2004-07-11 Wisconsin’s Ounce River with Kevin Shriver

At least it flowed very roughly parallel to East Copper Mine “Road”.  We were given a hint of what was to follow when the “Road” turned out to be nothing more than a wide All Terrain Vehicle trail of gravel, sand, and mud since it had rained all night and into the morning.  If we got stuck anywhere along the way, we could portage out to the road and run back to either one of the vehicles.  Our wives had long since given up trying to talk us out of these inadvisable adventures.  Most people don’t understand why anyone would want to follow a winding overgrown creek from one back country bridge to another. 

After a late breakfast, we packed snack bars and water, grabbed our heaviest and toughest paddles, parked my van at the downstream bridge, doped up with bug repellant, and dropped our canoe in the shallow rocky stream at 10:45AM.  We had to be back by 2PM, but weren’t concerned because we had only driven 4.1 miles between the bridges by road.  Figuring roughly 2 miles per hour, we would be back at the van by 1:00PM. 

Reflections of interlaced tree branches in the shady mirrored water made it look like we were flying upside down through a green tunnel of leaves. Kevin used his paddle shaft to deflect the gauntlets of branches and ducked low, fighting and thrashing through.  Then it was my turn. We should have been wearing goggles, but weren’t.  The canoe soon filled with evil looking long and narrow spiders crawling among the pile of broken twigs and on the gunnels.  When the stream did widen, often the only channel deep enough for the canoe was closest to the tree branches on the outside of the bends so we had to fight through a one sided gauntlet.  Mosquitoes and deer flies tried to land on us in spite of the repellant, but were slapped off us by the next set of branches.  Still the back of my shoulders and the back of my head itched from being bitten and the fear of West Nile virus gnawed at me.  Next time, I would use even more repellant and bring goggles.

The widest stretches of the “river” were never more than eight feet across and 1 foot deep.  These were normally punctuated by a beaver dam with as much as a two foot drop to the shallows below.  Many times, we portaged over beaver dam or a huge log and then had to float or carry the canoe half a block or more until it was deep enough to paddle again.  Climbing over some moss covered fallen trees as much as 2 feet in diameter; we would step into a hole and be up to our waists in the cold water. Sometimes we would scare an 8 inch trout from their hiding place under the logs.  

We had to climb at least 10 feet high to get over one pile of fallen trees. There were occasional deep quiet pools under the protection of a steep bank with a huge pine tree whose branches provided the shade for the moss on the rocks and trees beneath.  These were magical spots.  Other times, we passed between steep banks of sand with huge dead pine trees leaning perilously over the creek.  Sometimes there were no trees at all, just high grass and plants.  Whenever we cut the 90 degree corners too sharply, we beached on the sand on the inside of the bends.   

It was rare that the stream allowed us to get the canoe up to 3 or 4 miles per hour with our racing strokes.  When we did, we disturbed green bodied and black winged damsel flies and strikingly white moths, as we passed by occasional wild purple iris and several varieties of white flowering plants.  A huge dragon fly landed on a leaf directly above us to eat it’s freshly caught black butterfly.  A red-tailed hawk flew over purposely just to see what was making all the splashing noise in the normally quiet stream and then flew off in apparent disgust.  A huge doe standing in the water stared at us in amazement as we rounded a bend and then bound into the woods.  Huge deer hoof prints were on every sandbar, but we only surprised that one deer because we were making too much noise in our haste to get back to the van before our time ran out.  I should have gotten up earlier to start this adventure.

We got lots of practice climbing in and out of the canoe with roughly 10 beaver dams, 20 fallen trees, and 30 or more rocky or sandy shallows.  It was a constant struggle to keep the canoe moving.  My long wind pants and river shoes drained several cups of water in the canoe each time I got back in from splashing along.  In the bow, Kevin got the brunt of the workout because he had to drag the canoe up and over the logs.  If I pushed the canoe while he was hanging onto it, he might have sprained an ankle or twisted a knee.  Every few times we picked up the canoe, we had to dump the accumulated water that had drained from my soaked windpants and our river shoes. Then we picked up the extra paddle, water bottles, bananas, and the waterproof gear bag that had fallen into the stream along with the sloshing water.

Then the stream channel we had been following appeared to dissipate into several boggy shallows and we heard huge bullfrogs all around us. We began to wonder if we had missed a fork and turned off into a large bog.  We backed up the canoe to watch and see which way our paddle splash bubbles flowed and then drove our bow between two large mounds of tall grass to find another sharp bend looping us back into what became a stream again.  Checking Kevin’s watch it was past 1:00PM and we thought we were nearly going to have to give up and carry the canoe out to the road.  However, if we had taken a wrong fork, that might have us wondering lost in the woods. 

We stopped at the next log barrier to quickly eat a snack bar.  Two more bends and we found a bridge that looked much higher than the one we expected to find.  Scrambling and tugging the canoe full of broken branches and spiders up a steep slope full of nettles, we were very much relieved to find my van parked on the road above.  It was 1:20PM and it started to rain hard again as we drove back to Kevin’s cabin.  Our adventure had ended well.  Thanks Kevin, for being crazy enough to want to do it because I would have a hard time finding anyone else who would.