Saskatchewan Reservoirs

May 28
The sky was totally clear all day today with very little wind to keep paddlers cool. Saskatchewan has countless lakes in the north and the Saskatchewan River is damed into several large lakes which can be dangerous if the wind is blowing. Here is the crew arriving after a calm day on Lake Tobin and having made very good speed especially when chasing the Cumberland House crew. Tomorrow we paddle over 100 kilometers to reach Cumberland House situated in a large river delta.
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dam portage

May 27 - our first portage. Future portages will be more challenging since we used trucks and trailers to get around this dam and we will do the same thing tomorrow on Tobin Lake.
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Prince Albert departure

It is a beautiful frosty morning.
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Prince Albert

A fine rest day in PA - the forecast is for fiver days of sunny weather and finally a morning without head winds. The crew slept in this teepee while I snoozed for two nights in a hotel.
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Fourth windy day

Friday May 23rd, 10:45pm
The Saskatchewan winds have been our first real challenge. Previously the river pushed us along and made days of 80 kilometers seem routine. For the last few days however we have faced strong head-on winds from the east. Gusts at times were over 60 kilometers per hour and we had several days where the wind was consistently over 30 km/hour. Today we covered 70 kilometers in almost 10 hours.

Rain on Wednesday morning reduced the number of crews on the water to three: our crew, Pathfinder lead by Brigade leader Ted Bentley, and Fort Saskatchewan Traders lead by Don Gallaway another one of the organizers. By late morning it was obvious our crew could no longer maintain contact with the other boats and we switched two people with Don's crew - their power immediately drove the boat along with the others. By the early afternoon however it was clear we needed to retire Paddle Canada 2 and our crew joined in helping the other two boats finish the day.

It was disappointing that other crews weren't available to help get our Paddle Canada canoe to the end, but it was a lot of fun to join the other crews. Paddling in the Pathfinder canoe I learned a lot about paddling these boats.

One of the pictures shows our initial crew this morning arriving at the change point before Michel and I replaced Richard and Sharon. Sharon & Bill joined the crew yesterday and are from Illinois. Today Greg left for home after two solid weeks of paddling. While Greg has fewer years of paddling experience than others, he consistently demonstrated in fair weather and adverse conditions that he is a strong paddler all of the crew will miss his contribution.

The second picture shows David (second from right, left of the fiddle player) leading a group of dancers at Fort Carleton where we ended our day with yet another meal provided by the community.

Coverage limitations mean this message is not posted somewhat late. On Saturday we arrived in Prince Albert, home town for crew member Daryl Sexsmith. Part of the arrival ceremony is a gun shot from the boat followed by a welcome shot from shore. Richard fired the gun from our canoe as we came were the second boat arriving.

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The wind

The winds started to blow from the east yesterday and grew stronger throughout the day including rain at times. It was raining hard this morning and only three of the thirteen canoes went out: my crew, the Pathfinder crew and the Fort Saskatchewan Trader crew. Like yesterday it was hard work and again today we paddled for eleven hours. However today we swapped two strong paddlers into out boat for one section which made it fly. We consolidated to two crews for the next section and I finished the last two hours or so on the Pathfinder canoe with an assortment of strong paddlers including Steve and Greg from Paddle Canada 2. Richard carried the PC2 baton for the previous section while on the Ft. Saskatchewan boat. The photos show the two crews arriving at the farmer's field we imposed upon before the last section. I was still tired from the earlier six hours of paddling but the last 2+ hours was a lot of fun given the incredible speed we maintained into the wind. Our Paddle Canada boats look nice but they are not built for speed in comparison to the modern boats.

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A windy day

We were directly into the wind all day, probably 40 km per hour and gusting to 60. It was needless to say a difficult day but at least the rain was short.
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Youtube video

Check out a short video about the first week of the Brigade. It is linked to Youtube from the Brigade website:
www.2008ThompsonBrigade.com

From the David Thompson Brigade website you can also look at a map to see our progress. Our canoe is Paddle Canada 2, probably identified as #8 and zoom in if the #8 icon is hard to locate.
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Press coverage

Here is a link to an article written by the Calgary Herald writer who was on our canoe for three days:
http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/news/story.html?id=ec070319-e060-4cb0-8f01-1b9fa7c601f2&p=4

In theory there should also be some photos and video as well on that site. And the front cover photo on the Edmonton paper yesterday showed our canoe on the left along with several others.
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The Crew, plus a few

In Duvernay and Elk Point Alberta we again had communities serve the entire Brigade a supper meal and breakfast. Tonight will be the first time after nine days of paddling that we will cook our own supper. Today we paddle a short distance, just 30 kilometers or so.

In Duvernay the sunset was coloured by the smoke of a bush and grass fire that wiped with the assistance of strong winds we had enjoyed using to sail down the river. It burned for two days until the winds settled down yesterday.

Both towns had fireworks and Ukrainian dancers and fiddle players. Many Brigade members including Richard from our crew showed their dancing talent. The PC2 crew is pictured with Robbie and David Bates of Paddle Canada #1. Today David Colpitts joins the crew as the Bow Waters crew depart.
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Sailing to Duvernay

It is another ideal day - spring leaves are turning, windy, sunny & warm, no bugs, the current pushes us at 5km/hr even when we stop for a snack. We covered about 75 km today, the last 10km we sailed along at over 10km/hr with the Shanagan crew

You can also check out the blog of Paddle Canada 1 by Eric Williams:
www.paddlecanada1..blogspot.com

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Leaving Ft. Saskatchewan

Today was the sixth day of our journey; we were up at 5 and away at 6:30. It is also the first day when the six people who will paddle the full distance were paddling together. The photo of us on shore shows, from stern to bow: Chris, Richard, Michel, Daryl, Steve and me.



The shores of the North Saskatchewan River from Rocky Mountain House were lined with four feet thick ice but before long we were dwarfed by tall sandstone cliffs. The fur traders of two hundred years ago might have stopped to take some of the beavers we saw along the way.



Yesterday we paddled through Edmonton - Google David Thompson Brigade and Edmonton and you will likely see a newspaper article - we made the front cover. We ended the day with yet another community celebration at Ft. Saskatchewan.



This morning we passed a few large industrial processing plants and at least four gas pipelines. The river lost some of it's character from further south but the wind was strong enough to allow the crew to sale the last few hours today.



The photo where we are stopped mid-river for a snack shows, from back to front: Chris, Richard, Michel, Daryl & Steve.



By the end of tomorrow we will have covered 500 km in just seven days.

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Day 3 crew change

Along the North Saskatchewa the brigade does a crew change.
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Spring Snow

Rocky Mountain House is blanketed with six inches of wet snow. We will start paddling Saturday morning no matter what the weather conditions and we are all sure there will be lots of challenges ahead.
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Snakes

Here I am at the Narcisse snake dens in Manitoba. - the home of tens of thousands of red-sided garter snakes, the largest concentration of snakes in the world. Dozens of male snakes wind themselves around a physically larger remale creating a rolling and twisting mass. There were easily a few hundred in total, but a picture of a hundred snakes isn't as cool as a video clip - maybe I will post that when I get home.

Earlier in the day I had a great time at the Ducks Unlimited HQ at Oak Hammock Marsh. There were hundreds of ducks around - many of them species I had never seen before.
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