WE KNEW POPLAR RAPIDS COULD GIVE US SOME TROUBLE. Driving in the van we discussed the continuous 600-meter entry feed- ing over an eight-foot horseshoe falls fanning out over a shallow ledge with most of the water bending around against the left bank. At lower water on a warm lazy summer afternoon trip in creek boats we’d eddy hopped down to the lip, scrubbed up on an exposed piece of igneous rock, had a look over the edge, shoved ourselves back into the current and launched the drop.
On a high water multi-day raft and kayak trip
with college students of varying skills, we were considering our other options. We knew there was another channel to the left. We’d heard it lost the gradient more gradually through winding shallow class II. We’d expected to be lining and dragging rafts off rocks, not putting them on their roofs. Louise Urwin was driving the van. She was the
kayak guide and instructor. Lou is a strong, beau- tiful, no-bullshit Kiwi with a long list of whitewa- ter accomplishments. My good friend, raft guide and action sports photographer Rob Faubert and I were in the bench seat leaning forward to be part of the conversation. Behind us were the 12 col- lege students who had signed up for a multi-day whitewater guide elective. If not for the smell of river gear, they could be any other group of college students dozing, plugged into Taylor Swift, or try- ing to remember where they’d left a friend’s bike after Saturday night’s house party. Jeff Jackson was riding shotgun. He’s our trip
leader and the Outdoor Adventure program coor- dinator at Algonquin College. He’s in his early 40s, athletic and wise. His river resumé reads like a dirt bag 20-something’s bucket list, while his profes- sional resumé would make any mother proud. He’s an educator and professional guide who is all business. When Jeff got wind that the college was creating
an outdoor leadership program, he returned home to the Ottawa Valley from guiding jobs on the Green, Yampa and Cataract Canyon of the Colorado River so that he’d be in town for the job posting. He was hired in May of 2000 and went to work develop- ing the new Outdoor Adventure program and re- cruiting the first class of 70 students to arrive four months later. This group, Jeff’s fourteenth batch of second-
year students, had already completed their fall camp orientation, a 10-day sea kayak trip and two other six-day electives, two of which had to be whitewater canoeing or whitewater kayak certifi- cation courses and raft guide training programs. It’s a grueling schedule with back-to-back weekend courses and classes Monday to Friday. Not all of their outdoor training can be jammed into the late summer when the water and weather are warm. This river trip needed to be pushed deeper into the fall when the water levels on the Petawawa River could be higher and the temperatures much lower.
wTHE PETAWAWA RIVER FLOWS almost all the ay across Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park.
Thousands of whitewater canoeists have cut their teeth on the Petawawa, most paddling the second half of our trip, the three to four day section below Poplar Rapids. Above this classic summer weekend
34 | RAPID
section, above where Poplar Rapids spills into Lake Travers, flows a less accessible, steeper and more continuous section of whitewater. Twelve years ago Jeff and I began dragging
creek boats up the abandoned Canadian National Railway line that borders this upper section of Pet- awawa. Back in the ‘80s, guides from nearby raft- ing companies rigged railway jigger handcarts to pump rafts and equipment up the rail line for early big water spring runs. The Petawawa is not a com- mercially viable rafting run. It is too remote. The logistics are too complicated and, this time of year, it’s too cold for paying clients. But the Petawawa is exactly what Jeff needed for the program’s new multi-day whitewater guide elective. When we slid down the scree slope beside the
old rail line into the moving water above MacDon- ald Rapids, it was obvious right away that the stu- dents had a wide range of skills and confidence. Adrian, Nevin, Tom, Jacob and Holly had guided last summer. Their PFDs were faded from the sum- mer sun. They wore throw lines with their names and cell numbers scribbled on them. They hit the eddy above the first drop with plenty of room to spare. The rest—well, they had worked summer camps, ziplines and construction jobs, whatever was neccessary to pay tuition. A prerequisite for this trip was a raft
guide elective taken on the Ottawa River where commercial day trip raft- ing is a wham, bam, thank you ma’am one-day affair. The Ottawa is big and deep and safe. The bigger the hits the bigger the tips, guides in my day used to say. “Day guiding is so low consequence,
the mentality is different. There is al- ways a bail out to a road,” Jeff told the group as we were scouting the first drop. “By taking away that access we’ve added exposure to consequences. We need to look at every rapid differently. We need to always take the safest line possible.” We weren’t looking for big hits on this trip. We
were looking to get down with all the people and equipment we started with. Through MacDonald Rapids, Devil’s Cellar and
Rocky Chute the students did a good job getting everyone down. Some of the lines weren’t pretty. We had some swimmers from the rafts. There were a couple wet exits from kayaks. The clean up and safety was quick and efficient. Kind of what I expected. We scouted the bigger rapids from shore. Down
the 1,000-meter series of six ledges known as the Temptations, the students boat scouted with rolling cover looking out for the boats above and below.
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