Paddling Down The Little Jackfish River To Lake Nipigon

last revised on April 22, 2022.

Table of Contents:

Previous Post: Paddling The Ogoki Reservoir From Waboose Dam To South Summit Control Dam

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The Upper and Lower Little Jackfish River:

From its South Summit Lake headwaters to Ombabika Bay on Lake Nipigon, the Little Jackfish River (LJR) is 45 kilometers long.

  • The top half is a sequence of four lakes – South Summit, Stork, Moule, and Zigzag – separated by falls or rapids.
  • The section from the bottom of Zigzag Lake to its mouth is a much narrower river run with a number of rapids and portages.

There are two long sets of continuous rapids in the stretch just south of the Jackfish Road bridge, which crosses the river 6.5 km. below Zigzag Lake.  The bridge is a common end-of-trip point. Near the mouth of the LJ,  Canadian National rail tracks cross the river. Pre-arranged pick-ups here or at the VIA stop at Ferland are possible. Apparently, Ferland is also accessible by vehicle from the Jackfish Road.

Portages From South Summit Dam to Ombabika Bay:

  • 1 to 5 – South Summit to Zigzag Lake
  • 6 to 10 – Zigzag Lake to the Jackfish Road Bridge
  • 11 to 16 – from below the Bridge to Ombabika Bay

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The Little Jackfish Before the early 1940s Dams 

A 2011 study of the proposed 75 MW LJR hydroelectric project clarifies the Waboose Dam and the Ogoki River diversion’s impact on what we now know as the Little Jackfish River.

See here for the entire report. I’ve copied and pasted the short segment on the LJR –

The Ogoki Diversion converted what was then known as Jackfish Creek with a flow of 4 m³/sec into the LJF River with an average flow of 122 m³/sec…Major works were undertaken in what is now known as the LJF River. These works included the following:

  • Construction of a new railway bridge and channel where the Canadian National Railway (CNR) line crosses the LJF River (Photograph 2);
  • Major channel expansions in the area south of Zigzag Lake (Appendix A: Photographs A-1 and A-2); and,
  • Construction of Waboose and Summit Control Dams and channel improvements associated with these facilities.

Since 1943, the Long Term Average (LTA) flow in the LJF River has been approximately 122 m³/sec. The diversion works (Summit Control Dam and various channel improvements to the LJF River) were designed for a maximum flow of 283 m³/sec.

The slow 4 m³/sec current of the pre-1940s creek probably explains the Jackfish (i.e. northern pike) name.  The dense weed beds along the shallow shoreline would have made excellent spawning habitat for the fish that, in the Ojibwe language, has the name ginoozhe (also transliterated into English as kenoji).

In late August 2021, when we went down, the water flow was in the 80 m³/sec range.

Jackfish Creek – 1930s

construction of the CN railway channel (circa 1943)

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Little Jackfish River Maps:

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Surficial Geology of the Little Jackfish River Area:

We paddled down the nearby Pikitigushi River a few years ago from Butland Lake to Windigo Bay.  To no surprise, the Little Jackfish has a very similar surface geology profile. The big difference between the two is in the meandering that the Pikitigushi does in the 50 kilometers it takes to cover the final 20 kilometers to the Bay.

They share the following surface geological features:

  • 1a silty to sandy till
  • 2c end moraine, interlobate moraine, sand, gravel, boulders
  • 4c sand; silty to sandy till
  • 4a varved massive clay and silt

Perhaps the biggest single environmental impact of turning Jackfish Creek, with a flow of 4 m³/sec into the Little Jackfish River, with its average flow of 122 m³/sec ,is the massive amount of silt and sand that has been carried downriver into Ombabika Bay over the past eighty years.

This report – Erosion: Environmental Fact Sheet– looks specifically at the impact of the increased water flow.

See here for the map source and the full explanatory legend.

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The LJR’s “White Mile” Stretch Below the Bridge

Going down the Little Jackfish River from Mojikit Lake had crossed my mind years ago.  but it was crossed out as soon as my inadequate googling led me to a couple of items.  The first was this Youtube video –

I somehow projected the white water in that video to the Little Jackfish in general!

I then confirmed the impression left by the video by googling my way to a trip report titled Wabakimi’s ” Little” Jackfish River on the SuperiorTrails.com website. Here is how the piece started:

‘Little Jackfish River’ sounded innocent enough, like a creek in someone’s backyard. But it wasn’t a creek. It was a monster, wider and faster than anything we’d paddled before, with rapids that screamed and surged around rocks the size of Suburbans.

“Little Jackfish my ass,” said Erin, our guide. “How about ‘Hell-Roaring River of Death’?”

And that was it for any consideration of the Little Jackfish River for a decade!

While planning our trip down the Ogoki from the headwaters to the Waboose Diversion Dam and the South Summit Control Dam,  I returned to the idea.  If we were really going to do the upper Ogoki River from top to bottom, then going with Ogoki water down the Little Jackfish River to the logging road and on to Lake Nipigon’s Ombabika Bay would make it complete.

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A few days after I posted a brief outline of our proposed trip on the Friends of Wabakimi Trip Reports Forum, I received a detailed trip report from John Holmes via email.  He and other Wabakimi Project volunteers had gone down the Little Jackfish in 2014 and mapped and cleared the portages all the way to the Little Jackfish Road. The trip report really helped clarify things and added a lot of detail to the two pages on the Little Jackfish River in Volume 5 of the Wabakimi Project map set.

[The trip report was subsequently made available at the Friends of Wabakimi forum here or go directly to the 3.8 Mb pdf file here.]

From the report, I learned that the dramatic bit of whitewater featured in that video mentioned above is located just south of Jackfish Road. It is/was the proposed location of the Ontario Power Generation’s Little Jackfish hydroelectric project. Holmes’ report noted the various portages around the White Mile section of the river, though his crew did not do any work on the section below the bridge.

The idea of ending our canoe trip with a descent of the Little Jackfish didn’t sound so crazy anymore!

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South Summit Dam Outflow Rate:

With info on rapids and portages in hand, there was still one other concern – the outflow volume at the South Summit Dam. When I visited the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) website and found the data for the dam (see here),  I realized that the kayakers in the video I had seen all those years ago had probably driven the 60 kilometers from Armstrong on the Little Jackfish Road in June or early July and put in at the bridge for their two-kilometer fun ride down.

Here is the 2021 graph showing the 2020 and 2021 (up to September)  outflow rate measured in cubic meters per second:

Summit Control Dam – Outflow rate in m³/sec    [1 m³/sec = 35.3 ft³/sec]

This year 220 m³/sec (7769 ft³/sec) was the peak outflow; we would be going down in late August with a probable outflow rate of 75 to 80 m³/sec.  An email to an OPG contact in Thunder Bay about our plans for late August this year confirmed that there was no outflow increase planned for late August. [The day after our trip ended, there was massive rainfall in the area; the uptick in outflow rate is the early September result.]

The copy of the FoW trip report and the OPG outflow graph changed my initial and long-held view about going down the Little Jackfish!

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Day 13: From South Summit Dam To Stork Lake

  • distance: 6 km
  • time: 2h: started at 10 and done by noon – we took our time!
  • Portages/rapids: 1/1 290 m portage + 40m up to campsite
  • weather: 6 to 20 ˚C; sunny during the day, E/SE 10 -15 kph
  • sightings: the Pine Crest group on a river right point just below the rapids
  • campsite: top of a bluff, room for multiple tents, nice spot! Max’s favourite of the trip, thanks to its elevated view.
  • Natural Resources Canada archived 1:50,000 topo maps: Mojikit Lake 052 I 09  (b&w 1970)
  •  Toporama (here) is NCR’s up-to-date interactive coloured mapping website; it’s free to print what you need.
  • Our Garmin inReach-generated GPS track (here)- (Click on View All Tracks at the top right-hand corner)

Given the 33 km. we had covered the day before, we planned for something much less ambitious this day.  Since our tent site was still in the shade, we grabbed our chairs and our full coffee mugs and moved up from the shore into the full sunshine on the edge of the clearing that serves as a helicopter landing area.  After the coffee was drained, we finally got on the water. It was 10 a.m.

A half-hour (three kilometers) brought us to the bottom of South Summit and to Stork Falls with its three-meter drop. The portage is on river left.  We found the trailhead within five minutes at the top of the waterless bay and, within 30 minutes, were at the Stork Lake end of the 290-meter carry. [On the Wabakimi Canoe Route map, the grassy meadow you see in the image below is a bay you paddle into to access the portage.]

looking for the start of the portage into Stork Lake – grass and boulders instead of water

P260m river left from South Summit Lake To Stork Lake

Before we pushed off, we walked up to the falls with our cameras to get a few shots. The island blocked a full view of the main channel, but here is what we came up with.

max finishing off his sweeping video of the rapids into Stork Lake

Max coming back after his sweeping video of the rapids into Stork Lake from South Summit

As we passed by a point about a half-kilometer south of Stork Falls, we saw campers doing some fishing.  It turned out that they were the same Toronto-area YMCA Pine Crest group we had seen a few days before at Eight Flume Falls at the west end of the Ogoki Reservoir.  They had a leisurely four days before their shuttle from the logging road that crosses the Little Jackfish about 6 kilometers south of Zigzag Lake. They recounted their easy passage down the Reservoir, thanks to a northwest wind that blew them down! We battled the same wind for part of a morning as we headed west from Waboose Falls!

During the fourteen days we were in Wabakimi, these paddlers and a father/daughter combo above Ogoki Falls were the only canoe trippers we met. We also did not see any fishermen in motorboats on Whitewater or Whiteclay. However, we did see a couple of staff or clients at the Wilderness North Lodge at Striker’s Point and again at the Mojikit Channel Lodge. To complete the list of people sightings, we also chatted with the six-man OPG crew doing maintenance work at Waboose Dam.

Stork Lake Campsite, halfway down the lake

We paddled down Stork lake about halfway until we came to an excellent elevated campsite. It was only noon, but we were done for the day! We hauled everything up the sloped rock face and, given the positive overnight weather forecast, went for a fairly exposed spot. You can see it in the image above. The surrounding trees did give us a bit of a windbreak from the NW wind.

At most campsites, we usually turn our canoe into a tabletop. It is a clean surface that gives us space to organize things and make them readily accessible. The canoe sometimes also acts as a windscreen overnight or for butane stove cooking, though a repurposed baking sheet is our primary wind guard.

On the boil on our two butane stoves is our supper – pasta with Indian-style channa masala. The meal pouches are ready after a three-minute boil.  The pouches – one for each of us – are not exactly light at 285 grams (10 oz.), but they certainly make supper a no-fuss affair. The company is Tasty Bite (click here to see the various entréesavailable.) The pouches cost about $3.50 CDN each and are easy to find in Toronto. I have also seen them on Amazon though sometimes at double or triple the price they should be. Buyer beware!

Our other mainstay supper options are the entrées from Harvest Foodworks, an eastern-Ontario based family operation. See here for the range of meals they provide. Each pouch serves two and is ready in under twenty minutes.  They do require a bit more attention than the boil-a-bag Tasty Bite option! Mountain Equipment Co-Op used to stock its products, but it has inexplicably stopped doing so. I did send them an email asking why but received an answer that completely dodged my query.  I have since just ordered directly from Harvest Foodworks.

supper on the boil – Stork lake CS

The Garmin inReach Explorer+ on my stomach in the image below provides fairly accurate hyperlocal forecasts courtesy of a weather app called Dark Sky, which was acquired in 2020 by Apple. The forecast: clear the next day as we paddled down to Zigzag Lake, but massive rain on Sunday, the day we had arranged to be picked up on Zigzag.

bedtime reading in our spacious 4-person tent

The thought of sitting through a rainstorm on Zigzag Lake and then being picked up by a plane landing in a downpour when we could fly out a day early had me mulling over an early exit.

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Day 14: Stork Lake To Zig Zag Lake

  • distance: 15 km
  • time: 6h: 9 a.m. -3 p.m.
  • Portages/rapids: 3/3 1) 80 m relatively flat; 2) 230m relatively steep! 3) 290 m
  • weather: overcast
  • sightings: none
  • campsite: Hwy 17 Nipigon motel
  • Natural Resources Canada archived 1:50,000 topo maps: Mojikit Lake 052 I 09  (b&w 1970); Little Jackfish River 052 I 08 (colour 1976).  See the Toporama website (here) for more up-to-date mapping.

We set off around 9  for Moule Lake (the locals pronounce it Moo-lee), about 4 kilometers from our Stork Lake campsite.  But first, there would be a short portage to deal with.  We didn’t find it immediately, having gone a bit too far down. I walked back along the shore and found it after pushing aside some new alder growth that had covered the trailhead. We cut away the bush and put up some orange string to spare the next crew coming through the initial search. [The Toronto YMCA Pine Crest group was behind us by half a day.] The portage itself took twenty minutes.

Portage #3 –  from Stork to Moule

We played tourist for a while and checked out the rapids, walking some way up to get different views.

side-channel below the rapids from Stork into Moule

Stork to Moule rapids on the Little Jackfish River – final ledge

looking back at the canoe and a bit of the set of rapids between Stork and Moule

It is about 5 kilometers down Moule Lake to the next set of portages – in this case, two carries that take you into Zigzag Lake. The first portage trail took a couple of minutes to find. We were initially drawn to some prospectors’ tape visible twenty to thirty meters in. The “trail” looked very rough. I remembered John Holmes’ comment about coming across a bad trail in this spot –

After spotting some flagging tape and cut logs on river right, in a bay just above the moving water at the south end of the lake, we followed an appallingly bad trail over a steep ridge and down to the other side.

We paddled down a few meters and were soon looking at the portage trail that Holmes and his Wabakimi Project crew had cut in 2014.  It looked better than the first one, whose flagging tape might lure people into it!  We gave the entrance a bit of a trim and put some orange string on at the start of the trail, and got to work. The trail had a Lord of the Rings vibe to it, thanks to the moss!

a section of the first portage trail from Moule to Zigzag

Moule to Zigzag portage – another view

the canoe at the start of the portage – the last thing to go

We got the 250-m portage #4 done in a half-hour and then stopped on the beach at the bottom end of the portage for lunch.  We also decided that as soon as we were on Zigzag Lake, we would email our outfitter (Don Elliot at Mattice Lake Outfitters) and see if he could arrange a pick-up for later this very afternoon.

Then, after spending some time checking out the rapids around the corner from us, we paddled over to the small island before moving on to the last of the portages of the trip. The island would make an okay campsite but not much more.  Setting up camp where we just had lunch or in a spot closer to the falls would be a better option.

the first set of rapids coming into Zigzag from Stork

the rapids coming into Zigzag from Stork Lake

Apparently, the fishing in the rapids pictured above is very good! In his LJR trip report, Holmes writes this –

The fishing below the upper set of rapids was phenomenal. I expect the large drop off prevents the walleye from getting upstream. We caught and released several over 23 inches and kept smaller ones for our dinner. Out of fish breading already, so we used crushed crackers!

From the island, we paddled over to the start of our last portage.  The trail was in the best shape of any we had done in the past two weeks!  It is likely that the Wilderness North outpost further down on Zigzag Lake maintains it for the use of its clients.

This sign at the bottom end of the trail lets people know they are in the right place!

the Portage sign at the start of the trail going up from Zig Zag to Moule Lake

We sat there at the top of Zigzag Lake. It was 2 p.m., and I took a couple of minutes to send off that email to  Don Elliot.

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inReach Explorer+

This is where the Garmin inReach comes in very handy. The inReach includes

  • an SOS function,
  • a weather forecast app, and
  • the ability to send a GPS coordinate location every ten minutes to a website that the folks back home can access and whose track they can follow along.
  • It also includes two-way email communication.

Off went the email to Mattice Lake Outfitters. Within ten minutes, as we sat there at the top of Zigzag, we got a response!  “The plane will be there around 3.”   I answered back – “Fantastic! We’ll be paddling down the east side  towards the WN outpost.”

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We started paddling down Zigzag, sticking to the east side to cut down the wind now coming from the SE. We were getting close to the outpost when we heard the drone of a plane. However, the bright orange Wilderness North colour and the fact that it was a De Havilland Otter, and not a Beaver, confused us. We initially thought it was headed to the WN outpost.

But no – we were the reason it landed.   Now we were concerned!  The reason? –  An Otter shuttle costs about twice as much as one in the smaller Beaver. By 3:30, the canoe was strapped to one of the pontoons, our gear was inside, and we were seated in the much roomier Otter. This would be our first ride in the plane dubbed “King Beaver” during its design stage!

De Havilland Beaver instrument panel

De Havilland Otter instrument  panel

The pilot was Cam, the same guy who had airlifted us out of our Ogoki headwaters misadventure and dropped us off at the west end of Whitewater Lake nine days before.  As for the cost – we were charged the Beaver rate (i.e. $800.)!

The seventy kilometers from Zigzag Lake back to Mattice Lake took about twenty-five minutes. Waiting there for us was our vehicle – and the bill for our De Havilland air shuttles:

  • the Beaver ride to Endogoki Lake
  • the De Havilland Beaver shuttle to the west end of Whitewater Lake from some nameless lake just a few kilometers east of Endogoki.
  • the Otter flight from Zigzag Lake to Mattice Lake.

As we get older and the number of future possible canoe trips gets closer to zero, it is becoming easier to rationalize a bush plane ride or two or, in this case, three!

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The LJR From Zigzag To the Jackfish Road

While we ended our trip on Zigzag Lake, another option is to stay with the river down to where the Jackfish Road crosses the river. You can be picked up there by a pre-arranged shuttle vehicle from Armstrong. It is approximately a 70-kilometer ride.

The following map locates the five sets of rapids in the 6.5-kilometer stretch from the bottom of Zigzag to the bridge:

See this Friends of Wabakimi/John Holmes’ Little Jackfish trip report for details on each of the sets of rapids and the portages noted below. A Wabakimi Project crew went down the river in 2014, clearing or creating portages and recording locations, as well as campsites and other useful information.

The archived Natural Resources Canada topo Little Jackfish River 052 I 08 (colour 1976) does not have the logging road from Armstrong indicated.  Neither does the Garmin Topo Canada 4.0 map installed on our Etrex 20 and Oregon 450.  Check out the NRC up-to-date Toporama website (here) for more current mapping and print what you need. You’ll also find that the Toporama map site provides access to many additional layers of useful information.

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Satellite Images of the Rapids:

Note: This section would benefit from some detail from someone who has actually gone down recently!  If you have, let me know what needs to be added. Any portage info you see has been taken from Canoe Atlas of the Little North (p.44), the Paddle Planner Wabakimi map, Vol. 5 (2017 ed.) of the Friends of Wabakimi Canoe Routes, or the Friends of Wabakimi trip report.

There are five probable portages before you get from Zigzag to the road. The following overview shows the first 4; there is one more just before you get to the bridge.  All portages are on river left.

Little Jackfish River rapids from Zigzag to the Jackfish Road. – just missing #10

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#6- The First Set of Rapids Out of Zigzag Lake:  The 530-meter portage is on river left.

#6 – the rapids coming out of Zigzag Lake

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#7 – The Second Set of Rapids Below Zigzag Lake – One 630-meter carry on river left gets you around these two sets of rapids.

#7 – 2nd set of rapids below Zigzag

#8 –  Third Set of Rapids Below Zigzag Lake

#8 –  3rd set of rapids below Zigzag

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#9 – The 4th Set of Rapids Below Zigzag: Again, the portage is on river left and is 400 meters long with a campsite at the top end.

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#10 – The Portage Up To The Jackfish Road. The Holmes’ trip report notes this about the river below  #9 Rapids/Portage:

The character of the river is quite different in this section, with an earthen bank instead of the uniform boulders that make up the shoreline further upstream. The portage [up to the road] is on river left (east side) and starts before the bridge comes into view. It is 253m to the road.

Portage #10 on river left takes the paddler up to the Jackfish Road and the bridge for a possible shuttle connection some 65 kilometers back to Armstrong Station. Another option is to continue downriver. In that case, after crossing the bridge, the portage continues on River right. It is apparently another 600 meters from where you first reach the road.

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The Little Jackfish Below The Bridge:

If you choose to go down the final 15 kilometers of the river right to Lake Nipigon,  you could

  • end there with a floatplane extraction in Ombabika Bay,
  • carry up to Ferland and catch the train or a vehicle shuttle to Armstrong  or
  • continue your adventure on Lake Nipigon.

Rapids #11 – P 700m RR

Rapids #11 – the first set of rapids below the Jackfish bridge

Of the six sets of rapids to deal with, the most challenging ones are the first two below the bridge (#11 and #12 in my numbering scheme).  This “White Mile” section of the river is where the proposed hydroelectric project was to be built.  These two sets of rapids are the longest of those remaining – and so are their portages. See the embedded YouTube video at the start of this post for a look at this section of the river early in the season.

[I have no idea what shape these portages are in – or if they even still exist. My red line arches do not indicate their exact locations! If you have been down this stretch, any detail you can provide would be appreciated – and included in this write-up for the use of future canoe trippers.]

rapids #11 and #12 – the last two major sets of rapids

Volume 5 of the Wabakimi Project map set also has a page on the rapids/portages from Zigzag Lake down to Ombabika Bay. It has Portage #11 as 700 meters and #12 as 500. The figures are identical to those in Canoe Atlas of The Little North, their likely source for the information.

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Rapids #12 – P 500m RR

Rapids #12

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The Proposed Little Jackfish Generating Station

See here for a brief project description.

The stretch of river near the bridge is where Ontario Power Generation plans/planned to build a 75 MW hydroelectric station.  A pdf file of the detailed OPG analysis of the proposed development can be accessed here. It was released in 2011 – over a decade ago. Or – click on the cover page image to access the document –

The location of the Powerhouse on the map above corresponds to the end of the portage trail around Rapids #12. The dam and dyke would flood some land north of the current Jackfish Road, as well as a section of the road itself. The map below shows the extent of the head pond which would be created.

Also included in the project are upgrades to the South Summit Dam as well as an access road to connect it with the lower site.

  • Is the project dead?
  • Has it been temporarily shelved?
  • Does it need more study of the project’s environmental impact?
  • Does it require more consultation with nearby First Nations representatives?

According to the above  study of the project

“There are six First Nations situated around Lake Nipigon that consider the Lake and its surrounding lands their traditional territory. All six First Nations are Ojibway, located within the Robinson-Superior Treaty area. These First Nations include:

  • Animbiigoo Zaagi’igan Anishinaabek (AZA), or Lake Nipigon Ojibway;
  • Bingwi Neyaashi Anishinaabek (BNA) or Sand Point;
  • Biinjitiwaabik Zaaging Anishinaabek (BZA) or Rocky Bay;
  • Kiashke Zaaging Anishinaabek (KZA) or Gull Bay;
  • Red Rock Indian Band (RRIB); and
  •  Whitesand (WSFN).”

The Ontario Rivers Alliance webpage on the Little Jackfish River has this explanation:

The province’s Long Term Energy Plan released in December 2013 has indicated that the energy that would be generated by the Little Jackfish River Hydroelectric Project is not needed in the near-term. Therefore, all Project activities are being put on hold.

This video (uploaded in February 2015)  gives you some idea of what the development might look like if it proceeded. It seems to be OPG-approved or sponsored.

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The Rapids Below the Proposed Hydro Power Station:

Once at the bottom of portage #12,  things become much more manageable. The final Rapids/Portages are indicated below.

The satellite images provided by the Ontario Government’s Make a Topographic Map website are useful in getting a close-up sense of the river. [To access the sat view, go into the “I want to… window and choose Change visible map layers. Uncheck topographic and check imagery.]

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Rapids #13 – P50m either RR or RL

Rapids #13 Little Jackfish River

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Rapids #14 – P50m RR

Rapids #14 – Little Jackfish River

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Rapids #15 – P50m RR …or line

Some confusion here – Canoe Atlas indicates a much longer 200m P!

Rapids #15 – portage, line or run

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Rapids #16 – P200m RL 

Rapids #16 – the CN tracks

From the CN tracks down to Ombabika Bay is another 4 kilometers and a possible floatplane extraction back to one of the outfitters located on Mattice Lake.

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The LJR Rapids/Portages From Top To Bottom

[map image from Canoe Atlas of the Little North]

Canoe Atlas of the Little North (Jonathan Berger and Thomas Terry) is the ultimate tripper’s wintertime dream book. Published in 2007 by Erin, Ontario-based Boston Mills Press, the book is essentially a set of 48 13″x11″ maps (1:400,000 scale) and very informative accompanying text. Click on the title above or the book cover below to access the Amazon website.

The oversized-format book covers a good chunk of the Canadian Shield from Hudson Bay To Lake Winnipeg.  And since it only comes in hard copy, if it is found anywhere, it will be on an avid canoe tripper’s version of a coffee table! At $95. it isn’t cheap, but you’ll see why it costs what it costs when you get your copy.

Pp. 44-45, Armstrong 52I,  deal with the top of lake Nipigon and the Wabakimi area to the west. One caveat – the authors themselves point out that the book is meant as a reference book to be turned to at the beginning of the route planning process but that “the Atlas maps are not suitable for navigation.”  From our experience at the very beginning of this canoe trip (see below!), I can attest that some of the portages indicated on the maps no longer exist.

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The Historical Portage From Ombabika Bay To North Bay

Thinking we might paddle over to the northwest corner of Lake Nipigon’s Windigo Bay, during our planning last winter, the location of Portage Island – and its very name-  had us looking for the historical portage into North Bay across the narrowest point of the peninsula. No portage is indicated in the Canoe Atlas book, but this Geological Survey of Canada Map from 1912 does!

Zoom in on the map below to see the faint dotted line indicating the portage.

The portage from Ombabika Bay To North Bay of Lake Nipigon – see here for the full map.

With a spare day at the end of our Ogoki route, we considered an exploratory hike up to the small pond and then down the stream to the North Bay side. There is a 40-meter elevation gain from Ombabika Bay to the top!

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the archaeologist  K.C.A. Dawson of Lakehead University located the sites of a number of fur trading posts on the shores of Lake Nipigon.  In his Supplementary Report on Lake Nipigon Fur Trading Posts (p. 13), he notes that his team examined the portage between North Bay and Ombabika Bay but found no artifacts related to their focus.

If you are ever in the neighbourhood and keen on stretching your legs on a short hike, let us know what you found! I’ll insert the info right here!

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The Ogoki From Top To Bottom: Final Trip Thoughts

My goal to do the Ogoki from “top to bottom” needed more time – maybe five or six days more – than the fourteen days we had to “git ‘er dun.”  My brother’s initial skepticism – “Are you sure we have enough time? We’d need to do about 25 km every day!” – was the correct assessment of my ambitious schedule.

Given the three and a half days we spent on the first fifteen kilometers, another three days would have been enough to paddle and bushwhack the rest of the way to Wabakimi Lake. In my planning, I had allocated three days for the entire stretch from Endogoki Lake to Wabakimi Lake!

Any historical portage trails that were used 150 years ago by the Hudson Bay Company to transfer furs from Nipigon House to Osnaburgh House have long ago disappeared.  While maps – the Canoe Atlas of the Little North, the Wabakimi Project map set, and the online paddler planner website – show portage trails from Savant Lake into the Ogoki River system and then others leading into Tew Lake, the fact is that the Ogoki headwater portages no longer exist.

Wabakimi Project map – portages from Savant Lake To Tew Lake Via Ogoki River

It does seem a shame that the headwaters of the river that defines Wabakimi is not a part of the Park or do-able by recreational paddlers. The reasons for this are varied:

  • the fact that it flows through crown Land just outside the Park boundaries being harvested by logging companies
  •  the disappearance of the necessary portages and
  • the lack of convenient access points that do not involve an expensive bush plane insertion.

At the other end of the trip, we needed a couple extra days to stretch from Zigzag Lake down to Ombabika Bay. So – no top and no bottom – just 200 kilometers of pretty amazing in-between!

On our way home, we considered the possibility of returning next summer. With more time and a better understanding of the situation,  we would complete the headwaters stretch from Endogoki to just before Wabakimi Lake. We’ll see if that seed of a trip grows any over the winter – or if it is abandoned for

  • a return to the French River delta or
  • Temagami’s Lady Evelyn River’s North Branch and Channel or
  • a trip down Savant Lake and River into the Albany.

The map below shows our incomplete headwaters section in red just east of Savant Lake. It also shows the other bits of the Ogoki  – red for what we paddled for the first time this August and black for sections done before. The other tracks – in blue – are other Wabakimi-area rivers and lakes we’ve paddled on previous canoe trips.

We were thrilled to have paddled bits of the Ogoki that we had not done before, and our time on the eastern reaches of Wabakimi Park and the Ogoki Reservoir gave us a deeper appreciation of the river and what has been done to it with the construction of the Waboose Dam.

______________________________

An Overview: Wabakimi Water We’ve Paddled

Wabakimi Rivers we’ve paddled – red is this summer’s Ogoki trip

Now our post on Wabakimi’s Top Six – our attempt a few years ago to list our favourite Wabakimi spots – needs updating or enlarging so that it would include

  • Eight Flume Falls and
  • the gorge-like stretch of the Whiteclay before you get to the Two Mile Bay portages!

A Paddler’s List Of Wabakimi’s Top Six

We will definitely be back for some more of what Wabakimi has to offer!

______________________________

Related Posts

The Ogoki River From Top To Bottom

Bushwhacking The Ogoki Headwaters: Endogoki Lake Days 1 and 2

Bushwhacking The Ogoki Headwaters: Days 3, 4, and 5

A Two-Day Paddle Across the Ogoki’s Whitewater Lake

Down The Ogoki – From Above Ogoki Falls To Whiteclay Lake’s NE Arm

Down The Ogoki – From Whiteclay Lake (NE Arm) To The Ogoki Reservoir (Two Mile Bay)

Canoeing The Ogoki Reservoir: From Eight Flume Falls to “Moose Crossing”

Canoeing The Ogoki Reservoir – From “Moose Crossing” To The Waboose Dam

Paddling The Ogoki Reservoir From Waboose Dam To South Summit Dam

Paddling Down The Little Jackfish River From The Summit Dam To Zigzag Lake

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2 Responses to Paddling Down The Little Jackfish River To Lake Nipigon

  1. Ken Babinchak says:

    On our 2014 trip with The Wabakimi Project we were scheduled to paddle up the Ogoki River from Mahamo Lake/French Lake to the midpoint of the reservoir…unfortunately it was early July and the heavy winter snowmelt was still being drawn off at the Waboose Dam. The Ogoki was about 8 feet over flood and we barely made it 16 km till a small section of rapids kept us on an island campsite a few kms. below the falls. We had to paddle back to Mahamo Lake for our extraction, the plane couldn’t land on the river. While flying over the Waboose Dam in the Otter we saw the water churning for at least a km. downstream, Class6+. Phil Cotton contacted Ontario Hydro re: the Little Jackfish trip in two weeks. They offered to turn the water off for the John Holmes trip down the Little Jackfish and then asked we contact them when it was done. It’s a good idea to contact them before any trip early in the season on the Ogoki or Little Jackfish Rivers.

    • true_north says:

      Ken, 2014 was obviously quite the year for water! This August there was almost no water going down past the Waboose Diversion Dam and water levels were low even on the Reservoir. We did walk the Waboose portage trail down to the bottom before turning around and continuing on to the South Summit Dam. The control dam was completely open and we saw later (i.e. after we did the OPG portage) that we could have paddled right through!

      Re: contacting OPG. Definitely a good idea. We did and the response from the T Bay office told us that there would be no dramatic increases in outflow in late August. The control dam is unmanned and unsupervised; a crew is flown in when the gates have to be raised or lowered.

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