Northern Ontario's Best Kept Secret - The Little White River - Whitewater Canoeing Paradise

Hey campers. Hi. We are on the Little White River. This is a trip a few years in the making actually. Sherry and I were driving down this highway and we noticed this beautiful river with lots of little rapids and stuff that kind of follows along the highway and we said to each other we have to come back, we have to come back and do the Little White River in a canoe. So here we are. There's going to be lots of rapids, not a lot of traffic and some fishing and just some beautiful views. So come along. So we've been going for about two hours and we've reached Bowland Creek which is a gorgeous little inflow that comes into Little White here and it's about a 15 kilometer paddle up Bowland Creek to the falls but we're not going to do that today because we only have the weekend. How are you liking the trip so far Sher? It's nice. It's actually nice to be out. It's a little breezy so it's keeping the bugs off. The smells are amazing in here. The flowers are blooming on the bushes so yeah lovely. We just ran the first set pretty simple class one rapids. It's still a little bit bony. There's a lot of sort of bigger rocks and then a hundred meters after that we've got another little set here too The fun begins friends. Let's see if we go left of this rock. Keep your hips loose. Nice pillow rock. Nice. Nice baby. Catch. Yeah I know there's two of them. Go between them. Not as awesome. Left babe. No why don't we go left here. Yeah. Nice. Good job babe. Go right of this rock and then left. Yeah. Draw. Draw. Draw. Good. This is just a wave train. We should be good here. Nice. Awesome. Okay this is a ledge so paddle it. Play hard. Awesome babe. All right so we just finished, what would you say that was Sher? About a kilometer of basically straight rapids which was super fun. There was quite a bit of a drop in the river at that time. A lot of boulders. There's lots of water but it's still kind of bump and grindy. Definitely don't do this without a white water boat. So we're coming up to the highway. This river or the highway crosses this river a couple of times and this would be the second time we're under a bridge for this and there's a nice set of rapids under this bridge as I recall when we drove over it this morning so you can hear them from here so non-stop action. This is why you have dry packs even if you have a canoe pack that isn't a dry sack put dry sacks in it because there's a update. We ran some really fun rapids and just about swamped the boat on the last one which soaked us both. Soaked our everything and so we said okay well we've done enough today so let's try to find a camp and then we basically came around a corner to this beautiful island. We'll show you around. It is absolutely gorgeous a great fishing spot too far as I can tell and when we pulled up we actually noticed that we sure found a turtle and we're not sure if it's laying eggs or what. It was on a rocky spot so it might have been just on its way to a sandy spot so that's where I think they lay their eggs is in sand but we decided to come all the way up to the upstream end of the island in order to camp out for the night just to keep our distance from our neighbor the turtle and hopefully we don't disturb them. You might recall me mentioning to make sure when you're on whitewater that you pack all of your things that can't get wet into dry sacks. I didn't do that. So one of the sleeping bags wasn't in a dry sack and it got a little bit wet. So Cher is still napping. We had a little nap there and Cher decided she wanted to continue which there's no judgment there. We are on vacation friends. I'm probably going to do some fishing see if we can't catch some supplementary protein or even just to see the beautiful fish here. It is an absolutely beautiful evening as you can see behind me. The sun as I said was below our horizon because our horizon is high but it's still around and it's just bringing such beauty to our surroundings. An already beautiful campsite. The black flies are not doing that though. They are making it less beautiful. What you got going on Cher? So Cher what are you cooking? Vegetables in the back country. Fresh vegetables on an overnight trip. It's so nice to have. What are you going to put in that stir-fry with that Cher? Sausage. Fresh Pino's sausage right out of the store. Cafe mocha you made Cher? Yeah. Oh man it's an embarrassment of riches here. It's like a party. I was able to go across the island like legit across the island to the shore right at the highway and find a couple of not so punky dead maples that I can buck up now and then we can have some coals and we can keep it dry for after the morning. Well we can have a fire into the evening until we don't want to. Until we don't wanna. Yippee! Life is good. Life is good. Yummy bon appetit baby. Thank you for making this. Cheers. It's so nice to have fresh food in the camping in the back country. Hydrated food back here. This is such a beautiful little river. You don't really hear about it much. It's a small river. It's barely a river actually. It's like a stream but we're in relatively high water conditions so we're able to go through those rapids which are pretty rocky bouldery. Big big rocks. Yeah and luckily pretty round so we were able to just kind of hip flex our way over them. A couple of class twos there for sure were challenging but it's great because it makes you think on your feet and just sort of really be prepared. Yeah yeah it was fun. It's fun getting soaking wet. This isn't a wilderness river like a wild you know remote wilderness river. The highway follows it. It's not a highway. I think there's been less than 10 cars all day including our drive up and our paddle down. I think we've gone about 20 kilometers or so down the river and we have another 45-ish left to our takeout. But yeah we've seen maybe 10 cars on this. It's like a gravel highway so yeah it's not remote. The highway is right there but it is quiet peaceful. Relatively close for us to get to it so that we could do a weekend trip. So it rained all night last night and uh it was nice for for sleeping. It's always a nice little pitter-patter of rain. It didn't ever rain too hard. No thunder and lightning and thankfully not a lot of wind but as you will see somehow we were tired. I don't know it was dark. I might have had a mini stroke. Somehow one of my boots didn't stay inside our vestibule so it just sat open side up in the rain all night last night. So that's how I started my day. First thing I did put on a soaking wet boot so I have a soaker all day today. I think you were running from the bugs. Yeah I think yes good one mosquitoes had something to do with my haste. I don't know if we mentioned but when we got to camp yesterday to set up and dry out some gear and it started to rain so we headed into the tent to read a bit and I had a nap which lovely who does that who has a nap so last night when it was time to actually go to sleep I was wide awake wide awake but if we can get on the water by nine we can still be we just have about 45 kilometers worth of paddling today we're not sure how many portages we need to do but it stays light out until 9 p.m so there's that but we don't want to be on the water that long because it's supposed to rain again but anyway I'm rambling we're good we also had a beaver come by last night and let us know we weren't welcome yeah it's so fun when they come by they'll slap their tail yeah it's good that's not that we're upsetting them or anything but it's nice to know that they're out here yeah very very healthy ecosystem out here okay gang we are getting ready to shove off it's just around nine o'clock we dispersed the fire pit because it's not an established campsite as far as we can see so we don't want to create one unnecessarily so there try to leave no trace as little as you can we're going to start the day with a some sets of rapids and then a waterfall how's that sound Cher hopefully we stay dry skidders are pretty bad now staying left here isn't it yeah oh baby baby jesus don't fill up the boat full of water should be getting close-ish to those falls might be right here actually wait yeah I feel like these are the falls so I'm thinking on the left somewhere things are right up here maybe on the left yeah I see it okay you gotta get out I'm gonna try against the shore here babe all right so that was interesting to say the least the first drop of the falls is just like a meter or so so we got pretty close to it we were safe but the takeout didn't go as planned and it turns out it looks like the takeout was way up river actually so we had to bushwhack a bit to find a trail so I think I'm on that trail now heading down to see the other side to make sure that it leads to a safe and easy put in but these falls are beautiful it's like two or three tiers over the course of a couple hundred meters and I'm interested to see what it looks like down at the the main sort of drop and which is where I'm headed now beautiful falls trail is not too too bad leading down it's a bit slippery because it goes on sort of angled granite so we're just having to be super careful but uh yeah this is the trail Cher's just back at the other end bushwhacking a trail from where we took out against the rocks through to where this trail is it's only a handful of meters so it shouldn't be that big of a deal but we'll see yeah really slippery rocks in here double carrying this guy for sure so we just portaged around that waterfall we almost ended up going down it but I went back and marked the portage and we're on our way pretty intense so the river's taking on a decidedly different character it's a little more meandering higher banks sandy banks lots of vegetation still but the water is still moving really really well so the paddling has been really easy not as scrappy as yesterday and this is like the most leisurely paddle you could ask for at every turn for a while there there's another beautiful huge cliff reminded me actually of the agawam river canyon this is a gorgeous river to paddle perfect little beaver dam so they could build their perfect beaver dot lodge in there very sweet it's a wood duck hi friends so we've stopped for a lunch break on this beautiful rock how's the paddle been so far sherry it's been good it's been nice lots of birds it's a great day every day on the river is a great we hit the river and it started back to its quick decline or not decline descent toward the mississaugas and we've been running swifts ever since and there's very few flat sections now we've just come around the corner to this huge probably 200 and some odd feet high sheer cliffs and it's just absolutely amazing and the river continues to run beautifully quickly down man i just cannot believe this or we cannot believe this river is not super high on everyone's list to paddle it's insane like these cliffs take up your entire field of view from here to here it's crazy and the river goes right up underneath them i can't believe this is not i'm actually not going to tell anybody never mind forget you saw this this is majestic okay friends we did it we did it such a hidden gem it has literally everything you could want from a small river in northern ontario it's got beautiful rapids huge towering cliffs it's got slow meandering sections where you can relax and just take in the sounds and it's just wall-to-wall gorgeous and filled with wildlife so we're so happy to have done that and thanks so much for coming along for the ride this is how we camp guys