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Photo: Tim Nicholson Lifting over a waterfall on Bigstone River |
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Tim's Log cont'd The
upper Hayes empties into the very large Oxford Lake. We got lucky
and crossed half the lake, without the presence of wind, the afternoon we
got there. Our luck changed however, and the wind came up the next
day pinning us on a winter site used by local natives. The next day
we paddled a couple of miles, but the wind crept up mid-morning, pinning
us on a small island for the remainder of the day. We sat there,
wind-bound, in the true sense of the word, feeling a bit like Robinson
Crusoe. That evening we paddled the rest of the lake and camped just
shy of the Semple River’s outlet. The
Semple would take us to the height of land between the Bigstone and Hayes
systems. I was a bit concerned because, although the map made travel
seem straightforward, I had no other information on the river other than
some hearsay about people going down the river. We were going up and
I didn’t know what to expect. Luck was with us, however, and we
were up the river and over the height of land in three days. The
river was no problem to navigate and portages were in all the right
places. The locals from Oxford House clearly use the area. Once
on Bear Lake, the headwaters of the Bigstone, we met our re-outfit plane
and were off and running down the Bigstone River by July 14. It was
at this point when we realized we had a problem. When Dave and I
planned the trip, we took into account as many contingencies as we could.
We had 21 days to complete the trip once we started the Bigstone. We knew
that we had been conservative with time, but we never considered that we
would be too conservative! Travel in Manitoba proved to be so easy,
and so straightforward that we discovered we wouldn’t be having weather
days, portage cutting days, big time-consuming rapids and so forth.
All of a sudden we realized that we had 7 to 10 days to kill.
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Alex demonstrating that Section C is not afraid of a little pork.
Photo: Tim Nicholson |
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We
considered several solutions and decided that one answer would be to take
a southerly branch of the Bigstone called the Sipanigo River. The
Sipanigo would put us several miles downstream on the Fox and would allow
us to see more of that river. The re-routing would also add at least a
couple of days to the trip. We decided that we could afford to pull
out at Gilliam a couple of days early and eat up some time on the road as
well as on Lake Temagami. With the addition of a couple half days
and rest days, we would be able to stretch the time out so that we were
not stuck with a week of nothing to do. The
Bigstone proved to be well named with lots of Temagami-style campsites and
the occasional impressive rapid along with lots of runnable whitewater.
The highlight was Ox Canyon Falls where we spent a rest day, and enjoyed
this spectacular waterfall over mounds of well-cooked pizza. On
the morning of July 19, we left the Bigstone for its much smaller cousin
the Sipanigo. Not knowing anything about this river, we were excited
about the prospect of exploring. “Old Sip” as Bob McCoubrie is
fond of saying, was a delightful river with delicate little rapids and
perfect campsites nestled into its banks. We spent three days
enjoying what we thought of as true Keewaydin tripping. The portages
were nonexistent and needed to be cut. The campsites were virgin and
we were running by the seat of our pants. By this time the section
was working seamlessly and we couldn’t have been happier. |
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Maps and information herein are not intended for navigational use, and are not represented to be correct in every respect. All pages intended for reference use only, and all pages are subject to change with new information and without notice. The author/publisher accepts no responsibility or liability for use of the information on these pages. Wilderness travel and canoeing possess inherent risk. It is the sole responsibility of the paddler and outdoor traveler to determine whether he/she is qualified for these activities. Copyright © 2000-2013 Brian Back. All rights reserved. We do not endorse and are not responsible for the content of any linked document on an external site.
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