Day 7 - Snake Rapids to Scoop Rapids

Captain's Log - Day 7 from the top of Snake Rapids to Scoop Rapids:

I got up in the morning, made coffee, had porridge with raisins for breakfast and got underway at 10:30 so I could do a little better packing. It’s nice that there are no rapids to deal with except about an hour into the paddle. A 17 kilometer an hour headwind came up and that combined with the current caused me to really slow down. I was really hoping to make it all the way to the Hanson Lake Highway, but here was no chance of that with the headwind and the current.

I think I’m still doing pretty good. I’m only about 10 kilometers shy of the highway which I should be able to do in a couple hours in the morning to meet up with Bill Jeffery, Dave Bobber and Larry Sewap.

I was feeling ok today. My body wasn't hurting too bad. I thought I would push to the highway, but just before I got to Scoop Rapids I felt my shoulders and back starting to tighten up a bit so I thought I better just take it easy. It was slightly overcast and so it was a nice day. It wasn't cooking hot, so I was happy about that. They say there is supposed to be smoke rolling in, but I haven’t smelled any smoke yet.

Day 7 - Taiga enjoying the paddle

Taiga did very well today. He’s really liking the canoe. Since it’s cooled off he was really wanting to jump on the top of the packs, which I didn’t like, so I will have to rearrange packs tomorrow so that he can sit on them a little bit better. We'll get a formula figured out. He wants to be able to lay to ride and be able to look around at the scenery going by instead of having to stand up to see what's going on. So just like our other little dogs they like to ride on top of the packs and view the world going by. I'm sure I'll get it figured out so that he can do the same thing.

Oh my spirits are good. I feel like I'm getting stronger with the paddling. Mind you, I feel that sooner or later down the road here I might need a day off. I have been pretty steady since day one and today was a fairly hard battle against the winds, so yeah, I don't want to hurt myself.

Day 7 - Dave at Rapids

Today I saw a group coming down the river towards me and I originally thought it was my party of Bill and Dave and Larry, but it turned out to be a family, two fathers and two sons with their kids from Prince Albert. So anyway, they ended up camping here and I showed them where to fish. I went fishing as well and got one monster jackfish! It was at least 42 inches long, which is a master, so I just let him go. I caught another smaller jack and I was gonna keep it but as I was trying to reach in to grab it it did one quick head shake and snapped my line, so I lost my supper on that one. So then I put another jig on and a couple casts later managed to catch a couple pound walleye, which was good enough for me for supper. So I fried up a walleye for supper, which was very tasty, with some leftover Pad Thai from supper the other night.

Taiga likes to bark at everything. Of course, when the people showed up he was going crazy but managed to settle him down and get used to kind of seeing people, but he also notices the rapids laughing up against the shore and wants to go fight the rapids.

So yeah, he is a young pup still trying to figure out what he should bark at and what he shouldn’t. He's getting better at listening to me.

I just want to mention about Scoop Rapids that many canoers have tried to run the rapids but have not been very successful. I don't know of anybody that has died but it's pretty turbulent. There is a hole in one spot where the rapids are pretty deep and they’ll take you down. Anyhow, I have been known to run my jet boat on the rapids (I’m known around this area as crazy Dave with a jet boat!) I actually met a guy that accidentally went down this huge set of rapids backwards in his fishing boat. His name is Dave Knutson and he has a cabin at Pawistic. I guess in the early 80s they were out here fishing and whatnot and he jumped in his 16 foot boat above the rapids and when he pushed off, he forgot to put the kill switch back into the motor, so it wouldn’t start and he ended up backwards on the center in the big rapids and when he hit the hole he swamped the boat. He ended up surviving but he was so freaked out that ran on a bush trail all the way back to the highway thinking that he could have just lost his life. He was lucky that day for sure. A couple years ago, a motorboat went down the big rapids backwards too, but this fella doesn't want anybody to know that it happened, so I won’t say anything more about that.

So, I figure it was a decent day even though I didn't make my goal. I have a nice tent setup on top of a rock overlooking the rapids and it’s a beautiful night. Hopefully the next day is a good day too.

Okay, over.