Back on the Bonnechere

Often, when DW and I search for places to take our kayaks, we try to go to places where we've never been.

There are some places we've visited several times: the Jock River, between Terry Carisse Park and Twin Elm; the Rideau River, downstream from Black Rapids; Morris Island; and Petrie Island. But those places are close to home and easy to access when we don't want to venture far.

When we want to do a day paddle, we look for new places—places we've never been. And sometimes, that can mean just paddling on a river at a different stretch.

We've been on the Ottawa River in several places. It's so vast that we'll never cover it all in our lifetime.

We've been on the South Nation River three times. The first time, we paddled from Jessups Falls to Plantagenet; another time, we put in at Jessups Falls again but paddled in the opposite direction, to the Ottawa River. On a third paddle, we put in at Spencerville and paddled upstream for a few kilometres.

We want to go back there: next time, to go further and to make a video of it.

We've now been on the Bonnechere River three times: first, when we camped at the provincial park, off Round Lake, and took the river upstream; last fall, when we put in near the Ottawa River and paddled upstream, to the Bonnechere Falls. That trip also had us crossing the Ottawa River to the Québec side.

Our third outing was a stretch that we've wanted to do for a while but were unsure of the river conditions—whether there'd be large rapids or other hazards. We could find little information on this stretch.

We wanted to paddle from Renfrew to the Bonnechere Falls, also known as First Chute.

A couple of weekends ago, we met up with our friends, Russ and Jenn, who would be running the river in a canoe with Russ' dog. DW and I would, of course, be in our kayaks.

We still had little information to go on but DW found a brief write-up on someone's personal Web site, and she also found a short video on YouTube. The video provided no information beyond clips of canoeists negotiating the waterway. There seemed to be no hazards between the Second Chute put-in and First Chute.

We found a place to put in, just off Arthur Avenue, on the north shore of the river, just beyond the Second Chute dams. Apparently, there's another put-in spot on the south shore, somewhere across from where we put in. but Google Maps showed a fence blocking access, and when I got my drone in the air, I could confirm the fence on the opposite side.

Because this was going to be a one-way paddle, Russ left his vehicle at the Renfrew put-in and I moved my car to the Horton Boat Launch, where we parked the last time we paddled the Bonnechere. It costs $9 to park for the day.

As I said in a post last week, I had some technical difficulties with my Insta360 camera and only captured about 10 minutes of video footage before the camera stopped working. But I captured some moments with my phone and DW supplemented with video from her phone.

I was able to piece together enough to make a short video. Have a look:

As I said in the video, it would have been nice to have an extra foot of water in the river, to keep us from bottoming out and getting out of our kayaks. It would have also been nice to have a better take-out spot for portaging, but it all worked out.

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Happy Monday!