Bow River Float 03

The float on September 7th left everyone feeling a bit short-changed because of how quickly it ended. We lost at least 4 km of river due to the closure of the Ogden launch site and no one was happy with that.

Jen E. who organized the two previous floats I was on messaged me that evening on Facebook and asked if I would like to join her and others for a float down the Bow River from McKinnon Flats to Johnson’s Island in Wyndham Carseland Provincial Park the following day. Hell yeah.

Supplies were low so I made a quick dash to Walmart to stock up on more Gatorade, iced tea, and Voortman’s Strawberry Cookies. Essentials, you know. I like to keep the cooler strapped to the back of the Coupe de Ville fully stocked.

Gatorade is especially important when the temperature climbs about 30C outside. You can lose a lot of fluids through sweating, and the occasional verboten pee break in the bushes beside the river (not that I am admitting to public urination). Anyhow, a cold drink is nice. A cup holder would be even nicer, but the ones I ordered over a month ago ran late and were actually finally delivered while I was on the water. That’s timing for you. You can see my hacked solution above to keep my beverage from rolling into the river.

It turned out to be only the two of us. My daughter was committed to playing D&D or getting ready for a D&D campaign, and my wife was not comfortable with floating the Bow River yet. I would have really liked to have one or both with me, but things don’t always work out.

Jen’s husband was also not able to make it this trip because he had some work to do. Her son, nine, is maybe a bit too young for paddle boarding the bow at this time. Oh well, off we went.

There are some differences between floating the Bow River inside and outside of Calgary, Alberta. Powered craft are not allowed on the river in the city, only human powered craft. This is better. When you get to McKinnon there are people loading all kinds of powered boats onto the water. You need to watch out for them.

There are also some pretty significant shallow patches on the run between McKinnon and Johnson’s. You can see rocks streaming under me at the beginning of the above video and hear when my tail fin catchs them. I am very lucky it wasn’t damaged on this outing.

One thing I find odd is how the river seems to be a dividing line between two different types of landscape. To the left (north) it is mostly classic Alberta badlands. Prairies, exposed rocks and layers of sediment, and very sickly looking poplar trees. To the right (south) it is mostly boreal forest. It is all very Jekyll and Hyde, if you ask me.

I shot a tryptich of Jennifer paddling past a very pretty spot on the south side of the river and I find that the images really highlight the disparity between the two types of landscape we encountered for the majority of the float.

I don’t think the tree above on the north bank was very pretty to start with, but we have reached that time of year where all of the trees are turning a sickly green because of drought and heat stress. This one is a special kind of fugly.

I wound up thinking of my deceased friend Ray a lot while I was on the water. I know he would have enjoyed paddle boarding if I could have gotten him into it. Ray used to love nature walks and getting fine-art landscape photos along the way. The Bow River between McKinnon and Johnson’s is a bit challenging, especially with a cloudless sky, but I tried to get a few good images in for Ray. He would expect nothing less.

The other thing that occurred to me is that paddle boarding is something he probably would have tried to do with his dog, Turbo. Ray loved Turbo and Turbo loved him back in spades. I can easily picture Ray floating across a lake with a happy pupper on the front of his board. I’m sorry I don’t get to see this.

We did have a couple of “oopsies” on the trip. The first was that I thought I had dropped my camera in the water at launch. I slipped off my board into the river when trying to get onto it at and I figured I had dropped my camera into the water. It was not too expensive because mine was used, but I was lucky to find that deal and I did not think lightning would strike twice there. Fortunately, I had just tucked it inside my life jacket. I didn’t discover this until we both pulled to the shore about five minutes down from the launch point and I was prepared to walk back and search for it. Ugh.

Boy did I feel like a shmuck. It was nice of Jennifer to step up and make me feel better. About an hour in she realized that the keys to her SUV were in the cup holder in Vlad the Impala. This was a problem because her SUV was parked at the end point at Johnson’s Island and Vlad was parked at the launch point at McKinnon Flats. The way it works is you leave a vehicle at each point and at the end of the float you use the end point vehicle to go back to and retrieve the launch point vehicle.

Whoops.

Of course we had practically no cell phone signals at this point, either. Phoning someone to arrange for help was a problem. You lose signal when you drive down into the river valley at McKinnon and the signal only comes back when you approach Johnson’s Island because there is a good tower in Carseland, Alberta. The end point was only about 25 minutes from Strathmore, so Jennifer arranged for her husband to meet us with a spare key for her whip, saving the day.

There is actually a really handy way to know that you’ve got signal back. About 5 km before you reach the Carseland Weir, signs start appearing warning you of imminent death if you don’t get out of the water and portage around the weir. They’re not kidding. It’s dangerous and has removed its share of rednecks from the gene pool over the years.

A four hour float on a river gives you time to think. One thing that I realized on the trip was how important taking video is for my daily photo journal entries. While I’m running a photo blog and not a vlog, the videos convey things that still images cannot. I have deep, deep regret that it did not occur to me to get some videos of what I was doing before Ray passed. He was trapped in bed and I know he would have appreciated them. Especially the outings to Drumheller and Calgary.

Every time I shoot video on an outing now there is a small pang of remorse that I didn’t do this for Ray when he needed it most. I am still doing it for him now, in a sense, but it’s not the same. The entire playlist for this trip can be found here.

The water was beautifully calm as we turned off the main river to circle around Johnson’s Island. The point where we disembark is about halfway around the branch off of the river proper. There’s no way to get out neatly, your board always comes out of Johnson’s needing a bath.

The float took about four and a half hours with about four of them in motion. We pulled over a few times for washroom breaks and once for a missing camera that wasn’t missing. Arf. The GPS track says we went 23 km, which is my distance record for travel in one day on a paddle board right now.

The GPS tracks are for September 08 when we floated McKinnon to Johnson’s and also for August 31 to September 08 showing the first and second Bow River floats as well. The first is top left on the 31st, the second is from the 7th and just below and to the right. The third and last float is bottom right on the 8th of September. That is how much of the Bow I covered in eight days. Nearly 56 km. Not bad.

I think it is getting too late in the year to fill in the missing bits, but I know what I’m doing next summer now that I have a handle on river paddling. A big thank you again to Jennifer E. for getting me rolling on floating the Bow this year.

Images and videos are from my OM System (formerly Olympus) Tough TG-7 that thankfully didn’t go bloop and my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra phone.