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Contacts	Spanish River Trip Report

Spanish River, East Branch, 5 to 16 July, 1998

This year, in early July, the East Branch of the Spanish was an easy run. We loafed along, swam a lot, stopped early and took 11 days. Keen paddlers, with just a bit more effort, would probably find 7 days sufficient.

We arrived at Duke Lake around 6 PM after a longish day of traveling and paddled to a sand beach campsite along the lake. This was the first of many campsites which were not marked on the map and we were pleased to find it as the map's campsite was occupied. There were a few leaches in the water, as there were to be throughout the trip. There were an unusually large number of toads present, we saw at least half a dozen of them. By evening, the usual compliment of deer flies, horse flies, no-see-ums, black flies and mosquitoes had made themselves evident. Fortunately none of them were present in irritating numbers, although we did allow the number of no-see-um bites to dictate bedtime, usually about half an hour after sunset, most nights.

As we paddled the next day we saw at least at least two or three hundred purple fringed orchids. Their lovely purple flowers were often the most prominent flowers visible from the canoe; many times ten or twenty blooms were visible at once. In one day I saw more of these wonderful flowers than I've previously seen in my whole life. This experience was repeated on most days of the trip. Creeping spearwort, a very small, low, yellow flower with really inconspicuous slender leaves grew plentifully on these same banks; in places there were thousands of their blooms present over many square meters of damp shore. At this stage the river water was quite tea coloured, a condition that prevailed until a bit past the forks, where the two upper branches of the Spanish join. When the weather is hot and the river warm it's very refreshing to be able to jump into the water six or eight times a day, and we enjoyed our frequent swims.

The first two days were spent going down a series of lakes, from Duke to Tenth through to First. These lakes are connected by short stretches of river which had moving water, a few easy rapids and some shallow stretches which required wading. We stayed on our second night at an attractive campsite at the head of Fifth Lake. The campsite itself is flat and open and is treed predominately with jack and red pine. Just across from it is a huge cliff to which we swan and where we were able to climb out onto small ledges. Here as elsewhere the water along the edge was full of small dark tadpoles. Although they were less than an inch long including their tail, they already were growing hind legs. This seemed to be sandpiper chick season as this was the first of several places where we encountered small fluffy chicks running, seemingly by themselves, on the beaches.

The only detractor from the whole trip made its first appearance at this campsite; a lack of toilet training in some evidenced itself in several places with surface deposits of poop and old toilet tissue. Although it was easy for us to scrape up and bury, unfortunately this irritation occurred in about two thirds of the campsites we used. It is incomprehensible to me that people do this when it is so easy and satisfactory for one to make small cat holes and bury one's own.

We passed the Snake River, which connects the two parts of the Spanish in some seasons, where it falls into First Lake. Although it was almost dry it must be a great sight in spring flood conditions as it has a steep slope and is strewn with huge boulders.

There is quite a bit of lightish green freshwater sponge in the water in this series of lakes. Here, too, we saw a lot of River Jewelwings, the damselflies with iridescent metallic green bodies and half black wings. Their slow fluttery flight, usually in small groups, is always enchanting.

The campsite on First Lake has a pretty little island about fifty yards out from it, and here we found our first blueberries. The day before we had picked up a few pounds of grey clay on the shore of one of the lakes. This clay is a lot of fun to play with; mix in a bit of water and then rub it all over yourself. After a while one is all covered with grey slippery clay which slowly starts to dry, shrinking as it goes. It's as if you had on a second skin that is getting tighter and tighter. When it was all dry and when we had had enough laughing at ourselves, we swam around the nearby island to get it off. This proved to be not as easy as it looked and for a day or so afterwards our skin felt slightly slippery and if rubbed with a wet hand a gray streak could be raised. Still, it is an experience not to be missed, and I certainly look forward to the next time that I find grey clay on a summer trip.

We camped at the confluence of the two branches of the Spanish. What a shock it was to see and hear the trains right across the river from our campsite. It seems to be the main CP line, and there were a lot of trains, mostly long freights loaded with containers and freight cars. We waved at them and they train whistled back at us. These trains were with us for two or three days and then the line disappeared off to the east. Very early in the morning we saw one of the two moose of the trip. When we were swimming we noticed quite a few pointy snails, about an inch to an inch and a quarter long.

After the forks, the river seems to steepen, and very often it is clearly and obviously flowing downhill, sometimes quite steeply. With only three exceptions, all the rapids are relatively easy to run, with the first in each set usually the hardest. The rocks in the Spanish all seem to be rounded and slippery, and the ones that we bumped into were not clingy at all and gave us no trouble.

The river is not in a wilderness, and we passed some elaborate cabins before and on Spanish Lake. We also noticed places where the river is road accessible, and in fact meet a couple of fishers and their campers at one place. These things did not diminish the pleasures of the trip.

One night, while rinsing lentils we managed to spill about a hundred or so into the water. After a while we noticed that there were a bunch of crayfish around them. I watched one, about two and a quarter inches long. It shuffled slowly a bit to one side, then forward, then to the other side until there was a lentil about half in inch in front of it. Then it shot forward so that its head covered the lentil, and I could see its mouth parts moving from above. In the morning all the lentils were gone.

We were having a relaxed trip, and were deliberately moving only short distances each day. Often periods of quiet sitting are rewarded, and one day just after noon while we were sitting behind our tent on a great rocky campsite, our attention was attracted to a hare making a snuffling sound about twenty five feet away. It was alert and feeding, and seemed to be unconcerned about us. We watched it for about fifteen minutes with complete fascination. With binoculars the veins in its large ears were clearly visible, as was the small tuft of white hair just behind its ears. Shortly after this, four turkey vultures circled slowly overhead.

The next day we passed the graveyard rapids and as usual the first rapid was the hardest to run, and it was not really hard. One of us, however, went through it with her paddle up, her eyes shut and squeaking small protests the whole time, about fifteen seconds. We lined two others, one a small falls and the other a rock garden, and portaged about 150 meters around a falls. This was the only lining and portaging we did on the whole 145 kilometers of river. Thus the graveyard rapids were passed easily. It must be harder at other times for at the bottom of the falls, where we had lunch, there is the front three feet of a London Canoe Club canoe.

The blueberries and serviceberries were out early this year and we ate a lot of them. One afternoon we noticed a scramble up place on a sandy bank, and some berries on the way. We stopped and picked serviceberries until our pots were full and our stomachs could hold no more. Underfoot were the best blueberries that we had seen on the trip, but we only picked service berries as you don't have to stoop to get them. When we left, it seemed that we had scarcely made a dent in the berries available. On the way down the bank we noticed that we had climbed up through quite a lot of poison ivy. We scrubbed off our legs in the river, and none of us got a rash.

After a lovely day of paddling down river we stopped at the campsite at the mouth of Reynold's Creek. Behind this campsite there is a four wheel and/or a skidoo trail. It seems to follow a long abandoned road. We walked for a long way on the part of it that went near the river; it was nice to use our legs again. Somewhere, unnoticed by us, the river had lost its tea colour and it was now very clear.

The lower part of the river is shallower, and we had to be careful to pick our way through the fast parts, or we would run out of water and have to wade through the shallows. There are more marshes and wetlands at the river's edge in the lower part than we have seen before. Near the mouth of the Wakonassin River there is a wide area of sand bars. which separate the river into many channels. This sand is unusual on the Spanish as we did not see much sand in the water elsewhere on the river.

Our last night on the river was spent at the very northern end of the Agnew Lake estuary. The campsite was very nice featuring well spaced jack pines with an extensive under story of ferns. As the evening progressed a pontoon sightseeing boat motored by us and after a short while returned going the other way. The boat and its people looked to us as if they were from another world: they moved fast in a straight line, they made a lot of noise and even worse, they never looked around, but only gazed straight ahead as if they were zombies. We were being reintroduced to the "real" world.

The next day we paddled into Agnew Lake proper. It's a human made big lake, and I'm sure that it's very nice, but the sight of large houses with mowed lawns, cottages, boat houses and the many motor boats was sure a contrast with the lovely quietude and naturalness of the Spanish River. The uneasy feelings that all was not quite right here, when combined with storm warnings, made it easy for us to end our trip.

Ian Whyte

Details:

* Ottawa to Espanola=6 hours
* Espanola to Agnew Lake Lodge to Duke Lake=3 hours
* Shuttle info: Agnew Lake Lodge to Duke Lake, your vehicle=$120.00, their vehicle=$180.00
* Shuttle round trip length=414k, about 5 hours.
* Parking at Agnew Lake Lodge=$4.00 a day.
* Agnew Lake Lodge: phone (705) 869-2239; Fax (705) 869-6632.
* Map: available free from MNR, Box 129, Gogama, Ontario, P0M 1W0, and it's all you need.
* Book: Canoeing Ontario's Rivers by Ron Reid and Janet Grand. We only read their description of the route after we got back, and as a result we missed some things we would have liked to see.