Eau Vive Canadiennes (Canadian Whitewater)

Editor's Note: This is a free-form, diary-style of the Canada Rivers Trip by Marion Ambros.

If I go there will be trouble

And if I stay it will be double

So you gotta let me know

Should I stay or should I go?

                                    - The Clash

Decisions  - We make important ones, good, bad, smart, and dumb ones. Life is full of them. To be or not to be? Which line do I take? Should I portage? How’s my roll? Do I go to Canada? It all depends.

Drive up north was typically crowded on I-87N – everyone trying to get somewhere at the same time resulting in no one getting anywhere. There is always the holiday weekend obligatory accident tying up traffic and it takes eight hours to do 270 miles, which includes a refreshment stop at Brown’s Brewhouse in Troy, NY.

Friday night our tents are pitched in Clarksburg State Park, MA, where a casual stone toss into Mausert’s Pond hits, by accident, a big bullfrog right in the head. Some believe the frog got his revenge when the stone-thrower was hit in the head by a much bigger rock on the Deerfield.

Deerfield – Tom Cronin, from Brooklyn, asks if we’re PCC. He’s heard good things, and wants to paddle with us. About halfway down the river he inquires if the club has any rules regarding running rivers in a group.

“Yeah. Don’t swim.”

He swam twice after that.

At Dragon Tooth “Pac-Man” Thuong let down his guard and was hit by a one-two punch that busted his lip and half-closed his left eye. The next day on the same rapid Marion was TKO’d suffering three stitches above his eye. The Tooth also thumped Michael, but no blood was shed.  Cecile, too, had to bail out. Smitty, heading up the rescues, was very busy picking up the bodies. And it was after rolling up successfully at the bottom of the rapid that Lev finally decided and made up his mind that he was going north with us on his annual Canada trip.

Andrea suppresses with awareness, and releasing any worldly conceptions she may have, and achieves a formless line and makes it all look so easy.

Matt did a move across the top of Dragon Tooth worthy of the Demshitz boys. If Tony Robbins, self-help guru and motivational speaker, ever needs a whitewater stunt double Matt would be a good cast.

Septuagenarian Lev may not be the best paddler, or the strongest, but he is very wise, sly like a fox.  I learn a lot just by watching him.

On the wildflower-bestrewn banks of the ever-so-delightful Deerfield, axseed, orange hawkweed , birdfoot trefoil, and bladder campion, are some of the flora one can find along the waterline.

People have complained about how hardcore the Canada trip is, especially the driving part. This year, Smitty softened it up a bit. After doing the Deerfield we camp in upper New York State - a much shorter and less hectic drive than going through Montréal at night. At Ausable Campground we see stars! Yo, John is that Uranus? In the morning’s light we find we are tented in what appears to be a swamp.

Ausable Chasm is a tourist trap. It looked doable, but we decided a paddle was not worth the effort for a stretch that was only a mile long. If you’ve ever been to Bushkill Falls in the Poconos – it’s like that– the commercialization of a natural wonder.

RIP. Driving through New York and Massachusetts flags are flown at half-mast in memory of Senator Robert Bryd who vehemently opposed George W Bush’s preemptive war in Iraq.

Behind Habitat 67, Avenue Pierre Dupuy, off Rt. 10, we spend a couple of hours vying for the waves on the St. Lawrence with board surfers in 100+ degree heat while Mark holds a kayaking clinic for the local young lasses. Eric was the only one who ventured into the nasty looking hole while Matt expertly caught the surfer’s wave a few times. Watching the nimble-footed local surfers do their wave dance was very entertaining. They are very good.

Traffic out of Montreal is a sweltering nightmare. Smitty expertly plows our caravan through the traffic jams like an ace pilot. He’s as good a leader on the blacktop as he is on the whitewater. BlackBerries, iPhones, and GPSs are great innovations but for trips like this, hey good buddy, CB radios are a must.

Thermometer registered at 102 degrees on July 5th. Esther, our Camp Valle de la Riviere-Rouge hostess, says the river is at its lowest level in 28 years. It’s been hot like this for past five days. According to American Whitewater the name ‘Seven Sisters’ refer to a number of rapids and waterfalls. Sister Elizabeth, Elizabeth’s Sill or Lizzie’s Ledges? They are all names of the same mid-river drop. Most paddlers incorrectly assume the seven sisters are the Class V waterfalls near the bottom of the run. However, there are really only four waterfalls plus several other drops and rapids. Matt ran the Sixth Sister.

When in Quebec Province be careful when asking for information from a French- Canadian. They seem to comprehend. Their English sounds all right, but I swear they don’t know the difference between some very specific words like bridge, highway, trail, right or left. Taking the day off due to eye injury and following the confusing directions given him, Marion spent a frustrating day, risking heat stroke, dodging boulder’s tumbling down from a digger loader at Rt. 50 bridge construction site, and losing his glasses while hiking into the Sisters to take videos of our group of twelve running the rapids. Due to low-level Mushroom and Washing Machine looked much different and presented different lines and new challenges to the paddlers.

At group meals in restaurants occasionally felt out of place with no handheld gadgets to play with and no one to talk to. Remember dinner table conversation?  Dave Gunther, wish you were here.

July 7th. On the way to Ottawa City, we made a side trip to the Petite Nation River to see again Chutes de Plaisance. No one wanted to fork over $4 to see the beautiful falls, been there, done that, so we continue on to Ontario.

Lost and Not Found

Sabrina – One sneaker

Mark – Camcorder

Marion – Glasses

Ontario - At the Wall, a park-and-play, some go for a cool-down surf, then shop at Trailhead Outfitters, Scott and McRae, and to beat the 100 degree heat, drink, eat and watch the World Cup Semi-finals, Spain vs. Germany, at Grace O’Malley’s Irish Pub on Merivale.

The Ottawa River is the Cadillac of rivers. Big water, beautiful landscape with La Batt bleu skies and big, cotton candy white clouds.  McCoy’s, as always, flips a few. And who doesn’t love playing at Baby Face? At minus a foot Garburator percolates and is a screaming surfing machine. John, Peter, Eric, and Matt tore it up.

After Coliseum river doc Nancy “Lemieux” was worked over in a mean hole for a frightening interminable time. A cat has nine lives, they say. That Benevolent Big Hand from above reached down and gave her a helpful nudge. No post-trauma drama mama - she’s very resilient.

How hot was it? So hot Lev found one chipmunk cooling off in a toilet bowl at River Run Campground men’s shower room. Problem was it couldn’t get out and kept plopping back in the water. Mercifully Lev build it a bridge of paper towels and watched it scamper, slipping and sliding, across wet floor and finally, just barely, squeezing under the door to safety.

Due to the heat, I left the rain fly off my tent and enjoyed viewing the star-spangled sky through a tarp-less tent for a couple of nights. I predict its not going to rain; Smitty says it will.  As the sun sets we gather at beachside and prepare for a relaxing enjoyable evening recounting our paddling good times. While Peter serves up Russian White Gold Premium Vodka screwdrivers big thunderclouds gather above. Within minutes it’s pouring. Ah, a refreshing welcome summer shower and we frolic in the rain. Oh, the water!

Hurrying back to my tent, I find all my bedding is soaked and most of my clothes drenched. After spending a stifling hot sleepless night in a car that’s redolent of wet gear and suffering an annoying buzzing in my ear all night from a fly that turns invisible when lights are turned on I greet the dawn in a sour mood. Forecast is for more heavy rain. And it’s outta here. Au revoir. Rendez-vous l’annee prochaine!

Myth Buster – More mosquitoes bit me in my back yard while hanging up my wet gear than the five days spent in Canada. Wouldn’t you know it; the ubiquitous mosquito is an outdoor creature. When you are outdoors you should expect them. You need to wear suitable clothing and apply protection. Wearing shorts and no shirt and complaining about mosquitoes you’ll get no sympathy from me. While vacationing at Cape May, NJ, I found the bugs there were worse than in Canada.

Black flies are small, 1/8” long. Their painful bites draw blood, itch, cause welts, scab over, and are slow to heal. I have never been bitten, let alone seen a black fly on any of Lev’s Canada trips. In southern Canada they are prevalent from early May until late June. I think people are mistaking deerflies for black flies. Deerflies are similar to horseflies, but smaller.

Imagine back in the 1600s Captain John Smith’s reaction as he’s trying to draw recruits to help settle the New World and he hears - “Are there any bugs? I don’t like bugs!”

I think a lot of us wouldn’t have made it in them days as voyagers, or pioneers. Too particular. Too soft.  If it depended on us this nation would probably never have been settled. Raccoons, mosquitoes, deerflies, and other critters are a given when camping in the great outdoors.

Cast of Characters: Lev, Smitty and Nancy, Matt and Peter, John and Cecile, Mark, Eric, and Sabrina, Peter, and Marion.

Joining us on the Deerfield: Thuong, Andrea, and Michael.