Ahhh... Ottawa

Washington, DC in the summer is miserably hot, humid, and generally an unpleasant place to be. So when the air conditioner for the house broke, and the replacement parts were taking over three weeks Mandy and I decided to abandon everything and headed to the great white north, Canada.

The Ottawa River in Canada holds a wonderful section of whitewater about an hour and a half west of the city of Ottawa. The river provides year round whitewater, when it isn’t frozen over. It might seem a bit obsessive to travel 14 hours by car just to paddle some river in Canada, but we were driven to these extreme measures by the heat of DC.

The Ottawa is one of the oddest rivers I have ever been to. We drove through miles of perfectly flat farmlands to what appeared to be a large lake. There was no current, and I had to ask which way downstream was in order to find the main flow. After rounding bend and coming into what would normally be a bay on any other lake, turns out to be a class IV rapid that is draining the whole lake. It is like finding Niagara Falls in Nebraska.

I had heard of a famed eddy line on the Ottawa that was prefect for squirt boating. The squirt spot sits just upstream of a somewhat intimidating rapid, so if you are going to play there you better have confidence in your roll. A skilled squirt kayaker can manage to tap into the underwater currents and disappear for 10 to 15 seconds at a time, all the while cruising around underwater enjoying the sensations of a sub marine flight.

I am just a beginner squirt boater, so I was only able to manage rides in the 1-2 second realm, with lots of chest deep and head deep rides. Each day of the week long escape was split between squirt boating and surfing the waves and rapids the Ottawa had to offer.

After six straight days of paddling the gear began to smell, my hands had permanent prune-fingers, and I was starting to reverse evolution by reverting back to an amphibian. Time to dry out and head back to DC.