March 16th. After a long day of fucking around and encountering vehicle troubles with Joe, we finally pushed away from our troubles around 5PM. The day had been extremely frustrating. We were stranded at the intersection of Broad and Victoria for at least an hour and then got stuck again in the the truck at the Liquor store parking lot. Thankfully Joe and I have creative instincts and we managed to pass the time stuck in traffic making up "Truck" tunes, rolling down the windows and singing the blues at the top of our lungs to anyone that would listen. To top things off we had someone bail out on us at the last minute and were not nearly ready to go when Brett got off work.
The events of the day however made pushing off that much more enjoyable. It was time to forget about life for a while. During the first twenty minutes of paddling we saw a total of four mink just outside the city limits. Definitely a good omen for the trip. Over the course of the next two days we would see a handful of white tail deer, beaver, muskrat, a nesting great horned owl, migrating snow and Canada geese and even the occasional migrating mallard.
The ice had not yet broken up and instead the water was flowing on top of the ice, forcing the solid mass to sit on the bottom of the creek. In a few places where the ice had heaved, it had let go and we got to battle with the odd iceberg. Compared to last years flow though this was pretty tame. Last year the water ran at 80cubic meters per second whereas this year it was flowing at only 8cubic meters per second.
St. Patrick's day was spent getting a sun burn drinking pilsner on the river pretending to be pirates. I was in bed by nine. Don't really have any regrets spending the evening with two good friends and a couple hound dogs rather than chasing pretty girls at the bar.
Picture credits:
Pic 1) Me trying to ride an iceberg.
Pic 2) The river leaves eerie things when it floods its bank.
Pic 3) Buffalo rubbing rock.
Pic 4) He is new at the whole swimming thing.
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