Riviere du Lievre (17-23 May 2003)

This was a week long Spring whitewater trip on the Riviere du Lievre in Quebec with Ben Hoffman (2 canoes paddled solo). All photos on this page are by Ben but size and resolution have been reduced because of memory storage limitations.

The Riviere Lievre is a good trip for whitewater paddlers with some long challenging and continuous rapids but channels cleared of large obstructions from early logging operations.

Just days before departure the water levels matched the earlier spring runoff peaks and some rapids, or sections of rapids, had to be lined and/or portaged:

The view looking upstream and sidestream puts the sequence above in better perspective:

Scouting and lining the long rapid above a Class IV gorge:

We both went for swims but, aside from pride, the only damage was to Ben's sprayskirt. I had an open canoe and took on water often with the high water levels and numerous waves.

There are numerous start and finish points on the river because the area has hundreds of miles of logging roads and is still logged extensively. But its not the best wilderness experience. Clearcuts are sometimes visible from the river and the drive in passes through many logging operations. We didn't encounter much wildlife but we saw numerous hunting and fishing camps.

Even so there were some nice sections of river and, while many of the campsites were former logging camps or atop abandoned logging roads, we did see the odd nice campsite.

I usually eat dehydrated meals but on this trip I was treated to Ben's excellent cookery, including fresh stir fry and even hot apple pie for desert!

We started our trip from Lake Nemiscachinque but there was a bit of confusion during the drive in because neither of us realised that the locals use a different variation of the name. But with so many logging roads crisscrossing the area we were able to find another way in without doubling back: