We had another great trip to Crotch Lake in the North Frontenac Parklands. This spring trip has been a
staple of the 32nd's Scouting program for close to a decade now.
On Friday we left Connaught Public School at 2pm and headed on our way - 10 Scouts a Cub (who will be a Scout next year), 5 Scouters and a parent. The route we took was through Almonte along Highway 16. We had to make 3 stops in the Lavant Station area to carry turtles off the road into the safety of the ditch. By 5pm we were unloading the canoes and filling them with gear. By 7pm we had landed and had most of our gear on the site, and were unpacking our kitchen to make supper. We had Sites 5 and 6 booked for the weekend.
While our kitchen volunteers cooked our supper the rest of the Scouts set up the tents. We discovered that we'd done some errant math back at the put-in when deciding how many tents we had to take with
us, so a couple of Scouters paddled back over to get one more from the truck.
Saturday started early with a couple of eager Scouts waking at 5am, anxious for the day ahead. A few good cups of strong coffee calmed down the Scouters from their early and somewhat rude awakening :-) A couple of Scouts volunteered to cook the bacon and breakfast hash, and as we leisurely went about our breakfast we discussed what we were going to do for the day.
Several Scouts wanted to explore the lake and check out some other campsites, while others wanted to go fishing, a few more wanted to practice canoe-over-canoe-rescue, and we also had some requests for paddling up into where the Mississippi River enters into Crotch Lake to check out the rapids and possibly ride them in our life jackets. We were pretty confident we could accomplish all of that in the day so we packed up enough supplies for our lunch and headed south towards Skull Island.
We left there and continued south to Skull Island. We stopped briefly at another island on the way which turned out to actually be Skull Island - Scouter Alan was a bit mixed up in his geography. But it was not the island we were looking for since it did not have the excellent cliffs for jumping and swimming. We continued south to what we thought was Skull Island, but is actually called Gull Rock.
Along the way we passed through Whitefish Rapids, which is a powerful swift that was challenging to paddle up. Some canoes had to make several attempts before making it up and one canoe experienced a capsize in trying, but everyone did eventually do it. We paddled further to the base of Sidedam Rapids, where the Mississippi enters the lake. Here we found the water level to be considerably higher than last year. One party of 4 Scouted up the river a bit on foot but found it was far too dangerous to cross like we did last year. So we hung out for a good long time on the small island at the base of the rapids, where we enjoyed riding the much more gentle rapids in our life jackets. See the video for some of that fun.
On Friday we left Connaught Public School at 2pm and headed on our way - 10 Scouts a Cub (who will be a Scout next year), 5 Scouters and a parent. The route we took was through Almonte along Highway 16. We had to make 3 stops in the Lavant Station area to carry turtles off the road into the safety of the ditch. By 5pm we were unloading the canoes and filling them with gear. By 7pm we had landed and had most of our gear on the site, and were unpacking our kitchen to make supper. We had Sites 5 and 6 booked for the weekend.
Leon and Solomon volunteered to cook our hamburgers. Scouter Alan had a new type of grill that he bought for this trip and it was the maiden voyage for our new cookware. Midway through that activity several of the Scouts expressed a desire to make home fries - so they started into chopping potatoes to that end. On many of our trips we forget the condiments but this time we were fully loaded with a Costco 4-pack of ketchup, mustard, mayo and relish.
While our kitchen volunteers cooked our supper the rest of the Scouts set up the tents. We discovered that we'd done some errant math back at the put-in when deciding how many tents we had to take withus, so a couple of Scouters paddled back over to get one more from the truck.
We finished off the evening with a camp fire and a bit of fishing.
Saturday started early with a couple of eager Scouts waking at 5am, anxious for the day ahead. A few good cups of strong coffee calmed down the Scouters from their early and somewhat rude awakening :-) A couple of Scouts volunteered to cook the bacon and breakfast hash, and as we leisurely went about our breakfast we discussed what we were going to do for the day.Several Scouts wanted to explore the lake and check out some other campsites, while others wanted to go fishing, a few more wanted to practice canoe-over-canoe-rescue, and we also had some requests for paddling up into where the Mississippi River enters into Crotch Lake to check out the rapids and possibly ride them in our life jackets. We were pretty confident we could accomplish all of that in the day so we packed up enough supplies for our lunch and headed south towards Skull Island.
On the way there we noticed that Campsite 8 was not occupied and looked really nice, so we stopped to explore it. This is where we found the odd toilet with the seatbelt strapped to it - I guess in case of rough weather. It seems one of the park keepers had a sense of humour.
We left there and continued south to Skull Island. We stopped briefly at another island on the way which turned out to actually be Skull Island - Scouter Alan was a bit mixed up in his geography. But it was not the island we were looking for since it did not have the excellent cliffs for jumping and swimming. We continued south to what we thought was Skull Island, but is actually called Gull Rock.
While everyone else enjoyed swimming at the cliffs, Scouter Tom H cooked our lunch of hot dogs. And while it was a great deal of fun we agreed we should head back to the camp if we wanted to get the rest of the things on our list accomplished. We paddled back north and stopped briefly at camp to replenish our water, then we continued north into the mouth of the lake where the Mississippi River -the main supply for Crotch Lake - enters it.
Along the way we passed through Whitefish Rapids, which is a powerful swift that was challenging to paddle up. Some canoes had to make several attempts before making it up and one canoe experienced a capsize in trying, but everyone did eventually do it. We paddled further to the base of Sidedam Rapids, where the Mississippi enters the lake. Here we found the water level to be considerably higher than last year. One party of 4 Scouted up the river a bit on foot but found it was far too dangerous to cross like we did last year. So we hung out for a good long time on the small island at the base of the rapids, where we enjoyed riding the much more gentle rapids in our life jackets. See the video for some of that fun.
After spending a good hour or more riding the rapids in our life jackets we headed back south to the same spot where last year we taught all of the Heritage Area Scouts how to do canoe-over-canoe rescue. We spent about an hour practicing that (see the video) and then set off back for our campsite. Once back at the site we discovered a massive dead Pike washed up at our canoe launch. It was starting to decompose and had another very large fish stuck in its mouth - it seems it was not able to swallow it and choked to death. Everywhere we went during the day we enjoyed fishing along the way, but sadly this was the most impressive fish we saw all weekend long.
We cooked a supper of rice, fried beef and Indian food, and enjoyed our campfire for a while and then went off to bed.
Sunday morning the earliest Scout to rise was around 6:30 but thankfully a few Scouters were already up by then. Scouts cooked us a breakfast of bacon and pancakes. We all packed up camp as we cooked and ate, and by 11am we were loading the canoes to head back to the boat launch. It was pretty choppy going back out but thankfully we all got out without incident. We were back up in Ompah around 1pm and back at Connaught at 3:15.
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