Ok, started off this trip a couple days ago with the typical spring decisions of where to go for the FIRST water run this year. I can't remember where I went last year for the inaugural 2007 paddling seaon starter(probably the same place I ended up going THIS year) We were going to go up the creek from the Dupont plant and see how far THAT'd go before we'd have to turn around. Sam's former soccer team mate's Grandpa (ok, it SOUNDS a bit of a tenuous connection, but it isn't really) and I spent the last few months huddled in front of the school at 3:30 each afternoon, waiting to pick up our respective kids and in doing so have exchanged a fair amount of small talk on what I guess a former OPP officer and life time resident of the area and a former Chef and transplant from Toronto would find common ground on, I guess. Fishing and the weather, as it turns out.
So, he suggested that I go up from the plant and see if I couldn't make it all the way up to Princess road and the Ambassador Hotel, then turn around, something he said he's done a few times in the past. To be honest, I've thought about this route an awful lot the last couple years, as I've passed over it either along King St, Bath Road or Princess Rd. and thought that it'd be a great sort of warmup or quick-trip fix should I have the afternoon or morning off. The only thing is that I've never seen ANYone paddling it.
And the thing this morning was that there wasn't really a defined put in anywhere really except up at the Ambassador and where to park then? probably not in their parking lot and I dunno if there's anything public that's closer than the pancake place's parking lot (maybe a thought for the next time I go by: Where to Park?)
Anyway, with all the issues of access and solitude(normally solitude is a BIG BIG plus on a day trip, though later in the season) I was persuaded to go with the old standby of Rotary Park's put in and paddling down Collins Bay.
And, so , I unloaded everything and took everything but the canoe down to the put-in (where some d-heads sunk a picnic table in a bout 5 feet of water...I swear I don't GET the mindset of some idiots...Did doing that REALLY satisfy something deep in their souls, some missing thing that trashing a donated table satisfied or filled?)
Then hoisted the boat onto my shoulders and started down to the water, flipped it down and got all the gears loaded and pushed off and settled into my spot and planted that first pitch stroke and thought "andddddd we're off on another season of paddling"
Well, I got to where the memorial benches are, just west of the central parking lot at the Conservation area and saw the sheer of the lake effect wind pushing north from where the lee of the point faded. After this point, I realised, the wind would make any forward motion a hard thing to achieve.
So, I turned around and headed back towards the put-in/take-out, thinking that this really hadn't been the most soul-satisfying of trips. And as I was getting closer to the take-out I was watching the bridge on the Loyalist Parkway that heads over what I later found out was Collins Creek... And I thought about going over there, but was looking at the wind and the waves and what would happen if the wind picked up and whatever, but...I heeled around and started across on a path just south of the bridge, thinking the wind would push me around to where my tejectory would be this big "C" of an arc...well, it worked well enough andby paddling of the oppositre side of the prevailing wind, I was able to get decent speed up ( I'm sure someone more versed in Physics could tell you why when the wind wants to push your boat in one direction and you push from the opposite side, you get greater speed.)
Anyway, after a bit of paddling here, there and everywhere, I got under the bridge and into this area where it's usually very calm and slow.....but there's foam and obviously a current that isn't as strong in the summer (at least the time I was there last summer, I couldn't notice any appreciable current) so I paddle up around the bend and....
There's whitewater!!!
Be still my heart... So, I edge up on the inner part of the river's curve past a landing spot that I sort of passed on, looking for something farther up I guess, and make my way across in a decent ferry if I DO say so myself....and edge up through a couple eddies and land the boat and get it well up out of the water while I go up to scout upstream (last thing I want is to come back and see it out in Collins Bay)
And there's all these "No Trespassing signs" around in this undeveloped scrub land..
I mean I realise that the owner probably doesn't want play-boaters treading a mud trail through his land while doing repeated runs on the river during Spring Run-off, but still it grated me to see something so...I dunno...Corporate, I guess.
So, I went up a bit and realised that
a) the river was running pretty quickly and was at least a technical Class II+.
b) I would probably really ding the green boat trying to run any of it.
c) I really wasn't skilled enough to get a good run in without trashing the boat and possibly dumping it.
d) If I dumped, I was FUBAR'd in a major way, as the water was maybe 3-4 degrees above freezing.
So, I amused myself for a couple minutes by looking at the river and plotting the run I WOULD take, were I actually going to run it, then headed back down to the boat.
As I was getting in, I slipped and put my leg in the water up to calf level...make that water temp JUST above freezing....lol.....
Still, I did a few peel-offs into the currents and got pretty good at getting into the right spot on the river quickly, so it was at least decent practice for getting in and out of eddies..
Still, I did a few peel-offs into the currents and got pretty good at getting into the right spot on the river quickly, so it was at least decent practice for getting in and out of eddies..
I got back to the bridge and realised the wind had shifted (when does it ever NOT shift when I'm out????) and the bridge was acting as a major wind tunnel against me and of course I was too far back in the boat to avoid the bow weather-vaning all over the place and sending me back and forth... so, that was pretty annoying after a bit, but, finally out we came on the other side and well, after that it was just a matter of 'bulling' the boat across the bay and back to shore....
[One of the things that I'd been telling myself over the winter, while sweating it out at the Y was that all that weight training would make me a stronger paddler...Well... I dunno yet if that's true, as it's a bit early in the season... I didn't FEEL much stronger, but I did notice that my arms and shoulders didn't stay as tired as long after I'd rest a second or two: They seemed to recover far more quickly, which I think is a result of the training and them being used to being stressed out far more often. They look at the paddling as just another set of reps]
So, while I was loading up again, I got a wierd question:
"So, the water cold?"
I dunno...I would GUESS it would be, like I surmised about the whitewater....but I got the feeling that the person thought I'd gone swimming or something...I dunno, just struck me as a slightly strange thing to ask in early April...
So, I celebrated my first paddle of the year with a Tim's coffee...
