After a few years of not running much whitewater (young kids, pandemic etc.) we found a date that works and headed out early for a daytrip on the Petite-Nation. In this case, we couldn’t find any other takers (or those that could had to drop out last minute) so we headed out each in our own car to hit the river.
Since the last time we had done this river, there was a bit of construction work. The bridge where we usually put-in was being redone and there was a temporary bridge alongside so it was a bit of figuring out how to get the canoes (and ourselves) into the river.
The water level was very high for this time of year (we did not check ahead of time, only time we could go so it didn’t really matter) but we were not expecting it to be that high!
The water level was so high what are usually smaller rapids were a bit more intense! We had to portage a section which was not passable with the water level.
On this particular trip, I managed to mount the GoPro (yes still using the original version) to the canoe fairly well and kept it going most of the time so got some pretty good footage.
We scouted this one for quite some time trying to see if we could do it, it is usually one of the fun ones and more challenging. However every line we would plan out would end in an upset. We figured we could have run about 3/4 but would be so swamped at that point we would not be able to avoid anything at the end (and there was no straight line). If we were more than 1 canoe, and rescue standing by we could have attempted but it was just too dangerous alone so we ended up roping and left the camera going.
After the great day on the river, we did the logistics to get to our cars headed for home and grabbed a well-deserved poutine for late lunch.
The trip was such a relief after not having done much canoeing that we headed back to this river in August and September before the end of the season.
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