Kayak Yak: Spring Has Sprung

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Spring Has Sprung

Well, hello there.

The picture above was taken with my GoPro camera. I'm sure many of you are wondering just how many pictures your GoPro will take before the battery dies if you've forgetten to turn off the optional monitor before you head out. Thanks to my ~~stupidity~~ well-planned experiment, I can now tell you it's about 90 pictures. And 45 of them will probably be taken before you actually get in the water.
So you might get a couple of nice ones like this before the power craps out. Sigh.

As it happened, I had set up my GoPro and turned it on but got distracted as I had a moment of trouble getting it to work. After a moment it started to work fine, but I neglected to shut off the monitor, and it quickly chewed up the battery power. Ah well, live and learn.

Today, Louise and I were joined by Robyn and Mark of Gecko Paddler. This was their first time paddling in The Gorge and Portage Inlet area, so we gave them the grand tour.

First, we introduced them to what we call the Iron Man.

Further up The Gorge we found a victim from the winter's wind storms. We call it Cormorant Tree because almost every time we paddle here it's usually full of cormorants, but top of the tree is now lying in the mud after having been broken off, probably by the wild storms we've had over the last few weeks.

Next, we passed under the Craigflower Bridge into Portage Inlet.

Enjoy looking at this bridge while you can. Starting July 1, it's coming down. The replacement should be open by Christmas and look like this:

It also means that our paddling options in this area for the summer may be limited as we probably won't be able to get into the inlet due to the bridge construction.

We passed by the swans in their usual nesting spot. I'm guessing we'll see little baby swans playing here in a few weeks.

We headed up Craigflower creek...

...but we found the end is still plugged by a fallen tree, keeping the really cool tunnel 100 metres beyond out of reach, probably for a long time.

The duck and the seagull didn't seem to care about the fallen tree one way or the other.

From Craigflower Creek in the south west corner of the inlet, we headed towards Colquitz Creek at the north east corner, and on the way we passed...

...whatever these are. Centaurs? Avatar people? I don't remember seeing these here before so I'm guessing they're fairly new.

We paddled up the tranquil Colquitz creek, then let the creek's slow easy current pass us back to the inlet.

We headed back down The Gorge to our put in at Victoria Canoe and Kayak Club. Judging by their smiles, I'm guessing Robyn and Mark had a good time. You can read their paddle report here.