3 Sisters Paddle Trip to Mahood Lake

 

My sisters and I went on a five-day trip on Mahood Lake in Wells Gray Provincial Park.  Unfortunately as we were driving to the park Dorothea's vehicle started acting up.  We couldn't keep going to the park because it's an hour and a half from the nearest town with no cell reception or telephones.  So we turned around and drove back to Williams Lake. Dorothea left her car at Canadian Tire for the week for diagnosis, we transferred her canoe to our truck and we drove back to the park. 

The next morning we set off while Leo remained at the park to camp for the week.

Putting in at the Mahood Lake campground

Along with Dorothea's canoe, we borrowed our friend Mark's fancy sea kayak with the idea that we would switch between the boats.

The lake was glassy smooth when we left and in 45 minutes we reached the point where Deception Creek empties into the lake.

Here we saw

Bear tracks!

From here the wind picked up and we paddled into the wind for the rest of the day.  By lunchtime there were quite a few white caps so we took a long break, went for a swim and waited for the wind to die down.

Sybille read her book in a shady spot.

We also found a beautiful green toad:

After an hour and a half the wind died down and we were on our way again.  We weren't really sure how far it was to the first of three semi developed wilderness campsites on the lake.  The parks map was not very detailed.  We stopped at a nice beach for a rest at 3 pm and were happy to discover we'd arrived at the campsite.

Nice beach

The campsites have an outhouse, a firepit and a bear cache provided by the Parks.  Locals have built a bench and a table. It was a very comfortable setup, and the site looked lightly used. We never used the firepit as there was a fire ban on in the Kamloops Region.

Dorothea uses the table

In the late afternoon, a boat cruised by and stopped for a chat.  Other than a few boats out fishing near the Provincial campground, they were the only people we saw all day.

Sunset enhanced by smoking blowing in from Kamloops area forest fires