Sept. 1st, 2019 Day 2 Petawawa - Big Thompson to Crooked Chute

This was our first "real" day on the Petawawa. We took our time to get up and organized.  Our goal for the day was loosely to make it past Crooked Chutes and stay at one of the campgrounds there. The weather started to become more cloudy but it did not rain.

2 happy campers enjoying a sip of coffee at our Big Thompson campground!

3 more happy campers having breakfast at the Big Thompson campground :-)

I am a bit dismayed at how I hung-up our food last night. This is nothing to brag about, but at least there were no animals around. But we considerably improved hanging up our food packs during the next few days. Steve and Tobi came up with good ideas how to do this much better.

We launched our canoes at the end of the Big Thompson Rapid portage and headed for Little Thompson Rapids. There we encountered our first canoe lining job on this trip. The river also became narrow and scenic, with a few little islands in the middle of the river (I liked one campground quite bit that was located on one of the islands, but it was way to early for a stop).

Canoe launch below Big Thompson Rapid in the morning. Steve actually launched about 100m upstream of the portage exit and opted shorten the actual portage.

And off they are!

At the begin of our first lining job at Little Thompson Rapids.

Still getting used to the lining business at Little Thompson.

Little Thompson Falls at the left of the picture and us lining. 

Zandra and Steve were already done with lining!

View of Little Thompson Rapids from downstream. We lined our canoes down the water on the right side of the picture.

Scenery between Little Thompson and Grillade Rapids. The river at times became narrow.

Scenery between Little Thompson and Grillads: Some islands in the middle of the river.

On our way toward Grillade Rapids.

Someone is looking for a free ride!

Stopping for a break on the way towards Grillade Rapids.

In due time we arrived at Grillade Rapids and scouted the whole thing (we had a deserved break on another campground on the way). Something that became clear was that the Petawawa had low water levels and that a main challenge was not to crash into rocks and in some places getting the canoes over rocks by hopping out and lighten them up. But in other places, we did have to make sure we paddled a proper line in the rapids. Grillade Rapids at some point of time became the rapids upstream of Crooked Chute.

We did spend some amount of time to walk/run down the portage way of Crooked Chute to actually see Crooked Chute itself. All we knew was, that Crooked Chute itself was definitely to be avoided and that one had to stop well upstream of it and portage the canoes the remaining way. None of us had been there and so we ended up scouting everything before-hand. It was also getting late and we decided to pick a nice campground located a few 100 meters upstream of Crooked Chute on the portage way at the 2nd takeout. While we had not reached our goal of making it past Crooked Chute we were not so far from it.

Grillade Rapids: Tobi had to hop out of the canoe to make it over some stones.

Approaching the end of Grillade Rapids or the begin of Crooked Chute Rapids.

Our campground stop upstream of Crooked Chute at the 2nd takeout (Crooked Chute is about 200 to 300m downstream at the end of what can be seen in the picture). At high water this stony area is covered by lots of white water.

Evening impression from our campground upstream of Crooked Chute at the portage way.

Tobi boiling noodles using a big pot and the Optimus gasoline burner (our main cooking gear). We boiled noodles for 6 hungry people every evening. Our Trangia cookers served as complementary devices to make tea and whatever else.

Anna munching the cooked noodles.

Misc: We portaged or lined Big Thompson Rapid (about 200m from our campground to the portage put-in). We lined Little Thompson (about 150m). We scouted Grillade Rapids (400m). We scouted Crooked Chute Rapids (about 1km at that day).