Beartrap Creek
Today was a day when we saw a lot of wildlife. I awoke early this morning so that I could try to take pictures of birds. I did get find some merganser ducks but didn’t get too many pictures before my camera locked up on me again. It seems to be doing it more and more, possibly when it is cool.
We drove north to the Narrows road where we planned to launch the canoe at Beartrap Creek and paddle to Shady Lake. Along the road we saw at least six deer and one black bear with a cub. The cub ran into the bush right away but the mother stayed and ate dandelions in the ditch. Of course my camera didn’t work again, but we did get pictures of the bear on Enid’s.
A large beaver swam by as we prepared to launch our canoe in Amiskowan Lake. It was carrying a stick in its mouth and swimming to where it was building a dam where the road bridges the stream. The beaver seemed unconcerned about us as it swam back to its lodge right by the road.
Amiskowan Lake isn’t much more than a widening of Beartrap Creek and much of it is quite shallow, just deep enough for the canoe to pass over deep beds of vegetation that will soon be blooming. Beartrap Creek itself is narrow, winding, and shallow where it meanders to join Amiskowan and Shady Lakes. It was just navigable depth and Enid had to do a lot of drawing from the bow to get us around the tight turns and stay in the deepest water. We only had to get out of the canoe once going upstream at a very shallow rocky riffle.
There us a small dock and a canoe on shore where the creek exits Shady Lake. There are some park buildings and work residence trailers back in the bush here, and what looked like a red truck (this turned out to be a helicopter as it flew over us just after lunch).
I heard what I thought was a wolf howl soon after we’d entered the lake. Almost right away many howls joined in, but they sounded like pups rather than mature wolves. We paddled slowly along the shore hoping to see them and caught sight of a female wolf with swollen teats hanging below her belly. She was just back in the bush a few feet from shore and seemed to be following us. We got a good view of her at a very small opening in the shoreline vegetation and then she scrambled up the bank.
We paddled around the lake, stopping for a few minutes where the Shady Lake trail with its boardwalk steps drops down almost 200 metres from the highway. There are some huge spruce and birch here, as well as a small beaver lodge (we used the lodge to more easily beach the canoe). A beaver came out and swam around while we watched it from shore before we paddled on to the end of the lake.
Beaver on Shady Lake
We went up Beartrap Creek for a short way. It was navigable as far as we went upstream, but the creek is not very large. Since it was time for lunch we went back across the lake to a grassy spot just north of steps at the end of the Shady Lake trail. After lunch I took a lot of pictures and video of two beaver swimming out side their lodge. Finally they got the courage to enter it and I could hear them sniffling and breathing inside it.
We took off our shoes and waded at the two shallowest places on the way back down the creek going back to Amiskowan Lake. The water was a nice temperature as it flowed over the mostly sandy bottom.
We saw another bear by the highway as we drove back to our campsite but the highlight of the wildlife we saw today was the female wolf.