About 4 weeks ago I had the opportunity to go and help one day at the young womans camp, I helped unload kayaks for the girls to go out on Cold Lake. I watched the girls rip around the lake and I was inspired and wanted to try out kayaking with our young men on a camp.
I was driving the long journey home from Cold Lake and thought how fun it would be to take a few days and go down the North Saskatchewan river this summer to see some potential campsites and what the river had to offer for a next summer camp with the boys.
I called Richard Bennett and the 2 of us were going if our wives would permitt.
We planed to do a Wednesday to a Saturday trip from Edmonton to Marwayne. We got time off work and planned to be in Edmonton, Tuesday night to get a few final items for our camp. We rented 2 kayaks and a hotel room for the one night. We had 3 weeks to prepare our gear and our body's for the just over 300km journey.
We built kayak racks for our trucks to haul the boats. You see we had to build one rack for Richards truck and one for mine.
So August 9th we left our families and journeyed into Edmonton with Richards truck and all our gear. we made it into Edmonton around 830pm just in time to hit whole sale sports and get some freeze dry food and some dry sacks for our gear.
we got to our hotel and then went to walmart for some other last minute stuff. We had to fill up his truck at that walmart and found President Christiansen of the Stake President who was filling up his car. We talked of our impending challange and he was excited for us and wished he could come. I have really grown to love that man as I have got to know him through helamans encampment. He was a designated prophet and I spent time getting beads from him to complete my necklace.
Wednesday morning we got up and went to Totem outfitters and picked up our Kayaks and all the gear that comes with them. We headed to the Capalano park boat launch and got ready for our trek. we unloaded the kayaks and filled them with our supplies. There was a Canadian Military exercise going on so we got one of the Privates to take a picture of us before we died.
Floating down the river through the Edmonton River Valley was very beautiful. The Kayaks glided through the water like a knife through margarine. The weather was majestic the river water was like looking down on a mirror. That meant we had to do a lot of the work to move. The average speed of the river was 2-3 km/hour. With our paddling we averaged 9km/hour.
We left not knowing what to expect or where we would camp. That first day we started around 11am and went to 5pm. We floated around 55km. At this point it started to rain and cloud over so we started looking for the best spot. Well we pulled out on the north side of the river in a tall grass, bushy area, as most of the banks were like that. as we got out we got swarmed by mosquitoes. After a 1/2 can of bug spray we ate our dinner and were thinking of setting up our tarps but the weather cleared and we decided to move on. Good thing as right across the river a few meters down was a picnic table and a place with less grass and bush. We ripped across and were glad we decided to leave. less mosquitoes and flatter ground to set up camp.
We both received nice sun burns this day.
Thursday we were on the river by 745 and went 60km. At this point Marwayne was out of reach.
So if we paddled hard we could maybe make Elkpoint.
Another amazing day, weather was nice and we still had some energy. Our shoulders were feeling the pain of the sun burn as well as the muscle burn.
We saw many deer, eagles, hawks, ducks, and even found lots of clams and small lobsters.
Just before lunch a helicopter flew over us and did 2 full circles around us before leaving, I had never seen that before.
By the end of the day we were both getting tired and sore. We were going to stop early and camp on an island as it had a tone of wood to get a fire started, but we decided to continue on. Thank Heaven we did, not 2 km later we saw a yellow boat on the north side of the river and I wanted to check it out. As we were floating over to it, Richard noticed the grass above was short. We docked and climbed up and found a great little camp site.
We found the owner of the campsite and ask if we could spend the night. He said that it was O.K.
We set up a little tent like structure that only looked good in a picture. Once I climbed into it to sleep it collapsed and we had to build a different structure.
There was a few more rapids this day. Around lunch we noticed something red on the side of the river bank. we decided to go check it out and eat our lunch. As we got closer to the shore we could tell that the red was tuck tape that was wrapped around a black tarp. When we floated by we could see flies all around the object. It was around 3 feet long and 1 foot wide. I believed that was a body. So we ate our lunch first and discussed what we should do. We though we should call the cops right away, but what if it was just an animal. So we decided to cut open the bag and look inside. We walked over to the mystery package and saw some bear tracks near the bag. I took my knife and cut through the tape and the black tarp and ther was baler twine and tarp straps and more layers of tarp. I continued cutting and I could tell that this bag was heavy, and that I was at the last layer to cut through. I pierced the layer and the smell was overwhelming. I kept cutting and pulled it open and it had hair and the skull looked K9 ish. No human body and so we got the heck out of there ASAP before the bear came back.
The afternoon was hot and we went 65 Km and pulled out our kayaks at hwy36 around 7pm. To our supprise there was a hotel/restaurant and so we went and got appies and Pizza.
we enjoyed a hot meal and slept under the stars and watched the asteroids.
We got Kalinda to pick us up on Saturday and ended the wonderful, hard trip !!!!!!!
