Canoeing Columbia River

At 1:30pm of the long weekend, we just had to get outta town. I picked a river I hadn't paddled before, scanned where the weather would be best, and drove in the opposite direction:) Good thing too--kind of a pump-fake to the cold front which headed East while we went West to the Columbia River. Put in at Radium, planned a bicycle shuttle from Briscoe, and caught a ride at the General Store instead. On the river by 6pm with 35 km ahead of us, we settled in for a nice paddle. An hour later we found the most idyllic campsite--a beautiful sand bar--likely not even there in higher water.

After dinner we went for a stroll around the island and heard the slap of the beavers. Clearly we weren't alone!



We followed beaver trails through the willows, and snuck up on 3 beavers splashing about on the river. The third photo is of a beaver mid-slap!

After a lovely fire, a brief shower sent us to bed. We awakened early then skipped breakfast to catch beaver activity. This was successful as we found beavers every 50 metres down the river, fortifying their dams and slapping their tails.

We ate breakfast as we floated. Once sun came up, we found a grassy knoll to make coffee and tea for the morning. It afforded a perfect view of the river. 

We explored a logging trail and high ridge further down river to stretch legs and smell the spruce and fir. 

Later in the day we spied a massive eagle nest with 2 adult bald eagles very wary of us.

They hovered over us as we floated by. We also heard many songbirds, king fishers and waterfowl.

These cute goslings rustled out of the swamp grass as we paddled into a shallow cove.  Our ended our leisurely paddle about 4:30pm and were lucky enough to get a ride from a nice couple the 2 km to the van.