Cross-posted from Kayak Yak Yak.

This the first of two three catchup posts of my summer visits to the Parc de la Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.

Saturday April 30, 2011

My very first trip this year was two weeks before rentals opened, on April 30, when I did a Saturday scouting expedition, thinking that if I could find a good launch site close to the west side of the Park and the marsh, I would return with the Dragonfly on the Sunday and get a jump on the summer. I hopped off the 73 bus at the gate to the Parc, and trotted down to the landing, meeting the water rather before I expected: the small steep muddy beach that serves as a launch site was underwater, as was the bank above the beach, as were the trees at the top of the bank. The gangway to the dock, instead of sloping down, sloped up to the dock; the anchor point was underwater. Across the flooded channel, I could see various forlorn pieces of summer equipment. I estimated the water was six or seven feet above the ordinary level.

I followed Boulevard Sainte-Rose west, detouring down side streets down to follow glimpses of the water, and eventually down a km-long packed mud track past the golf course on the west side of des Laurentides which accessed the footbridge over to Île Locas. Last summer, I’d seen fishermen casting from dirt shoulders on either side of the bridge. No dirt shoulders now; I would have had somehow to scramble down the bank and directly into the boat. That after a kilometer or so of slog. Everywhere the river was up over its banks and in amongst the trees. In mid-channel, it was the colour of cold milky coffee, and briskly moving. I saw a single kayaker paddling upstream in a yellow hard-shell boat that was the brightest colour in the landscape, but I could just envision myself trying to make headway in my own little yellow Dragonfly, with its flat bottom and metronome swivel. Or not.

May 22, 2011

Three weeks later, the rentals were open and the cherry blossoms were out, although the sun wasn’t. The day was grey and chill, courtesy of The Spring that Never Was, but not raining, not blowing, and I was not to be stopped.

I headed upstream, paddling against the current beneath the bridge to Île Gagnon, and up along the south bank of the river, underneath the autoroute des Laurentides and then south of Île Lacroix. Where Île Lacroix bends, the woods at the river’s edge were flooded deeply enough for me to take the kayak into them, which I did.

I was sitting in my kayak, with the nose against grassy mud, looking around, when I caught sight of a distinctive striped pointed shape underwater off my bow. I misparsed it at first, thinking snake, and the sudden flaring of the front flippers was disconcerting (Hooded cobra! Way too many B-movies at an impressionable age). I recognized it just as it began to float upwards to the surface, and I snuck a hand out for the camera. At that point, unfortunately, the turtle recognized me as foreign and possibly threatening. Flippers, head, snapped back into its shell, lying almost edge-on to the surface, and almost hidden in mud. I waited. It poked its head gingerly out a couple more times, but each time was quicker to withdraw, so I decided to do the polite thing, and take myself off.

On the other hand, nothing and no one was going to put this muskrat off the reed it was munching with all the blissful obliviousness of a child left alone with a stick of rock candy, sitting on a mat of rotten last-summer leftovers under the flooded trees.

The sight of the marsh itself was a shock. With the water this high, I’d anticipated being able to get well into it, but . . . where was the marsh? Where was the land? Nothing remained but a grey expanse of water with some brown stubble of last year’s reeds. I wandered the watery wastes in bewilderment, round the back of the little island that used to be, took photographs of the bare marooned trunks and sodden branches, and strange cocoons wrapped around desiccated reeds (which came out blurry, autofocus having favoured the stark branches in the background). The only visible living critter was another muskrat crouching on a root knuckle and looking distinctly morning-after-ish. But although the day was dull and the early spring colours were drab, the birds were feeling anything but, with birdsong coming from all around.

For lunch, I sat on the steps at Île Gagnon, with the kayak hitched to the upright and floating at my feet. I watched the grey waters and the sparse traffic, three or four kayaks, a couple of outboards. Then I paddled across to the north side of the river, past Île aux Moutons – I didn’t feel like fighting the current alongside Île de Mai – between Îles Chabot and Clermont, and up and around Île Thibault, with the intention of checking on the activity underneath the bridge from the Autoroute de Laurentides, where I had seen swallows nest-building last summer. I was too early in the year; the only nests were abandoned ones, and it was not easy staying on station, against the current, to get a photograph. Going under the bridges, riding the current, was entertaining.

Also between Île Thibault and Île Lefebre, as best I can tell on the map, there’s a wooden bridge over a stretch of marsh, which I was able to paddle under, and in amongst the trees, look back out at the river. Somewhere around there, another muskrat was making short work of another reed.

And then I crossed over above Île des Juifs, came round the top of Île Gagnon, through the tunnel under the roadbridge, and let the current sweep me back to the landing. Mission accomplished.

Cross-posted from Kayak Yak Yak.

This was it, the end, the last weekend of rentals, both at the Parc de la Riviere, and at Îles de Boucherville. And what a gorgeous weekend it was, with highs in the low twenties all three days. The one hitch was strong SW wind warnings for both Saturday and Sunday, and a forecast of NW 10-15 knots for Monday as the cooling-off began. But I would have braved worse, for one last paddle. Plus, a fellow epidemiologist and I had been working on getting out on the river together for over a year; between her schedule, my schedule, and the Spring That Did Not Happen and Was That Really August?, this was our last chance. So off we went, on Monday morning, to the Parc de la Riviere. And we were rewarded with one of the best kayaking days I’ve seen on the river, warm, bright sunshine on golden leaves, barely a whisper of wind, a day when a mere wave of the paddle seemed to send the kayak gliding ahead.

We arrived at the Parc on the 10 am bus, got kitted up, and (after some circling around and taking photographs) headed out along a much narrowed and diminished channel, east around the tip of Île Gagnon; the river had fallen far enough that the water under the bridge carrying the Rue de l’Île Gagnon was not navigable. The river was as low as I had seen it, very shallow except for the main channels, and murky, and it was all too easy to miss large rocks until the moment of contact (or painfully prolonged period of contact), even when not looking anywhere but ahead of the brow. My boat acquired a few more scratches to add to its scars.

We paddled up the south side of the river, towards the marsh. We were not the only ones on the river: several pairs of kayakers and a few canoes, most of them colour-coordinated with the foliage: oranges and reds. This is the season for orange boats. That’s my paddling companion Daphne on the left, and a canoe group whom we kept passing, on the water and on the islands, here illustrating the exquisite calm of the water.

At the marsh, more autumnal glory and less water. The bird lookout was hard up against the exposed ground and reeds.

For the purposes of contrast (I do intend to do a catch-up digest post of the paddles I have not yet documented this year), here is a view of the same area in May, while the meltwaters were still coming down the river. That single tree is off to the right of the October photograph, high on dry land and surrounded by tall green reeds.

As another indication of how much the water level has fallen: the first time I paddled this year, that fairly chilly, overcast day in late May, I stopped for lunch at Île Chabon, hitching myself from the cockpit of my kayak directly onto the bottom step of the stairs shown in this photograph. We stopped at Chabon today, too, and discovered that there was no picnic table, but we ate sitting on our PFDs on a lookout platform over the channel between Chabot and “the mainland”.

After lunch, we checked out the turtle pullouts along the south side of Île Chabot, but either it was not quite warm enough, or too early in the day: no turtles. We saw a single turtle in shallow, rock and stem-studded shallows at the upstream side of Île Ducharme, but the water had fallen even lower than a month ago, when I found another series of turtle pullouts on the east side of that bridge, and we could not get past the bridge. The herons were dispersed along the riverbank, fishing. The warm weather seemed to have put them in a mellow mood, unlike last year. I’d left my my camera with the zoom lens at home – I’m at the stage in learning when there’s a lot of fumbling and muttering over the manual – so my photographs were generally of brilliant foliage with a bird in there somewhere. One of the herons looked almost pure white. It had a heron shape, at least from a distance, and heron stalking motions, but no apparent markings.

Gradually, we worked our way back across the river and back to the location d’embarcations, returned all the gear, and headed for the 3:35 pm bus back to Cartier and thence back to Montréal. And so the season ends.

Sigh. But what a golden ending.

(Cross-posted from Kayak Yak)

Starting back into the regular Monday-Friday routine concentrates the mind. Forecast of 10-15 westerly knots (again) notwithstanding, it was paddle Sunday or not at all, and the day that I got made me regret all the similar days I passed up.

(But I am not gloating, really, only on this particular day, the east won.)

It was Parc de la Rivière again: Bixi to the Metro, Metro to Cartier station, STM 73 bus in the direction of Fabreville – Laval, bless them, puts the direction of travel on the buses, unlike Montreal. Arrive just after 9 am in noticeably slanted morning light at the Embarcations, and stake my claim on a Kayak de Mer, the doughty orange Kasko.

I’m ashamed to say that I’ve only paddled the Parc once this summer, back in mid June, the continually taunting weather reports having fed into my third-book-and-trilogy completion neurosis; I kept procrastinating, waiting for a day with no wind forecast. When I was out in June I was impressed by how low the water already was. It made me appreciate that last winter had been dry. Last year in the early summer I was able to paddle through trees (and get munched on by flies), and venture into the marsh; this year, even the turtle pull-outs were well up the bank, the marsh was impassible beyond a short, narrow channel, a number of shortcuts, like the one out of the lagoon in front of the launch site, were above the water level. I’m simply not used to the water going away and not coming back 6 hours or so later. I found myself thinking that the originator of the expression ‘letting the grass grow under one’s feet’ as a measure of indolence had not observed river grass invading an exposed bank. There was no way of telling from the grasses alongside the river that that part was underwater a year ago. Today it was even more of the same. In a lot of places, if I’d tipped, I’d have been sucking mud, and if I’d banged my head on a rock, I might have been rediscovered like Lyuba, the baby mammoth in a million years or so. Although when I did wobble interestingly, it was because I was probing for the bottom with my paddle in what turned out to be a deep spot.

I took what has become my usual route, out the east end of the lagoon, and past Île Gagnon, where the water was extremely shallow, the bottom muddy and rocky, and I was conscious of tucking my tailbone up in anticipation of the grinding beneath. Up the south side of the river, under the Autoroute des Laurentides and the footbridge to Île Locas, checking out the completed swallows nests on the underside as I went – I’d watched the foundations being laid when I was out in June, beakful by beakful of dark river mud, trying to figure out whether one plan ruled construction or not. And then on to the marsh. This post was nearly entitled “500 geese, a dozen herons, and me.” This panorama, taken from beside the lookout on the edge of the marsh, should give the idea (note, those speckles are geese).

I let myself drift very slowly through a gap between goose-gangs, and discovered a dredged channel leading into the marsh, which terminated abruptly in a wall of black mud and sticks. I don’t think beavers were involved. If they were, no waterway is safe.

As last year, the great blue herons were out of their usual exclusive neighbourhood in the marsh, and scattered up and down the water’s edge west of des Laurentides, each one apparently aspiring to solitude. They seemed touchier than usual, and though I wasn’t trying to spook them, even when I swung over to the other side of the channel it didn’t seem far enough. Though there was the one I came on as I rounded a bend; it froze, I froze, and we played statues as the wind pushed me gently past and away. I also spotted a number of kingfishers dashing between islands, and some small white-bellied shorebirds I could not identify. No swallows, scattered dragonflies, and whatever moved beneath the water’s surface was safely hidden in mud. The water-lilies were looking tattered and tired, and there were scattered mats of purple river-plants.

Wind, yes, there was wind, intermittently. But there were spells of calm, allowing full appreciation of the flotillas of round cumuli proceeding overhead with perhaps just a little too much despatch to be stately. This panorama was taken at the furthest west extent of the Parc, at the tip of Île de Mai looking west. One day I shall go beyond …

I rounded the tip and came down channel between Île de Mai and Laval, brazenly floating down the middle of the channel while munching on a roasted mushroom and chevre panini, something I’d never have dared do in the middle of summer. I paused to admire and take pictures of a weeping willow planted above a wall and draping down almost to the water. While I was doing that, the first power boat of the day passed by, sending the water sloshing and my kayak rocking. Then I swung back over to make a pit-stop on Île Chabon, muttering ‘I must do more of this’ as I floundered to dismount onto a steeply sloping beach. Two or three canoes had reached the lookout and the geese had scattered. Then I paddled back the way I had come through the channel towards the des Laurentides bridge. I was well into my fourth hour and a day rental, so I paddled around the north side of Île de Jiufs, but had decided to cut myself off at 5 hours and get the 2:30-something bus, so back into the lagoon, which was crowded with single and double kayaks and two person canoes, heading out to enjoy a gorgeous warm afternoon. Would that it had been June!

My fake GPS plot – just Alison ‘taking a line for a walk’ as we used to call it in kindergarten. Unfortunately, I can’t recall where I got this image from, or I would have updated it to show the difference between then and now.