Canoeing the Elk River

On Friday afternoon Aaron, his cousin Devon, and I grabbed a three-man lake 'Scanoe' and headed down to the Elk River. This was to be our test run to see if the lake canoe was river-worthy. If it passed the test, we would do a longer trip on Saturday.

We drove just upriver of Elkford to our launching point. As we turned off the road, a young teenage couple were making out where we wanted to drive through. They stopped and looked at us, not thinking to move out of the way. Devon had to open his window and say to them, "We'd like to back in here if you don't mind!" They reluctantly got up and moved out of the way.

As we backed the truck towards the river, another teenage girl in a bikini came staggering towards us. "Oooh! Are you guys from ALBERTA?" Looking inside the truck, "Whoa! Theres a GIRL in here!" This chick was clearly inebriated with 'shrooms' since one of them was holding them in their hand as we passed by. There were a couple other bikini clad girls swimming in the muddy pool of water that connected to the river.

As we lowered the canoe into the water, I reminded Aaron that I can't swim. I figured now was as good a time as any to bring that to everyone's attention. Shortly after, we pushed off from the riverbank and started rowing away from the drugged up girls. One of them shouted to out us, "You guys aren't gonna swim in the water? You guys are pussies!"

Soon we were out on the river, shooting through white-cap rapids, bouncing off massive rocks, and plummeting over waterfalls. Just kidding. The main challenge to our canoeing was dodging the many fallen trees and log jams that litter the river. At times the current from the river would pull us towards the log jams where the water rushed beneath them and threatened to pull us under as well. For the most part, however, the river was fairly navigable. For three guys who had no idea how to work together to control our canoe, we managed to reach our rendezvous point in one piece. This meant that our Saturday canoe trip was a go!

---

Saturday afternoon we found ourselves floating down the Elk river once again. Devon was in the back providing rudder action for us, Aaron was in the middle shouting out paddling directions, (mostly to himself, I think) and I sat in the front navigating. Some highlights from the trip were floating beneath a tree that had fallen across the river, shooting through the 'rapids' where the river narrowed, and just enjoying the beauty around us during the calm stretches. Not-so-highlights consisted of having to portage a couple times past log jams, somehow spinning around backwards while trying to avoid a log jam, and launching off from crap/algae infested waters. Even the not-so-highlights added to the fun of the adventure, though.