Looking for Wilderness River for Summer 2019

[Erica]

PaddlingPit, Thank you for the link, it was a great trip report. And also for the additional informative post that I didn't see until I posted this one. I think you are correct that for the sake of a story, one might increase the level of difficulty.

Gerald, Thank you for more information on the Horton and Gouin. (I still only use paper maps and a compass. I have not been able to learn to use GPS and besides, what if I dropped it in the water, or smashed it, or it mysteriously stops working as many electronics can in my experience.)

I will have to put the Horton back on my list and keep the Gouin in reserve. Good information. Thank you.

Erica

 

[Quinn]

You could do the trip Rob is suggestion, but then portage into the ottertail and paddle the Ogoki river to Ogoki or Kayden Lake, then fly out. The Ogoki only has two ports and no real whitewater, but lots of small swifts. I've been told flying is around $11 per mile in the area, and if you could get on a back haul from one of the camps it might be cheaper.

 

[memaquay]

Ya, I was thinking of that too, if Erica didn't mind a one mile port, she could port down from Kayden Lake into Kapikotongwa lake, but then there would be the nasty bits to get to Terrier...so probably not. I had buddies who got picked up by a bush plane on Kayden Lake once though.

 

[Quinn]

I've been spending too much time in the office recently, and keep looking at Reckett creek on Bing and trying to convince myself you could paddle it for long enough to get real close to the kap by Berger. Then you'd have a nice downstream on the Ogoki, uptsteam on the Kap near loop.

What might be a pretty cool trip would be to fly into Cat lake out of Pickle Lake (maybe you could fly on a scheduled flight to Cat Lake First Nation?) and paddle the Cat River to Lake St. Joe, and then Lake St.Joe to hwy 599. I've only paddled the Lake St.Joe portion, and the Cat River up to Keezik Lake, but it's an awesome area. There are short bits of white water, but there are mostly good portages (we were going upstream).

Quinn

 

[memaquay]

That is an interesting idea Quinn, if I was 15 years younger, I'd take you up on suffer-fest like that. Using the Frog creek ports on the way back up and you could start and finish on the Ottertail. I've got some very old maps, gonna look and see if that was ever used.

 

[memaquay]

Just looked, nothing indicated, guess it could be a first ascent, or first drag, something like that.