These three days were entirely on lakes behind two of the Columbia’s dams. Our speed was drastically reduced compared to our first several days in on the water, but our muscles are getting bigger. We paddled through Sinixt & Ktunaxa ɁamakɁis ancestral lands
Day 78 – CR Mile 183 – Still water
When the water was calm today, the river was BEAUTIFUL! We are paddling beneath glacier-capped mountains to our left and right. We are headed north into a more and more remote part of Canada. We are sharing the river with almost no other boaters. The murky water of the wetland has transformed into clear turquoise in the deep lake. It is nice. We had lunch and all of our breaks in the boat today. It was a long day, but thanks to thruhiking we are used to the mental challenge of endurance wilderness challenges. We finally found a campsite at around 9 and had unstuffed peppers for dinner. Yum!!
Until today we have had an on-and-off current for our entire paddle. Today the current turned completely off. We are in Kinbasket Lake, a 66 mile long reservoir behind the Columbia‘s first dam, Mica Dam. There is no flow. We just paddle and paddle and paddle and move slowly forward. At times we had a head wind and basically stopped. At other points it was calm and we moved between 3.5-4 mph. That’s faster than walking, but at the end of the day we completed just 36 miles and were in the canoe for well over 12 hours. That many hours/day might not be sustainable. That said, we are still on schedule relative to how long we initially thought the river would take, and not every section ahead is going to be a lake like this. The timing always works out in the end, but we are definitely starting to feel the pressure of the calendar. -T
Day 79 – CR Mile 218.2 – Mica Dam
This morning we had a bit of a tailwind to start, which helped push us forward on the lake. It picked up though and became quite wavy, which tired me out and made us both a bit seasick. In the afternoon the lake became calm and glassy. We have been headed north with the Rocky Mountains on our east and the Purcell Mountains (or Selkirk Mountains?) on our west. We saw lots of glaciers again today. The river turned south though this evening, and we said goodbye to the Rockies. We also made it to our first dam. Mica Dam is an 800 foot tall earthen dam. We got to the pullout above the dam with enough time to portage. We put everything in our backpacks and carried the canoe together over our heads, resting on our backpacks. The portage ended up being 2.9 miles and took about an hour and a half. We had to take a few breaks, but it went surprisingly well! We found a nice place to camp and will resume canoeing first thing in the morning. -R
Day 80 – CR Mile 252.5 – Misty morning
We paddled into a spooky haze this morning. Mist settled thickly into the Columbia River valley below Mica dam and didn’t lift until 10 or 11 am. We paddled into the fog with low visibility and stuck to the east shore to navigate. There was only one point where we got confused about which way to go, but the GPS maps on our phones straightene us out quickly. By afternoon the weather was perfect: about 80°F, sunny, and calm. We took a 1.5 hour lunch break on a sandy beach where we went swimming and made an extra coffee, but other than that we paddled all day. We got some very light showers and a few periods with a headwind in the afternoon/evening, but nothing terrible. It’s amazing how fast the weather changes in the Columbia River valley! We feel good about our mileage considering we have been on still water for so long (and will continue on mostly still water for many more days), but as we move closer to the ocean we should start to get a current more consistently, despite the dams down there too. It looks like we might get showers overnight, so we flipped the boat upside-down. It is water proof on all sides, but if the inside is full of water sloshing around on us while we try to paddle tomorrow that will be no fun. For dinner we had curry rice. Yum!! -T
