Bowron Lake Canoe Circuit – To the Chute
The first night in a tent is never really a good sleep, even after nearly 30km of paddling. It became evident after I went to bed that I had got more sun the day before than I had thought. I could feel the heat of a sunburn on my knees, and my ankle smarted where I had skinned it on the last portage. I listened to the pattering of the rain on the tent in the dark, slept here and there, and woke in the early light to the dawn chorus of birds. At least it had quit raining.
As is our usual while camping, Leroy got up first and started preparing breakfast and coffee. Since we began TrailFare, our backcountry kitchen consists of spoons, mugs, bowls for the kids, and the JetBoil. We buy instant coffee satchets that include cream and sugar, so the dishes are few and easily rinsed out. I got the kids up, dressed, and out of the tent, then started packing the sleeping gear. Once that was all stacked by the door where I could reach it from outside, I got my shoes on and joined the family for breakfast – Scrambled Eggs.
The tent and the tarp were both wet from last night’s rain, but we found the bear cache had kept the rain out just as well as any bears. When we purchased the big drybags we got two different colours so it would be easy to tell what was in each one without having to open them. Blue became the tent and sleeping gear, yellow was for food and kitchen supplies. It was a bit of a juggle that first morning to remember in just which order to pack the sleeping gear into the sack in order to get it all to fit. Eventually we got a system. The kids were sent on gofer missions to the bear cache to get various pieces of gear, and eventually all of it, and us, were back in the canoe. We pushed off around 9am with the goal of reaching the end of Isaac lake, 28 km away, this time with no portages.
The day was fair again, with a bit of a northwesterly breeze serving as a tailwind. We had considered trying to rig up a sail, as many paddlers do, but couldn’t come up with a way that would allow us to steer and still be stable in a single canoe. Regardless, we were still covering roughly 5 km per hour and had lots of time. Isaac is a deep, fjord lake that snakes between mountains along its length and its south end is tucked into the glacial peaks of the Cariboo range that make the southern boundary of Bowron Lake Provincial park. All along its sides waterfalls cascade down avalanche chutes and tumble over rocks into the lake. There was always something to look at. Halfway down the lake, at Betty Wendle creek, we saw a moose feeding in the weeds along the shore before it turned tail and sploshed out of view. We pulled into Campsite 21a, just to look around and stretch our legs a bit, but found the site mostly flooded. We didn’t stay long before moving on.
As the sun came out, Leroy and I were feeling our sunburns from the day before. Thankfully, the weather wasn’t particularly hot, and I put my sweater over my knees to keep it from getting any worse. The kids were both in long sleeve shirts and light pants and it seemed liked their bug protection had also served them for the sun. Being only June, we’d remembered the bug dope, but not the sunscreen. There’s always something forgotten on a trip.
Its peculiar to watch your perspective of the mountains change significantly, as it does from a car, when you are self propelled in a canoe, but it did as the kilometres slipped by. The peaks along the sides of the lakes became increasingly impressive, the glacier capped ones at the end of the lake came closer and clearer. When we stopped for our lunch of energy bars and trail mix, we could look back up the lake to peaks in the distance that we had passed the day before.
We saw several other parties paddling along with us on this day. The campers from site 18 with the yellow frontiersman set off slightly before us in the morning, but stopped somewhere before the end of the lake. We watched a group of six canoes leave the group site on the west side of the lake before they stopped along a rocky beach for a break. There is a shelter and group site at the end of Isaac lake, where it flows out into the Isaac river through the infamous section called The Chute. As such, many paddlers make the end of Isaac lake a destination in order to run the Chute and the Cariboo river in the morning when they are fresh. If we were going to have to share a campsite, tonight was likely going to be one them. We were aiming for site 27, just up from the shelter at site 28 and its neighbouring group site 29. As we neared the end of the lake, we watched three other canoes – white, red, and green – pulling out from the group site for what appeared to be a practice run of The Chute.
We pulled into the (thankfully) empty site 27 just before 3pm, having covered the distance in less than six hours. The weather was warm, we were tired, and had no intentions of going further. It was time to claim a spot and take a break. There were three tent pads. We took what appeared to be the largest and flattest towards the trees at the back, and set up our damp tent to dry in the sun and the breeze. A large tree appeared to have died, possibly damaged by wind or lightning, before the rangers had cut it down and notched the log to serve as a sort of picnic table. Other parts had been cut and stacked as firewood. Leroy set up the jetboil on the log-cum-kitchen to make an afternoon coffee, I got the kids stadium seats out of the canoe and set them on the grass on another tent pad, and the kids…. how can I put it? Anna and Alice love camping this way with us. They make toys out of sticks and rocks. They crawl over all the rocks and logs along the shore and splash in the water. They invent stories, act out plays, and sing songs. The kids were backcountry kids enjoying themselves on a wilderness canoe trip. We enjoyed our coffee, our afternoon break, and the view of the snow and glaciers on the mountains.
As the sun dipped lower among the peaks to the west, illuminating the glaciers in the south, we watched the group of six canoes paddle in to the group site at the end of the lake. Thoroughly rested, and having eaten supper (Lasagna all around), we decided to paddle over to the other sites, find the portage pull-out, and take a look at The Chute. Isaac lake narrows and essentially ends at a spit by the group site. On the other side of this spit is the Isaac river. The water drains out over a series of rocks, which funnel it into a V with standing waves at its point. On either side, there are eddies of calmer water swirling back around toward the rocks, but the main current runs directly into the rocky shore opposite the chute as the river takes a sharp bend to the right. Experienced paddlers can choose to run this section, and the following “Rollercoaster” portion of the Isaac river, before another portage around the unnavigable cascades. The paddling guide I brought along details several strategies for paddling this section with diagrams. There is also the option to portage around this whole thing, before putting in again to paddle a short section to cross the river to portage around the 11 metre high Isaac falls. We are not experienced river paddlers, and with two young kids and a loaded canoe, we were planning to portage whenever possible. To paraphrase my pilot friend, “there are old paddlers and bold paddlers, but no old, bold paddlers”. Wise words in the backcountry.
The sites by the pullout and the shelter were very busy. The group alone was twelve people, there are six tent pads at the individual site (most of which seemed to be full), and several people had set up hammocks in the trees. Not wanting to barge into a strangers campsite, and unsure of where the portage take-out was, we passed up what looked like a campsite beach and paddled slowly along the spit before coming to its gravelly tip. The pull of the current was immediately obvious. A man came down from the group site as we paddled hard into the shore. He may have been concerned that we were about to unexpectedly run The Chute, he may have just been coming to say hello, one can’t say for certain. We got out of the canoe, and our comfort zone, as we picked our way through the crowded site to a view point of The Chute. The water was much higher than in any of the videos of other people running the section that I had watched on YouTube before we left. There were no rocks visible on the shore on the river side of the spit, and the current was piling into the far bank of the river. You could see the water level drop from the lake into the river – not really all that far from where where we landed the canoe. The man from the pull-out stood beside us as we looked at the current.
“Yeah, I watched a guy run it in his kayak earlier – man! He shot through there. I thought he was going to hit the rocks!”
We would definitely be portaging. The trail head wasn’t difficult to find – it followed the ridge to our left and followed the height of land along the edge of the river and curved around the corner. Now we knew where to go in the morning.
Back in the canoe we headed back to our quiet site and some peace before heading to bed. I wasn’t exactly worried, but knowing tomorrow would be at least half river paddling, I knew it was likely to be our most challenging day.