Bighead River

Last weekend we paddled the Bighead River into Meaford. We put-in at the 11th Line bridge and spent two pleasant hours paddling a few class 1 sections to the 7th Line bridge before lunch. But the next 45 minutes to the take-out at Beautiful Joe Park (Edwin Street) was fantastic – essentially continuous fun, shore to shore, genuine class-2, river. In hindsight, we would have just paddled the last section twice because the car shuttle is so quick. A solo paddler could use a bicycle or probably even a local taxi.

There aren't any complex ledges; there are plenty of mid-river boulders for catching eddies, especially in a kayak; and as you will see in the video, lots of fun maneuvering for a tandem canoe. Higher water might push the take-out about 100m down to the other end of the park and if the water level dropped another foot it might have a couple fun sections but it would also be rather shallow. The first five seconds of this video clip show me doing a little ender.  The water office graph shows a 16 discharge and 11.45m water level.