So, Peter found one of the Yurts available at MacGregor for the weekend, so he snapped it up and invited me to join him for some paddling and relaxation. As the weekend approached, the weather forecast was all over the map - sunny, rainy, sunny. The actual weather was quite nice, sunny for most days except the holiday monday, and some rain at night. The yurt is great because it makes it tolerable if not fun, no matter what the weather brings, although, this was one of the warmest May 24 weekends in recent memory.
So, the Saturday we wanted to do a medium sized trip. No getting in at dark, but some good paddling. I looked at a few maps and thought it would be great to do a Port Elgin to Port Elgin loop.. put in on the Saugeen near PE, ride that down to Lake Huron, then back along the coast.. about 26 kms. The Saugeen was super high, as is with all the rivers in Ontario right now, due to the relentless rains that have been hammering us for the past several weeks. So we dropped my car off at the Port Elgin Beach, and drove the yaks to Saugeen access point 13, on Bruce Road 17, just outside Port Elgin. the convenient thing about this is the two points are only 5 kms apart, unlike the 45 mins. + driving we're accustomed to, to set up cars for a day trip.
The river was indeed high.. packed up the yaks and off. I didn't know it at the time, but I had dropped my car keys at the access point. The trip was fun, fast water, some good rapids. Played around with the new camera setup thet Peter started using that I copied, that is my TS2 camera mounted on my deck using bungies around a gorillapod tripod. I tethered my camera to the deck ropes in case it fell off. It's an awesome camera setup for hands-free movies or timed photos, with the option to take the camera off the tripod mount and hand shoot for self shots, or when more steady or precise shots are wanted.
See here for a quick video going through the rapids below Denny's Dam:
Saugeen Rapids from Jason Fowler on Vimeo.
We portaged around Denny's Dam, the water was raging through the partially opened sluice gates.. I was wondering what it would be like to run that. I don't think it would be as dangerous as it looks, but chances are I would have to wet exit from the kayak at minimum.
I had no idea what kind of waves would be on Lake Huron in the afternoon by the time we got there at Southampton. I brought my drysuit just in case, as the water was still dangerously close to freezing, being May. turns out it ended up being very calm and serene paddle. We visited Chantry Island off of Southampton, took some sots of the lighthouse on our way to Port Elgin. We dragged our kayaks back to my car. After disassembling all of the gear I had three times, i confirmed to my horror that i didn't have my car keys. At least i thought there was only one place it could have been - at the put-in. Peter got a port Elgin cab over to the access point.. again, luckily we were only 5k away. He didn't find the keys, came back to get meand out gear and we went back to look for the keys. I found the keys sitting on a picnic table to great relief, someone found the keys and put them there. I could then put the thought of waiting for and paying exorbitant amounts of cash to get someone to make a key for my car on a long weekend at bay. Awesome, time for some food and beers at the Queen's.
Everytrail Trip - Port Elgin Loop
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