Where: Upper St.
Croix
What: Canoeing
When: 7th
weekend
Spring Term 2005
Leaders: Chris
Erickson, Natalie Coleman
Notes:
Canoes rented from:
Guy and Jerry Pardun
715-656-7881
http://www.pardunscanoerental.com/index.htm
About $60 for an overnight canoe
rental.
(The address given on the website,
a year ago at least, was the guy’s house.
Don’t make the mistake we made and go there at 9:30 pm to “check
in.” Although he did give us free firewood. The store is off highway 77 to the left in
the town of Danbury)
5-ish hour drive from Carleton to Danbury, Wisconsin.
We stayed the first night at the Riverside Landing directly
off the 77 bridge over the St. Croix.
There was only a field at the time, but they were doing a lot of
work on
campsites for the other side of the road, there may even be water now. We were dropped off the next morning at
Gordon Dam and canoed about 26 miles to a small but very nice island
that we
camped on, probably took us 7-8 hours.
There are designated camping sites along the river, you can’t
pitch a
tent anywhere. The rapids on this
section didn’t really amount to much, even the mandatory portage at the
old dam
is easily run, but the river was mostly flowing well and we didn’t have
too
much trouble with low water. The
surroundings were also very nice, and for most of the paddle we didn’t
see any
houses or roads. We took this trip on
the weekend with some of the heaviest forecasted rain of the year, but
we only
got poured on twice, and the clouds made for a dynamo sunset. We woke up early the next morning and
paddled the remaining 4 or 6 miles to the Hay River Landing. We were several hours ahead of the outfitter
so we hitch-hiked into town and walked to his store.
Everyone was back at Carleton by Sunday afternoon.
The trip was pretty easy, unfortunately no
one capsized. The only real odd note
was that Sodhexo gave us in the supplies 1 giant cart of juice drinks
and a
pack or two of soft drinks, and though none of these were brought in
the
canoes, the entire seven-man group managed to down no more than
¾ of 1 nalgene
of water for the trip.
The St. Croix National Park Service has a really nice site
with river levels, other outfitters and best of all, downloadable maps.
http://www.nps.gov/sacn/trip/
I’d look
into the Namekagon as well.
--Chris Erickson