Thursday, August 27, 2009

Montreal River in August

Last Friday a group of us paddled the Montreal River from the Highway 2 bridge to the gravel road 165 bridge, a distance of about 40km. It is apparently very unusual to be able to paddle the Montreal at this time of year, with May-June being the usual window of opportunity. Today I talked to Martin at the Saskatchewan Watershed Authority to find out what the water levels were at and what they might be expected to do over the coming couple of weeks. Martin informed me that the river was running at about 25 m3/second, a level that is higher than the average spring peak (the median actually). He also suggested that because of the large size of Montreal Lake which feeds the river, the river should be runnable for some time to come yet.

Martin also sent me this graph of the flow for 2009 at the outflow from Bigstone Lake:


An interesting note was that the water metering station is now a "real-time" station and no longer requires manual reads. The station is expected to soon be added to the list of stations that are available to the public online!

So, if you want to run the Montreal River but missed you chance in the spring, now is the time. The Montreal River has lots of Class 1+ rapids and at the levels we paddled it was not at all technical (I ate a can of salmon while negotiating a series of rapids), but it was a lot of fun, especially the last third which had a couple of stretches of C1/C1+ water that were 3-4km long.

For information on running the Montreal, see Laurel Archer's book Northern Saskatchewan Canoe Trips. I also found a brief description and map online at http://www.princealberttourism.com/index.php?option=com_docman&task=doc_details&gid=129&Itemid=86 (down at the bottom click "download" or "view" to see some information on running the Montreal as a day-trip).

Follow Up: I posted some pictures as their own post. You can find them at http://pawistik.blogspot.com/2009/11/montreal-river-follow-up.html.
Blathered by at
Labels: , ,

3 comments:

  1. Bryan Sarauer9/03/2009 02:19:00 pm

    We're on our way back to the Montreal River tonight, to run it tomorrow. I just checked with SWA and the water level is currently at about 23 m3/s, down slightly from 2 weeks ago. Should be good!

    After the Montreal, we continue driving north with Robertson or North Falls in mind as a destination. The Churchill is still high also. It's about 600 m3/sec.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous9/07/2009 05:38:00 pm

    Thanks for the information about the river! I've been doing some kayaking in the province and elsewhere for a few years now, and just enjoyed a gently, four-hour paddle on the Moose Jaw River this past Saturday. It inspired me to find out more about lesser-known Saskatchewan rivers and to try some more kayak trips on ones that seem navigable (our turn-around point on the Moose Jaw came at a point where the river disappeared, to be replaced by a lot of rocks and mud!). So your account is very helpful, and I'll keep an eye on your site to read more about any other adventures you write about in the province. Thank you!

    Adriane
    Regina, SK

    ReplyDelete
  3. Bryan Sarauer9/08/2009 10:28:00 am

    Thanks for the comments Adriane.

    Our run down the Montreal on Friday was great. We saw a moose swimming across the river in front of us which was a treat to see. We used bikes to run the 23km shuttle which worked well (it took about an hour) but was a good bit of exercise. There were sections of the river that were described in Archer's book as C1 rapids but that were flatwater at these higher levels. Other sections were fun C1-C1+ and easily negotiated around the exposed and the not-so-exposed rocks, but which must be a tough and rocky run at lower water.

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)