Thursday 23-Aug-2007:
My trip for GatFest actually started on Thursday. I had to attend my Grandmothers funeral (almost 90) in St Catherines with my kids in the morning. We picked Chelsea up at the Burlington Go Station on the way back. It was more convenient to do that then drive into Toronto during rush hour. We dropped the kids off in Barrie … one at the YMCA and the other one at her moms place. We did a quick stop for some grocery essentials and then off to my place for dinner and a night of watching chick flick movies. I was too tired to even think of packing up the car. I had all of our paddling and camping gear pre-packed and ready by the door anyway.
Friday 24-Aug-2007:
I got up around 6am and started packing up the car. I had everything loaded up by about 7ish. I then grabbed a quick shower and had breakfast. The Princess was just starting to get moving. We managed to get on the road around 08:30. We weren’t in too much of a hurry as we had the whole day to get there. I finally found my missing IPOD (3 weeks) so it was nice to have a variety of different music to listen to on the way up.
I decided to let Chelsea drive once we got up to Orillia. I knew she had her G1 and was assured by my insurance company that it was ok for her to drive my car. We finally made it to the Tim Hortons in Bancroft where we saw a vehicle with two kayaks on it. It turned out to be Princess Leah and John. They were on there way up to Esprit as Leah is now taking the 3 month WILD program. Goodbyes were said and we were on our way after picking up some goodies.
I got back into the drivers seat for the rest of the day (Chelsea is a fine driver). Next stop was the Paddlers Coop where I dropped off a CD to Sasha with pictures of some of their kayak students from a couple of weekends ago. Next stop was for an hour of shopping at the Foymount Sierra Designs factory store. Chelsea had never been there before. She spent about 90 bucks on stuff she really needed. I ended up being her personal shopper picking out stuff and handing it too her over the change room door. I only ended up spending 30 buck on three fleece hats as I always tend to misplace them and find them months later.
I topped up the gas and bought a lottery ticket at the border before crossing over. Somewhere in the land of no where we caught up to a green Beamer with two yellow open boats. We followed it for a long time before the driver waved back at us in the rear view mirror. I kind of waved back but did not recognize the car. It turned off somewhere south of Maniwaki. I found out later that it was Jon.
We finally made it up to the high school in Maniwaki around 4ish. We decided to stake out some real estate in a semi-secluded area for us and the remainder of the group that would be coming up later. We quickly set up the tents. I knew it was supposed to rain on Saturday so I decided to set up the tarp as well. We taped off a fair size area with rope to try and reserve enough space. We weren’t quite sure at how many would be staying with us. I ran into Peter from the Ottawa Y group and he had a huge area taped off for the others that were showing up late. We got all the paddling gear sorted out for the next day based on the forecast of rain. It was easier to get everything we needed out now then scrambling for it last minute.
I left my boat out in the parking area in a roped off area so the others would find us easily and have somewhere to park. We finally did our official check in around 6pm and then headed off into town for dinner at the Rialto. I had an excellent feast on Greek pork kebabs and Chelsea had the salmon kebabs. We got our desert to go as we were stuffed. We headed over to the local Maxi grocery store to pick up lunch stuff and snacks. It’s pretty amazing that you can buy groceries at one end of the store and a case of beer and wine at the other end. Talk about one stop shopping. I still could not figure out how the Presidents Choice full size dark chocolate bars were a buck less her considering we were in the middle of BF nowhere.
We ran into Greg and Dan back at camp. They had their tents setup in the parking lot and were in the process of setting up this huge tarp. I told them we were on the other side of the tree line. They folded up the tarp and moved their tents. Dan had just spent a week in Temagami with his dad. Greg picked him up somewhere around highway 11 and 60. Dan ended up somehow getting water in his fuel tank for his stove. He spent some time dumping the fuel in a pot lid and lighting it on fire as it was not a very good idea to burn it in the stove. I asked him what the story was on the water in the fuel. It basically came down to him pouring fuels from the bottle onto a fire that was supposedly out which then resulted in a molatov cocktail that ended up in the lake. Dan and Greg decided it was time for a later dinner complete with expresso (see pictures). I was already in partaking in home made grapefruit coolers and I know there were quite a few empty Guiness cans around as well. I am not sure when but at some point in time Keith and Bev showed up. They were going to camp with the Y group but set up shop with us.
I kept checking the parking lot for Neil and AnnaLisa. They were supposed to be up by 10ish. I spent some time talking to the YMCA group and others in the campground I knew. I came back to the car to get something and noticed my GF was gone. I know the kayakers have taking a liking to her but who the hell would actually want to carry her away. I went back to the campsite and asked if anyone had seen her. There was a round of nope .. nope … nope. I then looked over at my tent. Someone had put her in there (see picture). I dragged her out and zipped up the tent doors. The culprit responsible for the incident (Dan) had opened both ends of the tent and pushed her all the way through into the vestibule. My only complaint was I probably now had mosquitos in my tent. I finally went to bed around midnight and there was still no sign of Neil which was to be expected as they are always late for stuff. It rained all night.
Saturday 25-Aug-2007 Water level 7.5 with rain off and on the whole day:
I dragged my butt out of bed around 6am. It was cool and overcast. I did a quick walk around the campground to see if I could find Neil. No luck. It was just a sea of tents and boats. I headed over main tent and waited for breakfast to be served. I managed to be 5th in line. The others started slowly started showing up for breakfast. I finally saw Neil and AnnaLisa and to my surprise Derek managed to show up as well. They were at the opposite end of the campground from us. They said they were going to do a warmup on the Desert River. I told them they were wusses and should just come and from the Gatineau with us.
Greg and I went back to the campsite and noticed that quite a few people were actually putting on drysuits. We had a philosophical discussion on whether we were going to do that as well as this was still august and not October. Greg ended up wearing his drysuit and I wore my shorty drytop and drypants. I dragged my boat over to the shuttle. Chelsea carried her's over afterwards. It is quite amazing to see how many kayaks and open boats get stuffed into a full size transport truck trailer. Keith was still outfitting the airbag into his tandem boat and said we would catch up with him at the river. We got onto the school bus and were headed to the putin. So how does one empty a trailer full of boats you ask. Just imaging a two long lines of people across from each other going from the back of the trailer to the river and playing a big game of hot potato. It was just a big game of pass grab part of the boat from one side of you and pass it off to your neighbour on the other side ntil they are all off and by the river. I did not bring my regular camera gear today as it would have only sat in the boat with all the rain. I brought my small waterproof camera for taking minimal shots or video.
We re-grouped on the water. Low and behold Neil and gang showed up. They missed their shuttle to the other river. Go figure and now we were back to a party of seven boats. We had a brief discussion about safety and what would happen in the event of swimmers and who had the first aid and pin kit. I
t was off to the first set of rapids “Tete des Six”. The scenery is absolutely gorgeous. We played around surfing for a bit. The upstream boat has the right of way rule seemed to have gone out the door. You had people jumping on to features when people were coming down. I could have had a field day with target practice. Chelsea ended up swimming due to a tandem boat cutting her off as she was coming down. We managed to have some fun surfing. I spotted Chelsea for a couple of rolls in her kayak. We slowly made our way down river before getting to Lucifers where we all got out and scouted from river right. Most of us decided to run the big river left wave train. Dan decided to run the right line and threaded the needle with ease. Chelsea and AnnaLisa elected to walk. I walked back up the shoreline to watch the action in Lucifers Anus. On my way back down I slipped and fell on a wedge shaped rock. Don’t worry the rock is fine but I now have a huge bruise on my thigh below where I had the bruise on my a$$ a few weeks ago.
We headed down to “Du Corbeau”. We all got out on the log jam to scout the run. I ran it first with no problem at all. It was a pretty quick run. Some of the group decided to walk it. I carried back up to run it again. I notice Paul Mason and Mark Scriver on river right as I was making my run. I said hi to them as I was going by and then I realized I was getting kind of close to the river left rock that I really want to be on the right side of or die going down the nasty stuff on the left of it. I tilted the boat on edge and carved to the right and dropped into the hole and punched through. I went back over to get the gear I had left on shore. I noticed that there we lots of people doing the creek run drop. I watched a few people go down and decided to pass on it as my boat was just to long to make it successfully with the skills that I had. Dan, Neil, and Derek ran it a couple of times. Not sure about Greg. We watched some more people run it including Scriver, Mason, Martin, and Scott MacGregor.
We headed down river going through some of the other rapids and finally arrived at “Le Haute Tension”. I did not feel like getting out of my boat and scouting this one. I ran into the Y group and asked Hartley where the line started. He said about five feet out from the rock in the middle. I followed his group down. I did not realize they were going down the chute just to the right of the rock as they were way ahead of me. I went to the right of the hump in the water. I had a fun ride down and had lots of water in the boat by the end of it. Thank goodness I have pumps in my boat. I paddled back up and ferried over to the river right beach to talk to the others as they had just gotten there to scout. I explained the line to them. Neil, Derek, and Greg made their runs. Not sure where Dan was as he was the group Boat HO and paddled with other groups from time to time. I spent some time rescuing boats from other groups. The rescue belt I bought a few weeks ago has had a lot of use since then. There is nothing like towing a 17 foot open boat with minimal flotation in it full of water.
We headed down river through some rapids before arriving at “Des Cedres”. It was basically a 4 foot drop. I did not bother scouting it and just ran it fine. I put my paddle up for Neil and gang to make their runs. Everyone made it fine. We had to rescue a female kayaker. She ended up hitting a rock upside down but luckily she was wearing her helmet as there was a huge piece of missing paint. She seemed really disoriented. Derek grabbed her and was asking the basic whats your name, etc questions. We had to hold her out of the water for a bit until she was ok. I towed her back to shore while others collected her gear. We saw her later on at the bus and she had a really big headache. Apparently there were quite a few injuries there throughout the day which resulted in it being a mandatory portage for the Sunday.
We had long flat water paddle to the last rapid at “Bonnet Rouge”. I had to stand up in my boat and paddle it from the standing position to stretch my legs. Dan decided he was going to try and tip me over. He ended up standing in his boat and wanted to have a jousting match. We started paddling towards each other and then I raised up my paddle and took a huge swing and knocked him out of his boat. I was going to leave him swimming in the middle of the river but decided to rescue him and hold his boat while he climbed back into it.
We finally arrived at Bonnet Rouge. I decided to see how far I could get by running the river right side standing in my boat. I chickened out at the very end and I was started down the first drop. It was steeper than I thought. After that it was get the boats on the truck and jump on the bus and head back to camp.
I was in dire need of shower and headed over to the pool area to find them. After that it was cooler time. I was getting hungry and headed over to the big tent. I was sitting their relaxing when Neil from Dublin, Ireland. I met him the previous August when I was camping for a week with their group and the GBR freestyle team for the pre-worlds freestyle competition. It was nice to catch up and I hung out with him and the others for dinner. They were over for a three week vacation and were heading over to Montreal after the festival was over. I mentioned I probably had some pics of him competing at worlds. I also showed Keith some pics of him and his daughter from the Gull Fun race a few weeks back. I ended up putting some pics on CD’s for Keith and Neil.
After dinner I partaked in another nalgene bottle of coolers. I was feeling pretty good by that point in time. It started raining again and we were under the tarp. They only problem we had was a lack of chairs. We heard a rumour that the Maxi store in town had half decent chairs for like seven bucks. I asked Chelsea if she had anything to drink yet as she was probably the only one who had not started and I was in no shape to drive. We made a quick road trip to pick up three chairs. I decided later on to go over to the party tent to hang out with some other people and catch up. I had my my fugly shirt and pimp-daddy-ho hat. I am quite used to being stared at but I guess I caught quite a few people off guard when I went into the tent. The noise volume dropped and the finger pointed started as I was walking through the tent looking for friends. I finally caught up with them. I know I had my picture taken at least twice.
I spent some time talking to Jeff and Jennifer. They were trying to persuade me to go to Gauley Fest. I am now back to the almost going stage. I spent a while talking to quite a few people. The entertainment was just beginning. There were about 10 people with various types of drums. They were really good. I caught up with Chelsea, Neil, and AnnaLisa in the middle of the tent. Low and behold we see Dan up front dancing up a storm. Chelsea and AnnaLisa joined in. Neil and I grabbed a seat. I have no rhythm and can’t dance worth crap. I ended up leaving a short while later and crashed about 11ish. I got out of bed around 12:30 when I heard Dan and the others make it back. Someone was asking where Sinead from the Ireland crew was and Dan said that I might know. It turned out to be a guy from RiverRun I had previously met. I pointed him off to the right direction. I hung out for a bit before going back to bed.
Sunday 26-Aug-2007 Water Level 8.5 Sunshine for most of the day:
Holy crap 6am came quick. I packed up most of the stuff in my tent and headed off to breakfast. I was the first one in line as most of the campground was probably hung over. I re-organized the crap in the car leaving room for the last minute stuff like hopefully not wet tents, etc to be thrown in at the end of the day. Greg and Neil decided they were going to leave their vehicles at the takeout. I decided to leave mine where it was as I had a shorter drive at the end of the day compared to them. I made sure our two boats were on the truck and got on the bus. Not sure where Chelsea was as she was only going to buy a t-shirt. I had all the paddles and water with me. Neil had the lunch and snacks I prepared with his stuff.
I got off the bus and ran into Gail, Brian, and Jon at the putin. Chelsea ended up getting on a later bus. We unloaded the boats from the truck in similar fashion to the pervious day. Neil and gang almost missed the shuttle from the takeout to the putin. They got the last three seats and they said there had to be at least a busload of people stranded there.
I finally saw Chelsea at the river. She picked up the spare kayak paddle from the car and had it in her hand. I had to deflate my front airbag and shove the paddle under it. It barely fit. I then re-inflated the bag. I know had water for two, a four piece break-down kayak paddle, full kayak paddle, and spare OC1 paddle, and my regular ten pounds of camera gear in my boat. I told Chelsea that I was heading down river to take pictures of the rocks at the first set of rapids and she stayed behind to wait for the others.
I managed to take some great pics of the Y group and some others that I knew. I almost contemplated having a nap as it was at least 45 minutes before the others showed up. Needless to say I did not get too many pics of them during the day as I was always ahead of them or on a different side of the rapid.
I spent some more time taking pictures of other rocks on the way down until we came to Lucifers. I decided I was going to run the right hand thread the needle line. My first run down was fine. I ended up with water in the boat but that’s normal for me. I then decided I was going to drop into Lucifers from above. It took me another four tries and running from above before someone told me I had to be way left of the tongue. I knew I had the right spot when I saw all the finger point and whooo hooos coming from shore. I finally got in and side surfed for about 4 seconds before window shading multiple times, almost rolled up, and then got spit out like a terd. Thanks Keith for helping me get back into my boat in the middle of the river. I know Neil and Derek took a couple of runs. I was not sure what Greg and Dan did as they left just shortly after I got there. We spent quite a bit of time there having lots of fun.
We headed down river and ran log jam. No creek runs todays. We had a snack on shore before heading down to the sandy beach lunch spot. I was making my run down to the spot when Alexandra and her boyfriend decided to jump on the wave. I have to swing my boat around them and they she ended sitting in her boat on top of mine just in front of me. I had to quickly grab their boat and push it off. I hung onto the boats until we floated down. After a high five it was lunch time. We had lunch with Gail, Brian, Fiona, Jon, and Steve (I think that’s all of them). We watched these people jump off the 30 foot cliff on the other side of the river. I started yelling out scores and then this guys ended up over rotating on a front flip and did a belly flop. About 50 people all went ewww when he hit. The guy was ok.
After feeling semi-bloated from lunch it was time to run “Le Haute Tension”. I had a really dry run down. Neil and Derek had good first runs. Neil’s second run was a little different. He decided to run AnnaLisa’s boat down as she was walking it. He ended up dropping into the hole and out of his boat for his longest swim so far that I can remember. He managed to get some really good underwater look up at the sun downtime. I rescued the boat and he was being dragged to shore by some bystander. After that I head down river to take some pictures of some really neat rocks.
After that we headed down river. I ran the drop at Cedars even though they said it was a mandatory portage. There were lots of people running it and with all the extra crap in my boat carrying it was not an option. Neil and Derek quickly followed. I started paddling ahead to Bonnet Rouge as I was getting tired and just wanted to get to the takeout. I got farther down the river at Bonnet Rouge while standing up in my boat. I managed to do the river right drop and then made it to the second wave before literally jumping out of my boat. I managed to get back into my boat with the help of a paddler in the eddy. After that It was a ferry across to the takeout and the long process of hauling all the gear to the truck for the shuttle backs. Goodbyes and hugs were exchanged in the parking lot. Chelsea and I head back to takedown camp. I was happy that the tents and tarp were fairly dry. We just rolled them up in a ball and threw in the back seat of the car. We tied on the boats and were off.
We ended up stopping for ice cream along the way. We had lots of snacks to last us for a while as we were going to have a late dinner at my dads place. We ended up stopping at Esprit for a bit. We had a nice chat with Leah. Chelsea managed to talk to a lot of her friends she met there in the spring. She also had some other business to take care of as well. Jim offered us some pizza as well as some of the others who could not finish theirs. I ended up taking some nice pictures of the sunset. We left but ended up stopping a few minutes later to take some pictures. I was commenting on how nice it would be for pictures if the ponds that were on the right side of the road and been on the side where the sun had set. Low and behold we both said at the same time like those ones as we found some coming around the corner. I stopped the car and got out the tripod.
Next stop was to be my dads but we were kind of hungry and ended up going through the Burger King drive through for the after 9pm special. We finally got to my dads where we ended up doing laundry and watching another chick flick. I finally crashed. All I can say is I am glad we did not have to make the long trip back to Barrie that night.
Monday 27-Aug-2007:
Made cheese omelletes for breakfast. We did a quick stop at Tim Horton’s for tea for Chelsea and a big box of TimBits for the MKC gang. I decided to let Chelsea drive. We pulled into MKC around 11ish. We went into the kitchen to say hi to the gang and dropped off the TimBits. I told them I had some chairs and a shelf table for them and offloaded it from the car. Our plan today was to paddle at the Gull but we decided to paddle at MKC instead. We had to wait until 12:30 for the water to flow as they were being affected by the lack of rain. We headed down to the river as Chelsea had never been there before. I ended up getting some nap and suntan time in. Chelsea decided to head down river a bit to find her own rock as she was writing a new song. You could tell she was really into it as her head was bopping all around.
I walked back up to offload the boats and get geared up. My boat was in absolute stripped down mode. No camera, spare paddle, battery. Just water bottles. I decided to forgo the polypro and shirt and went au natural under my pfd in order to get some more suntan time in. We walked up river and started our run down by eddy hopping on river right. Chelsea was starting to get the hang of it. We spent a lot of time at this really sweet spot where you could practice peel outs and eddy catching from shore to rock and back again. We walked back up river and I took another run down trying to catch as many eddys as I could while the Princess was having a snack. Mark was nice enough to come down to help Chelsea with her roll for at least an hour. I was getting as many runs in as possible. I managed to get some sweet side and back surfs in as well.
After that we packed up the paddling gear. I grabbed a quick outdoor shower. Man I love those things at MKC. I thanked Claudia for the river access and said goodbye to the gang as I probably would not see them until next year.
Chelsea drove all the way back through Orillia and down to the McDonalds on highway 11 just before the 400 highway. This was a far a she could legally drive. We made a quick stop at Costco for chicken fingers and salad. We finally got home to my place just after seven. I went to unlock the doors, turn the oven on, and head out in the back yard to open the gate. We offload the boats into the yard and the gear into the house which now looks like a tornado hit it. We finally had dinner. Chelsea had had a craving for chicken fingers since Sunday. In between watching another chick flick and dinner I managed to do two loads of laundry before crashing.
Tuesday 28-Aug-2007:
Holy crap 04:30 comes fast. I got up, showered, had breakfast and woke up the Princess. We left the house at 05:30 to go pick up my car pool buddy. We were able to watch the last half of the lunar eclipse as we drove down to Toronto. I dropped buddy off at work and then drove over to the Kiss-N-Ride to drop Chelsea off. I got my hug and she was off. I now have three days to make sure all the gear is dry and re-pack it before our trip to the Ottawa on Friday.
Link to pictures
