Spring has Sprung

The paddling season has finally begun in NL, actually it started in St. John's last weekend. Rivers on the Avalon have been booming and it sounds like people have been taking advantage of the high water. We’ve done a couple of runs on Bay Bulls River and yesterday Cody and I got on Seal Cove River for a very high-water run. I saw a post on the KNL newsgroup for a trip to Salmonier River for a bit of surfing today. It’s nice to have spring and see the crews getting back in their boats.

Here are a few pictures from recent trips that I have been on in the past week.

Bay Bulls River

Seal Cove River

I don't think I'll be in my boat this week, but hopefully next weekend we can start picking away at creeks on the Burin.

Keep your blade in the water and the right-side up.

A long winter hiatus

As Dave Mac mentioned in his email the other day, it has been a strange boating winter this year. Snow, rain, more snow. It certainly bodes well for some epic creeking across the island this spring. I have just a couple of housekeeping notes for the website today. I've included a picture of the shuttle rig Steve and I used on our last trip to the Northwest River to demonstrate how our winter paddling season has been this year.

A few prepared locals that made getting into the put-in possible on December 5, 2007

Northwest River
Now that spring is around the corner, right after this blizzard, I'm sure groups will be eager to get on the Northwest River. During a trip in early December Steve Arns and I noticed that a lot of wood was poised to make its way into the river. Since the really high water levels a few years ago wood has been popping up in undesirable spots on the Northwest River. Thankfully it normally washes out fairly quickly. However, in December there was wood in the entrance ledge to the second canyon. A tree extends from the river right canyon wall out into the landing zone for the river-right boof line. It is not very visible from upstream and care should be taken to assess this risk on the next trip or two down the river.

Second Drop on the Golf Course Section. Steve is checking out ice conditions in the entrance to Mulligan.

Google Earth File
Last year I generated a Google Earth file that showed many put-in\take-out locations on the island. A few weeks ago I was looking at this data and I realised that some really important rivers were missing from this dataset. I spent a bit of time here and there to update my maps and make sure the classic whitewater trips are included in the file. I also discovered a new tool last year for transferring maps between MapInfo and Google Earth. It allows a lot more data from the database to be transferred into the Google Earth file. Now when you click on each of the location balloons you will be able to discover UTM co-ordinates, river and rapid ratings, and few sentences of the descriptions.

I thought since this storm has blown in tonight that some people might be looking for something to kill a few hours tonight and tomorrow. I hope that a few hours of day dreaming on Google Earth will spawn some new adventures for everyone this year. The file is available for 30 days in a Google Community forum. The link is below:

Newfoundland and Labrador Whitewater Rivers - A Google Earth File

I can also email the file to anyone who is interested in having a copy. Just fire me off an email and put Google Earth in the subject line so your email doesn’t disappear in my spam filter. Once you have down loaded the .kml file it can be opened in Google Earth.

Enjoy,
Chris Buchanan

Summary of JK River Exploration

I'm sure everyone who reads this site knows that a crew of Jackson Kayak paddlers were poking around on the west coast of the island this fall. The expedition team consisted of Ben Stookesberry, Eric Jackson and his son Dane, Jesse Coombs, Darin McQuoid, Chris Korbulic, Nick Troutman, and Joel Kowalski. These intrepid paddlers made great inroads on a list of rivers that needed to be explored on the island and found a couple of unknown rivers along the way.

I just wanted to put up a list of rivers that these guys explored as part of my efforts to inventory what rivers have been explored in the province and by whom. Darin McQuoid and Eric Jackson both documented information about these rivers on their respective websites and for the time being I will simply link to their information. All of the basic information about these rivers has been added to my database and their locations will be included in an updated Google Earth file when I get around to generating one. Updated PDF files will also be added to the webpages

New rivers the JK team explored in 2007 and links to the beta:

Leg Pond Feeder (V-V+) Darin McQuoid Jackson Kayak (Castors Feeder)
Doctors Brook (IV-V) Darin McQoid Jackson Kayak
Cloud River (IV-V; V+) Darin McQuoid Jackson Kayak
Steady Brook (IV-V) Darin McQuoid Jackson Kayak
Little Harbour River (V) Darin McQuoid Chris Korbulic
Black Brook (IV-V) Darin McQuoid Jackson Kayak
Bluey Brook (V) Darin McQuoid Chris Korbulic

These guys also ran a few other classics on the west coast as well:

Upper Humber River Darin McQuoid Jackson Kayak
Torrent River Darin McQuoid Jackson Kayak

In addition a couple of the team members have posted reflections about their trip to the island on various Websites:

Ben Stookesberry
Chris Korbulic
Nick Troutman
Dane Jackson

Crazy hikes and the drops that make it worthwhile

I first saw Little Harbour Falls in a photograph book by Brian Bursey. It took a while, but eventually Steve Arns and I got around to hiking into the falls and checking them out. We didn't chose the best day, -6 and frozen sprayskirts discouraged us from running the drop, but, it always stuck in the back of our minds as being possible.

This week Dave MacDonald and I took the opportunity to show this waterfall to the remnants of the Jackson Kayak Expedition team. Darin McQuoid and Chris Korbulic were able to notch another Newfoundland and Labrador first descent onto their belts, finishing their trip on a high note. The bonus was that Dave and I got tag along on this adventure and run Little Harbour Falls too.

Little Harbour River is really all about the beauty of the gorge through which it flows. It has to be about the beauty, because the hike in is one of the worst on the island and there are only two rapids on the whole river. Some day I'll put a proper trail into the falls, but until then you'll just have to trust me that is worth the blood, sweat, and mud to hike into the falls.

I'll update the trip report for this river soon, but until then here is a couple of pictures so you can see what all this fuss was about: