Words By: Brandon Willms
I have slowly been making a reputation amongst my peers of being the instigator of trips with lots of work and suffering for little reward. I dunno what it is that keeps me coming back for more, but for some reason I love it. Days out with me often involve excessive amounts of hiking, bushwaking, portaging and very little whitewater. It was earlier this year that I strung Tim and Jason along on yet another suffering heavy/enjoyment light, type of trip.
The incredible vista as we hike down to Spray lake, which to our dismay was way too low! That's Mt Nestor in the background.
Some of our friends had brought a section of the Spray River to our attention and it looked like a sweet piece of whitewater. They had said it required a 12 km roundtrip hike to and from the takeout and a bushwack up the river to the put in. After looking at the map, I thought I could beat the system and paddle the lake all the way to the take-out. This would mean a lot of flatwater, but still better than a hike. Long story short, the Lake ended up being so low that an 8km flatwater paddle turned into 1km paddle and 7km hike into a headwind, plus an unnecessary bushwack. All said and done, we took an hour longer than expected. We then arrived to find the river was raging high and the tightness of the canyon caused us to abandon our plans of running the main drops. By the end of the day, Jason and I had managed to paddle about two rapids. Abysmal.
Hiking through some beautiful bush on a beautiful day. Even when we are not paddling, we are having a great time!
High water in there makes things get out of control pretty quick. This is looking up at the last rapid in the gnar sequence.
We did not come away empty handed though as we were equipped with a bit more knowledge for next time. So, last week, we jumped on the opportunity to try it again and actually paddle something cool. The Spray gauge had fallen significantly from our first attempt and we now had a better approach plan. We hiked 6km in to the takeout, hiked up the trail to the put-in about 1 km and then paddled the spray out along the lake and finished the day with a short hike up the hill to the vehicles. This time around, we arrived to find PERFECT levels and had a blast paddling the 8 drops in the canyon. It is a super high quality section, however short!
No caption needed!
_______________________________________________________________________
The River Report – Spray River (Above the Lake)
Location: Canmore, AB
Our Water Level: 7.4cms on Spray River Gauge at Banff (this gauge is unlikely to be a very good representation of the level, but it is something to go on for deciding whether or not to hike). Visual gauge below takeout bridge (see photo)
The rock in the middle at the bottom of the photo is a good gauge rock. This gave us a wonderful padded medium.
Looking up from the bridge.
Grade (at this level): V- (The run is so short and the hike-in is significant enough that coming for anything less the whole entire run is not really worth it.)
Character (at this level): Pushy low volume creeking; Pool drop; Tight Canyon with no egress in some spots; 8 main features; classic drops, ramps and bedrock rapids; A perfect 15 foot waterfall; Sticky, walled in holes; Short section with high commitment; High potential for wood; Sieves (mostly out of play at this level); Scout entire canyon before putting on;
Directions: Park at the Mount Shark Day Use Area. Hike for 6 km on the trail to Assiniboine. Reach footbridge over Spray at the confluence with Bryant Creek. The visual gauge is a midstream rock just downstream of this bridge (see photo). Continue across the bridge and turn left onto a well-marked trail (toward Palliser Pass) to get to the put-in. Bushwack to the river approximately 1 km up this trail. To finish the run, it is possible to paddle out all the way to Spray Lake and then around an arm to the bottom of the hill and trail system up to Mt Shark Day Use. Make sure to google earth this option.
Run Spotlight: (the part of the show where we discover the good, the gross and the glorious parts of the river through trial and error/success!)
- Our first trip gave us a look at this beast when it is cranking! It certainly looked wild, but it has potential to be a very high quality V+ sequence for someone to tackle.
- At lower flows, the waterfall is one of the finest 15 footers I have run to date and it can easily be lapped.
- Jason and I “Blue Angeled” the section below the 15 footer and ran 4 drops in sequence without much of a stop between (I annoyingly missed 3 eddys in a row), it’s very tough to set safety in there.
- The whole run is easy to lap (once you have commited to walking 12+ km for the day, whats an extra .75?)
- On our first trip, Jason and I put in partway down the canyon and ran the last rapid just to get a feel for how pushy things were at high water. We were both impressed with how powerful it was in there!
________________________________________________________________________
Jason here is having a ball to say the least! He's makin' that Brapp sing!
This is the one rapid we got to run during our first high water excursion.
Upper Spray is certainly a wonderful place worth checking out. Although it is too short and too much effort to really be considered a classic, the fleeting moments you spend in there will have you thinking otherwise.
Stay tuned for the next time I get way more walking than paddling.....I'm sure it is not far off.
