Route

Interpreting maps can be challenging

After plotting the locations of the HBC posts, the First Nations communities and the fly in camps we could locate the fun began.

It's like one of those maze problems where you try to get from here to there. Every once in a while you come up against a barrier.

Above is an example of the passage down the Keeper River on the way to Moar Lake. There are two possible routes; the river to the east of Malaher Lake or a portage at the south end of Malaher where a rapid is indicated entering the lake.

We opted for the single short portage since the river had a couple of narrow sections that could have made it more difficult.

As an example of things to look out for ... here's a portion of the Cobham River. The Cobham is a mostly gently flowing river with widths ranging from 30 to over 50 meters wide.

As we were examining the maps this section jumped out at us.

The river narrows and the banks become quite steep ... potentially no landing area ... then around a sharp bend to the right with an island shown in the middle of the river. Although there is no rapid shown on the map we mark it as a possible portage.

As we arrive on the scene ... sure enough there's very steep banks and the current begins to pick up. Since the river sweeps around to the right we hug the right shore and back paddle to keep our speed down.

Entering the turn there's a nasty ledge on river left and a log jam on river right. There's a single boulder on river right that we eddy in behind to study the water flow around the log jam. Not seeing a fast flow beneath the logs we approached cautiously and drag the canoe up on the log jam and look for the portage.

As we expected, it's here on river right ... now just to get our stuff across these slippery logs.

Had we not been alerted by the topographic features and entered the canyon area on the left it would have been very difficult to cross the ever increasing current.

There were many instances where portaging was required and yet there was no rapid shown on the map.

With all that said ... here's a gallery of our maps

We've also developed a spreadsheet that helps us to plan our days. By entering a few constants like portage unload and reload times, paddling speed and portage speed you've got the basics down. Now for a day just add the paddling distance, the number of portages and their total distance and the spreadsheet will tell you the anticipated number of hours. Try it out if you'd like ... It's here for download.