Oxtongue River                               Oct. 2-3, 1999

Canoe Lake to Oxtongue Lake      Just the 2 of us

Tea Lake dam in May	Tea Lake dam this trip - high water!!!	Gravel Falls	The top of Ragged Falls	The bottom of Ragged Falls

 

Day 1 - Canoe Lake to Upper Twin Falls

We were dropped off at Canoe Lake by Algonquin Outfitters for $20 or so and were told that we had to rent a Swift Dumoine in ABS if we were coming down the river since the water levels were pretty low and were were going to scrape up the canoe.  At low water they would be right, but the water level was the highest we have ever seen it, easily 3 feet higher than the spring and overflowing the banks in many places!  Likely had something to do with the rainy fall, the guy that dropped us off said the water had been higher than spring levels for a few weeks.

The day started off overcast and we went to see the new bridge at Smoke Creek after the old one had burned earlier this summer.  We then quickly got onto the river as the rain started.  Since it was so high, most of the swifts had disappeared and we had to deal with boils in the water rather than look for the deepwater in a gravel swift.  We portaged around Whisky Rapids, it looked pretty nasty at this water level, and since we were cold, wet and didn't want to get any wetter we portaged around (the haystacks were about 4 feet high, never seen them this big here before).

Day 2 - Upper Twin Falls to Oxtongue Lake

It got down to -2 last night, but it cleared up overnight and we were greeted by a ray of sunshine on our tent.  That always turns the tent into an oven, but at -1 this morning, it was pretty welcome!  We started off by playing in the second drop of the rapids outside our tent, no ledge is obvious now since all of the rocks are covered!  It is only a swift with stand waves about 1 foot high - and we dumped here in the spring!   As we moved into the bog before Gravel falls we see the hills around us ablaze with reds and oranges, we hit the peak of the colors this year.  We ran everything before Gravel Falls (3 swifts / C1s) and were surprised that water levels hadn't changed them very much.  Gravel Falls was impressive with the increased water flow and the coloured backdrop made it even nicer.  We decided to run only a portion of the rapids after the falls and floated downstream rather quickly due to the current.  When we arrived at Ragged Falls, the number of people there was surprising, but I guess people drive north to see the colors for a day trip.