breeze to keep the bugs off but the lake was very calm. We could see the bottom most of the time. We went north around the island on the east side (more of peninsula right now) and there was an interesting rock formation with friendly gulls.

We then turned south to check out the main beach. I recall this was a very long carry from the main day-use parking lots the last time we were here. The lake has receded since (I'd guess another 30-40 feet of beach and grass was there).

Despite the wind pushing the boats around, there was hardly a ripple on the lake. There could have been a much longer paddle here (the lake is maybe 3 x 4 km) but we were mostly out to get Jess some experience paddling on her own and see what the facilities are like.

We stopped back at the day-use lot for a picnic lunch. There are flush toilets, picnic tables, a playground and beach access. Water quality was low so there was a swim ban. We walked around some slews to the south of the day-use lot and I wish we'd brought our bikes to check out the trails. This was an interesting paddle but I'm not sure we'd go back unless it was for an extended tour of the lake.