Friday August 14 almost 50 Junior Forest Wardens made the trek from Bragg Creek to Rocky Mountain House for a river canoeing experience with Wild By Nature Adventures.  The crew set up camp at Twin Lakes Campground just west of Rocky, and most of the younger wardens got onto the water on Twin Lakes Friday evening to practice their canoeing skills.  Saturday morning the whole club hit the lake for a final practice session to prepare for the river adventures to come.  Saturday afternoon thirtyfive club members climbed into 15 canoes and the entire armada headed off down the mighty North Saskatchewan River from the Brierlies launch site to the Riverview Campground at the Highway 11 bridge.  Several rescue boats were set up with fully qualified instructor/guides, but no rescues were necessary.  All the hard work from the two lake sessions paid off; the club members had practiced their river paddling skills on the lake and had no problem applying those skills to the river.  All 15 boats safely negotiated the Class One rapids, riffles and bends on this stretch of the river, and practised river skills like eddy turns and forward ferrying wherever the opportunity presented itself.  The armada pulled into the Clearwater River confluence, and paddled a short distance up the Clearwater before continuing down the North Saskatchewan.   Everyone  pulled out totally under control at the Riverview Campground at about 5:30 pm on Saturday. 

Sunday morning a “hard-core crew” of  Bragg Creek JFW paddlers hit the North Saskatchewan River at the Blue Bridge launch site, about 4 km upriver of the Brierlies.   The stretch from the Blue Bridge to the Brierlies provides a lot of opportunties to test whitewater canoeing skills, and our hard-cores did just great.  First they paddled through the one meter standing waves of the Greer Rapids, and eddied out river left just below for their first bailing session, then we had a lot of fun hitting the great waves along the rest of this route, including the curling waves at the Lower Fishers.  Everyone had a total blast, nobody tipped, but there were moments where there was quite a bit of water in some of the canoes.  The hard core crew was having so much fun that they were disappointed to see the Brierlies launch site…this meant the best whitewater section was over for the day.  Another crew of club members joined us at the Brierlies, and the entire group paddled to the Highway 11A bridge without incident, playing in the rapids and practicing their river skills along the way.

The club shuttled the canoes and paddlers back to Twin Lakes for a late lunch, then everybody headed over to the National Historic Site to experience the “living history” diplays staffed by Parks Interpreters in era costumes.  After a very informative session at the Historic Site, the club said their farewells and started off on the long trek back to Bragg Creek. 

It was a great weekend of fun on the river (and the lake).  The club members really improved their lake and river paddling skills, had a great experience paddling down a river that played a vital role in the fur trade, and learned more about the fur trade at the Rocky Mountain House National Historic Site.  This was a full on Canadian Experience, and the Bragg Creek JFW Bald Eagles made the most of it!