Berens & Pigeon Rivers 2011

Berens & Pigeon Rivers Journal 2011

The Berens River is located in Northwestern Ontario, the headwater are approximately 500 km NW of Thunder Bay Ontario, the river flows almost due West crossing the Ontario/Manitoba border and then continuing to Lake Winnipeg. We will start our journey at Berens Lake bypassing the actual headwaters section. We will paddle downstream to Family Lake where we will switch over to the Pigeon River for the final section leading to Lake Winnipeg. The total length of this trip is about 400km. When we reach Lake Winnipeg we will be picked up by float plane to return to our vehicle in Red Lake.

In spite of all the flooding this year just to the West the water levels in the Berens River watershed are fairly low, the solid blue line in the this chart indicates the flow rate for this year compared to historical data. Since the river is of the "pool & drop" variety this should not present any problems and may make navigating and/or lining the larger drops easier than they would be in high water.

My trip partner will be driving from Massachusetts to Toronto and from there we will drive 2,000km via the North shore of Lake Superior to the town of Red Lake Ontario. From Red Lake we will be shuttled about 100km North to Berens Lake Landing where we will begin our adventure.

Check the SPOT link below starting July 5th to track our movements in real time and/or come back around the end of August for pictures and stories from the river.

Updates From The River: This year I will have the capability to send email, If I feel so inclined and have something worthwhile to impart I will be sending messages to give you a slightly better idea of what is (or is not) going on as you follow our movements via SPOT. These messages will be posted online at the Canadian Canoe Routes discussion forum, you can view as a guest but if you want to leave any witty comments you will have to register.

Some of you may recall our trip in 2010 on the George River in Quebec, my apoligies if you have been waiting for the "pictures and stories" I promised. It will happen, maybe not until after I update this page with the details for this year but eventually I will make the effort to transcribe and sort.

SPOT Berens/Pigeon River Tracking Page

The tracking page shows our current position and track over the past 7 days. the tracking is theoretically updated every 15 minutes when we are on the move. OK messages are sent each morning when we leave camp and at the end of the day when we get to the next camp. On layover days there might only be one OK message around 4:20 (if we haven't left by then we are not going anywhere). Layover days may be the result of high winds, lack of energy or a desire to explore off river (we will SPOT if we go off river).

In general I'm expecting warm to hot weather with episodes of potentially violent thunderstorms, Little Grand Rapids is at the halfway point of the trip so should be indicitive of what we are experiencing.