Crowsnest River - June 14, 2008

So I am finally able to tell you about the Crowsnest River trip we just had recently, but not only do I get to tell you all about it... you can live it vicariously through us in the video slide I made up at the bottom of this post.

We put in at a small pinkish bridge just west of Highway junction 507 that runs from the Crowsnest Pass to Beaver Mines. This section is a few Kilometers above the falls and lasted for about 2 1/2 hrs. It was a very scenic run, but the most scenery was actually experienced paddling backwards facing all the mountain landscape. But not to worry about us paddling backwards in treacherous waters, it was a calm class I run all the way to the train bridge a few hundred feet up stream from Lundbreck falls. The only action that we saw was a nice little wave hole that was shallow enough that even catching your up-stream edge didn't make you flip, but instead it pushed your boat down to underlying rocks that would stop you from going over. Jollin, our whitewater canoe man, had a great time side surfing this hole. Once again Jollin has impressed me with his balancing skills of such a large boat. He even got so comfortable side surfing in the hole that he was able to spin his paddle above his head for quite some time. Another little fun section of the river was still a class I, but was really cool to experience (or at least I thought so) was a really tight "S" curve in the river where you would do 2 complete 180 turns on the bend. It almost felt like backtracking, but you were still flowing down stream.
Once we go to the train bridge all, but Jeff Milner and I, got out to portage around a section of class II rapids directly above the 30 foot Lundbreck Falls. Jeff and I decided to run the smaller rapids to experience a little more to the Crowsnest than class I. We both caught our eddies with ease and got out to look at the falls.

At this point Jeff was getting the itch... I have already had the itch on more than one occasion, dropping both sides of Lundbreck (river right and river left). River right of the falls was NOT to be dropped because a tree has lodged itself directly below the line of the drop, so Jeff decided to go big or go home. Aaron and myself went to the bottom and set up safety and a camera to take the footage of the event. I will let the video tell the rest of the story!!!
We then got all our boats down the stairs at Lundbreck falls and enjoyed the Class II run for our last hour and a half of the paddle. There are a few play waves and some fun little drops to keep the last part of the trip exciting. Our take out was the gravel road bridge just off the highway, and about a 2 minute drive from the Falls. We had a lot of fun and had great weather too, so enjoy the clip and come join us next time!