2004-06-15 – Circumnavigating Pike Island

Tim McGuire and I met at 5:30AM at his house near Portland and Highway 62 to try our luck at fishing and also test out my theory on upriver paddling in high water.  That theory is that it’s just as easy to paddle upstream in high water as it is to paddle downstream.  Not faster because you can take advantage of the current speed on the way downstream, but just as easy to paddle.  The gate at Hidden Falls was still locked when we got there just before 6:00AM so we had to park on the street and portage down to the Mississippi River just above the boat launch at Hidden Falls.  Tim McGuire is an expert swimmer who had set records in college, but a relative novice at canoeing.  If we could go downstream and come back up on the Mississippi River in water this high without paddling hard, I would be convinced that my theory was right. 

The river was higher than I had ever seen it here, the water was all the way up to the “river full” high water marks on each side of the banks and the main channel surface was covered with 10 foot diameter boils.  We headed downstream and I was surprised that the current on the surface was slower than it had been when the water was much lower.  We stopped at the first backwater channel and tried casting some artificial lures with no success.  Drifting a bit further down, we passed a waterfall coming down off a cliff in the shade.  No luck fishing there either though.  We decided to spend more time canoeing and less time fishing.

We came to the channel that led to the muddy brown Minnesota River and I was surprised again to find it flowing into the greenish Mississippi River. Normally, in lower water, it flowed from the Mississippi River into the Minnesota River.  Now we were paddling upstream in the muddier water of the Minnesota River past the towering pylons of the Mendota Bridge.  Once we reached the Minnesota, we paddled downstream towards the city of St. Paul with Pike Island on our left.  We turned upstream into the Mississippi River along with a huge double barge loaded with high piles of gravel.  The barge’s huge propellers pushed upstream in the main channel against the fastest current.  Because we stayed in the back eddies next to shore, we were easily able to stay alongside it halfway back to the channel before it slowly pulled away from us.  Then we rode the huge rolling wakes.

Across from us was the Watergate Marina full of docked boats.  We also saw 8 blue herons, 4 white herons, a single baby wood duck and two concerned parents, black birds chasing a red-tailed hawk across the river, a few fish splashing, and a big grey spider rested on the concrete bridge pylon in the sun as we passed.  All the while, we never had to increase our paddling pace.  In fact, I asked Tim to try paddling easier than he had been to see if it made a difference in the speed of our progress upstream.  It didn’t.  We got back to the Hidden Falls boat landing just before 8:00AM and headed for McDonalds for a Sausage McGriddle.

Even though it doesn’t sound sensible, we proved that we could paddle upstream as easily as downstream in high water. A hundred years ago, everyone who paddled the rivers knew this, but it had now been forgotten and needs to be rediscovered.  The element of danger may have been increased because of more powerful currents and more tree sweepers along shore, but we exercised proper precautions to minimize the dangers.  We wore life jackets and were especially cautious upstream from obstacles like trees and bridge pylons to avoid tipping.  As Tim said, “Canoes aren’t tippy; people are.”   You can read Tim’s version of this adventure on his blog by searching for “Primate Brow Flash”.