Thetis Lake Cougar

Just heard this news from the coordinator of volunteers in the Capital Regional District -- news which will be of interest for paddlers enjoying Thetis Lake:

Hello all,
I just wanted to make you aware of a cougar sighting at Thetis Lake Regional Park that we received notification about this afternoon. A cougar was spotted on Sunday, April 19 near the control dam on the Lower Thetis Lake Trail.  The incident was reported to the Conservation Officers and they have advised us that it was probably a young cougar looking for new territory and that it did not display any unusual or concerning behaviours.

As a precaution, we have placed the public advisory below on our website (yellow banner at the top of each page on our website) and have installed temporary “Cougar in Area” signs: 
Cougar Sighting at Thetis LakeBC Conservation Officers are advising visitors to Thetis Lake of a cougar sighting in the park. Exercise extreme caution, keep dogs leashed and travel in pairs. Please report sightings to RAPP 1-877-952-7277.
The Conservation Officers and Regional Parks staff will be monitoring the situation over the next couple of weeks. Please use caution if hiking in the park. I will pass on any other updates as we receive them. Thanks.
Colleen
Colleen Long, Coordinator of Volunteers
Visitor Services and Community Development
CRD Regional Parks
490 Atkins Avenue
Victoria BC V9B 2Z8
T: 250.360.3329F: 250.478.5416www.crd.bc.ca/parks

Thetis Lake

This morning, Louise and I headed down to Thetis Lake so that Louise could try a dry-suit for the first time. Up to this time, Louise has used various combinations of neoprene pieces and paddling jackets. However, her main paddling jacket is in need of replacement and we've been discussing the pros and cons of a dry-suit as a replacement. Personally, I don't see any cons to a dry-suit -- except maybe the cost -- but until now Louise has remained unconvinced. We borrowed a dry-suit from another local paddler, but when she put it on we quickly discovered that Louise suffers from "clothestropohbia" -- a fear of confined clothing.

Our plan today was to paddle around the lake, then play in the water a bit so that Louise could get an idea of what a dry-suit is like.
We were about to hit the water when we suddenly realized that in our concern over getting the dry-suit ready for Louise, we'd forgotten out PFDs! Whoops!

What to do? If we were launching into the ocean without out PFDs, well, we wouldn't. But this being a lake we decided that sticking close to the shore should be safe enough. Thetis Lake is actually a deceptively deep lake; many a poor swimmer has encountered serious, in some cases fatal, trouble by walking out into the water from shore not realizing that the bottom drops off sharply and unexpectedly.

So, carefully, off we went.


Soon we found some trash floating near the main beach.

I'm not sure what it is -- a floating drink tray? Summer is starting early in the park! We put it ashore near a garbage can.

We continued on.


Among the trees and bushes along the shore I thought I saw a giant turtle. All I saw was a round shiny back, so my first thought was turtle, since we know there are turtles in the park. Then I saw it again, and it was definitely not a turtle. Too fast for one thing. Moving between the trees, it waddled along. Otter, maybe? We have seen those here, too.
But then I noticed the tree it walked by.

I'm pretty sure that otters don't eat trees.
So, a beaver then? Maybe, especially because Louise pointed out the large beaver mound behind the tree.


We moved into an arm of the lake that we know has turtles in it...

...and sure enough, there were two.


Soon it was time to head back. Louise has promised to report on her dry-suit experience.


Trip length: 6.04 km
YTD: 18.75 km
More pictures are here.

Kayak Polo at Thetis Lake - 1974

Here's another blast from the past, but this time with a personal twist. A few nights ago my sister and I were going through my father's old slides. Suddenly, this one popped up.

What the heck? My father didn't kayak. What's going on here?
A look at my father's notes reveals that he took a couple of pictures of a bunch of guys playing kayak polo in nearby Thetis Lake in 1974. If you look carefully in the middle of the picture below, you can see one of the kayakers striking an orange ball in the air with his paddle. You can also see that all the paddles have holes in them to catch and throw the ball, unlike modern kayak polo where the ball is thrown with the hand.

Of course, kayakers use Thetis Lake all the time as it's a great place to practice or to have a quiet and leisurely protected paddle,and there have been organized kayak polo teams in the city in the past, but I've never heard of kayak polo being played at the lake.
So, anyone out there know what the story is here? Was this a one-off gathering? Was Thetis Lake once home to marauding bands of kayak polo-ists? And, perhaps most importantly, is polo-ist even a proper word?

Rolling Clinic

Louise and I zipped down to Thetis Lake after work last night for a rolling clinic with Yves of Go Kayak.
Louise has never felt terribly comfortable if her kayak was anything but upside-up, but she certainly gave it her all.

Yves was a terrific teacher, and we learned a lot. Now that Louise has a boat that she really likes, it's time to get a little more serious about practicing again, and this was a good way to start.

Trip Length: .23 km
YTD: 153.34 km
More pictures are here.

Practice Makes Closer to Perfect

This morning Louise and I headed out to Thetis Lake so that she could get a practice session in her new boat under her belt. This meant that we were going to get dunked in the water.
Doesn't she looked thrilled with this idea?

However, I was keen to start.


Before we began our practice in earnest, we went for a quick little jaunt along the shore, and we spotted a heron.

Since the point of today was to spend more time in the water than on it, I hadn't brought my main camera, only my back-up Pentax Optio W90 which was a shame as this heron was totally calm and unperturbed as I approached. I got in fairly close and would have got some awesome pics with the big camera. Ah, c'est la vie.

First we practiced our edges and bracing....

...then we tried something we saw in Gordon Brown's latest DVD, a balance exercise where the kayaker sits on the deck just behind the cockpit and slowly shuffles themselves around in a circle. Sometime it went well....

....often it didn't.

It is not as easy as it looks. Gordon Brown makes it look easy, but of course he's probably done it 14,000,000 times. One thing we noticed while watching the DVD last night in preparation for today was that his Valley kayak sits a lot lower in the water than our thermoformed Deltas, but that's just the nature of these boats. I presume these sorts of balancing skills are slightly easier in a boat that rides lower in the water, the same with rescue skills. Which isn't to say they are easy.

Then we moved onto rescues as Louise tried to figure out how to get back into her new boat. I have to say the paddle float rescues weren't pretty, but they worked.

We also tried some assisted rescues which went well, then I tried some solo rescues of my own.


Then, battered and bruised, it was time to get warm. To the coffee shop!

Trip Length: 1.42
YTD: 126.10 km
More pictures are here.

Commando Kayaking in Winter

I got out to Thetis Lake last weekend, to meet John and Louise and Alison. It was an expedition with multiple transportation choices, as John has already observed on his own post. Scroll down to look at it, and his excellent photographs -- always glad to see 'em.

John and Louise took their car with their Delta sea kayaks on top. Alison rode in her own car that's currently being driven by her parents, with her Wilderness Systems Kestrel rec kayak on top. (Shorter than the Deltas, it's a good fit on her smaller sedan. Here's a photo that John took last year at Gyro Park, showing the Kestrel on the sedan.) The Sinclairs waved at their madcap daughter and headed back home to hot tea and scones, I'm guessing, since they had no interest in hanging around the chill beach. I hopped on the bus a block from the Beach House, transferred downtown, and hopped off the jitney (or le car in French) at Six Mile House.

Yeah, yeah, so who uses "jitney" for the bus linking a satellite community to an urban core? Or "le car" for that matter? Someone who just read an article about Alzheimer's disease, that's who. Apparently people suffering from Alzheimer's who are bilingual can have up to twice as much brain damage as people who show a similar amount of visible signs and symptoms but are not bilingual. In the interest of making my nearly-bilingual brain more resilient in case I'm ever faced with Alzheimer's disease, I'm incorporating vocabulary from French and from other dialects of English into my daily discourse, eh? D'accord?

Bilingual observations aside, commando kayaking in winter is less fun than in summer. While it didn't rain during my commute, there were other issues. I arrived at the bus stop ten minutes early for the first run of that Sunday morning, but the bus arrived ten minutes late. So I got downtown too late for the #50 bus and had to wait. Once I finally got to Six Mile House, it's a fair walk over two little hills to the lake. Luckily, a passer-by alerted me when the ball of yarn from my knitting fell out of my pocket. It was unrolling along behind me on the sidewalk, but my knitting hadn't yet begun to unravel -- whew!

Meanwhile, John, Louise, and Alison had already arrived at Thetis Lake. They paddled from our usual launch spot at the second beach, around a point and up to the first beach as we arranged. I was not yet there. If you check out John's post, you can see his drawing of the route he took that morning. It shows that he and Louise and Alison went around in circles for a while, back to a nearby island and back to the beach when they saw me crest the hill and plod down to the beach.

We still had fun. We noodled all over the lake. And it didn't matter a bit whether the wind came up or there were a few raindrops, or more chill than we prefer. The lake is sheltered. That's part of why we paddle lakes in the winter -- so we don't have the disappointment of going all the way to an ocean bay that surprises us by being full of rough waves and wind from an unexpected direction.
After paddling, we stuffed my Expedition into the back seat of Louise & John's car and me into the back seat of Alison's sedan (with her parents staring admiringly as the hardshell kayaks were loaded onto the roof racks of both vehicles). Then we retraced my portage from the bus stop to Six Mile House.

Alas, the pub restaurant serves only buffet luncheon until 2pm on Sundays. A fine buffet, but one for people with grand appetites, not those who just wanted soup and tea. So we went our separate ways. I bid goodbye to the rest there, thanking them for saving me the portage, and hot-footed it a long block to the bus stop, where the driver waited for me to trot the last fifty yards to le car with my kayak. Yay! Merci! Much nicer than waiting 45 minutes for the next scheduled bus to arrive.

The ride and the transfer gave me a chance to knit another few rounds on the latest pair of fingerless mitts for a colleague of Louise's at UVic. Some of us have always felt it's better to wrap the humans up in warm clothes than to turn up the thermostat in winter. These mitts may look like frivolous decorations compared with neoprene kayaking gloves, but I gotta say, if those people in Records and Admissions want to keep warm, I will keep knitting for them!

Thetis Lake

Hard to believe it's been a month since we were last on the water. Life is like that sometimes.

Even though it was a brisk 1 degree as we headed out in the morning, the sun was occasionally poking through the clouds and the cool air certainly woke us up.
Our friend Alison is back in town for a visit. She's been post some great paddle reports of her kayaking adventures in Montreal, but she's here in town for a few days visiting her kayak and giving it a little workout.
Unfortunately, Alison suddenly realized that's she'd forgotten to renew her driver's license before visiting, limiting her options for moving her kayak to put ins. And with Paula limited to commando kayaking on public transit today, a tense two-hour negotiating session ended with the decision to paddle Thetis Lake today. (If David Stern needs help with the NBA lockout, tell him to give us a call. After this, we can negotiate anything.)

Louise and I put in with Alison....

....and caught up with Paula at a different part of the lake.

Checking my records, I see that this is our first paddle this year at the lake. How the heck did that happen?

Not only is this a great place to paddle, but it's a great place to do some rescue and paddle practice, but no one felt like doing that today. That water was cold!


So we spent a couple of hours meandering around the lake....

...and then spent a couple of hours warming up afterwards!

But before we could imbibe some warm beverages, we passed a bluff on the shore where a photographer took some snaps of us. We bumped into him later in the parking lot and he graciously emailed us the photos. Thanks for these pictures, Erik!



Trip Length: 7.55 km
YTD: 214.59 km
More pictures are here.

Thetis Lake News Release

Hot off the presses -- we've just received a news release from the Capital Regional District (CRD) Parks that will be of interest to anyone who paddles in Thetis Lake this month. Here's the news about how we who use the lake can co-operate with the Salmon Enhancement Program, basically by not launching our kayaks at the main beach during a salmon fry release.

Media Advisory

For Immediate Release
April 28, 2011

Public Cooperation Sought as Students Release Salmon Fry into Thetis Lake

Victoria, BC – The Capital Regional District is requesting the public’s assistance and cooperation in treating the main beach area at Thetis Lake Regional Park as a quiet zone from
April 29 - May 31, 2011.

Fisheries and Ocean Canada has acquired a temporary permit allowing students to release
salmon fry from their classroom projects into Thetis Lake. This is due to the recent fuel spill in
Goldstream River, which damaged the fry’s home stream and compromised that watershed as
healthy habitat for aquatic organisms.

CRD Regional Parks is requesting that the public not disturb the waterfront area if a release is in
progress. Dog owners are requested to use a different beach when a release is underway, and
to keep dogs under control and away from the students and shore.

For further information, please contact:
Laurie Sthamann, Communicatio Coordinator
CRD Regional Parks
Tel: 250.360.3332 | cell: 250.889.8030
lsthamann@crd.bc.ca
www.crd.bc.ca/parks

Following Up On Turtles

Last week's blog post concerning our turtle sightings at Thetis Lake prompted some email from Todd of the Habitat Acquisition Trust. Not being a turtle expert, I misidentified the turtles as the local (and endangered) Western Painted turtles, and Todd was kind enough to correct my mistake (and I've corrected the original post).

The Habitat Acquisition Trust is a local non-profit regional land trust dedicated to helping people understand and care for natural environments in the Victoria area through land acquistion, and local lobbying efforts.
One of their projects is the monitoring of the Western Painted Turtle. Todd said, "We are asking for reports on the Endangered Western Painted Turtle from anywhere on Vancouver Island, the Fraser Valley, and the Sunshine Coast as part of our work through the federal Habitat Stewardship Program (Environment Canada). Our public outreach and research is designed to create more knowledge of the species' population distribution, behaviour, and other characteristics so that we can help to protect the remaining populations here."
In previous years, the Habitat Acquistion Trust has surveyed local inland waters looking for the painted turtle, and just last month reported that two new painted turtle habitats may have been found.
So what species of turtle did we see? Todd identified them as red sliders (with maybe a pennisula cooter thrown in for good measure). The turtles we saw were most likely released pet turtles, and releasing pets into the wild is usually a definite no-no. (Just ask UVic with their current rabbit issues.)
I asked Todd if released pet turtles could pose environmental concerns. "We are studying the interactions among native and introduced turtles," he replied, "but we don't have a clear understanding of actual consequences. It seems apparent that sliders can outcompete the natives for basking space which is often a limiting factor. Pet turtles could also introduce parasites or disease to our native amphibians, turtles, and reptiles."
If you spot a turtle in local waters, the HAT would love to hear fom you. Email hatmail@hat.bc.ca. Not sure what kind of turtle you've seen? They've thought of that, too. Here's a local turtle indentification chart (opens as a .pdf).

Shell Games

Okay, forget what I said Saturday about the fact that maybe Summer was finally here. It isn't. Maybe soon, but not yet anyway. Yesterday, we were hoping to possibly head to Sidney for a paddle, but, no, we had rain instead. And today, it was blowing a stiff breeze. So Louise and I decided to head to the shelter of Thetis Lake. As least we'd get some paddling in this weekend!


Sheltered on the lake, we didn't feel the wind very much, although occasionally it swept little ripples along the water. I was hoping to see an eagle or two today, but wasn't having luck. But quickly it became obvious that I should be looking down instead of up.

As we paddled down one of the arms of the lake, a saw a lump on a log. As I moved closer, the lump turned out to be a turtle, most likely a Slider and probably a former pet turtle released into the wild. (And if you're a hardcore turtle fan, you can click here and find a survey prepared for local municipal governments on the Western Painted Turtles habitats in local parks.)
The turtle was camera shy and disappeared, but these otters weren't the least bit put off by my camera.


With one turtle spotted, we wondered if we might find some more. They're fairly rare in this area. We've only seen turtles in the lake a couple of times before, but both times they were on an old fallen tree we call Turtle Log.
The lake's water level was higher than normal, so Turtle Log was under water, but on another fallen tree across from it, we saw another turtle. (That's #2 for those of you counting at home.)

This turtle quickly fell into the water, but as I had my video camera out just panning around the trees, Louise called out to me:

The turtle had climbed back on the log, and he was posing.


Wow, two turtles, and some otters! We could have gone home at that point and be satisfied with a great paddle. But the turtles had other ideas. We continued down the lake's arm and turtles starting popping up everywhere. (They were popping up slowly, mind you. They are turtles, after all.)
Number three...

Number four...

Number five...


We finally exited the arm, and headed back into the main body of the lake. The sun had come out and the day began to warm.


But even here, the turtles were about.
Numbers six and seven...

...okay, you'll have to trust me about number seven. He jumped off the rock he was sharing with number six before I got the picture.

These turtles were really fuzzy for some reason.

The reason is that they were actually goslings, not turtles. Mom and Dad gathered them up and took them on their way.


You think we didn't have a good paddle? Check out that smile!



Trip Length: 6.80 km
YTD: 88.08 km
More pictures are here.