Canoeing the Harrison

The Harrison River runs from Harrison Lake to Harrison Bay and ultimately the Fraser River.  

Yesterday morning we set out from the shore of Harrison Lake at 7:30 am.  The weather was calm but cloudy so unfortunately the scenery  wasn't as spectacular as it could have been.

the entrance to the river is just around that point.

Never having been down the river before, I was surprised by how wide it was.  Notice the burned trees on the left side hill - that is where there was a wild fire, started by fireworks, earlier this summer.  You can't see them in the photo but there are hydro transmission wires running right over head so no wonder the concern when the fire was burning.

there are some interesting rock formations along the route (also way more cabins and even elaborate homes than I ever would have expected!)

this Great Blue Heron was one of the few birds we saw.  In fact the lack of life was rather disturbing considering the Sockeye Salmon are supposed to be running.  We saw a couple of Osprey and a Bald Eagle, that was pretty much it.

off in the distance there is the start of what we hope will be the Wildlife Management area.

stopped at this point for a snack break....you can see the river is still really wide.

There is a foot path up this very steep rock - not for me!  At this point you can turn and paddle up through the grasslands to Morris Lake....a side trip we didn't do.  I think this is also the northern boundary of the IBA.

Now the river changes dramatically and becomes very swift.  

To my mind this is the most scenic part of the trip but unfortunately the river is flowing so fast that taking pictures is virtually impossible.  

Took this looking back as we were leaving the rapids and headed across the estuary towards home.

What we didn't expect to see was this.  A shelter of some sort with some comfy chairs inside and attached to this shelter, extending out and right across to the structure that holds Hancock's cameras in season, were fishing nets.  The weird thing is that the water is very shallow here, in fact we ran aground a few times....there were nets all along the river but we've never seen them out here before, so not sure what that was all about.