With my dive season wrapping up for the year, I decided to revisit the AuSable River right around Halloween. I did paddle the full river a few years ago, plus some of the coast of Lake Huron up to Alpena, but this year I wanted to make it a quick trip. Because it was so late in the year, I was keeping an eye out for a window of decent weather. I saw a short three-day period that looked halfway decent, and decided it would be a fun challenge to do it with just two nights of camping.
Carlisle Canoe Livery was able to move my car for me, and even let me sleep in my car nearby. Being able to get my boat ready the night before was really helpful; they were great to work with. When I woke up before first light to get ready, it was only 28 degrees and I had trepidations. It was tough to even get out of the car! But I layered up and got on the water anyways. I unfortunately wasn’t able to wait for it to warm up; to finish the trip in three days I had to paddle about forty miles each day, so there was no time to sleep in.
When the sun started coming up it really was pretty, and I saw carved pumpkins in a few spots. A lot of the first day was going past cabins and houses, with some stretches of woods. The current in the first part of the river is pretty decent, so it helped quite a bit. Around ten or eleven in the morning, the ice on my boat started melting, which was an improvement.
I paddled until I was close to the first portage, a little over forty miles, then I found a great campsite. I wouldn’t have minded going further, but I wanted to finish for the day before sunset so I could set up camp before it got too cold. The campsite I picked had a great view of sunset on the lake. I had some delicious homemade dehydrated chicken and dumpling soup for dinner which was the perfect meal for a cold night, although it is not an attractive dish. It was a very cold night and stormed pretty hard in the early morning.
Day 1: 43.59 miles, about 11.5 hours
I was up early, but waited until sunrise to get on the water, a bit late because I had waited for the rain to mostly stop before packing up. The first two portages weren’t bad, and Alcona Pond was foggy and beautiful. The second portage involved quite a long walk, but my kayak stayed on my cart quite well with the bungee cord system I’ve improvised. There was a lot of mist on the river because of the warm weather the second day, and it was very pretty, sunny, calm, and peaceful.
I wanted to get close to the third portage before stopping, and ended up a few miles away. It felt like slow going, but evidently I was moving fairly fast, and I ended up having plenty of time to relax at camp.
Even though it was going to be a warm night, I wanted to have time to dry my tent, especially the rain fly, before it got really dark. I know, excuses, excuses! My campsite was up a steep hill, but it was a beautiful spot, a nice big site with a good view of the sunset. I set up a lot of drying lines and shockingly I was actually able to dry everything pretty well because it was a windy and dry evening. I don’t remember what I had for dinner, but I do remember I had some delicious hot chocolate afterwards, and it was warm enough that I was actually able to stay outside my tent and enjoy it.
Day 2: 41.35 miles, and a relaxed 10.5 hours.
I knew the third and final day would be more challenging, with four portages, 35 mph winds predicted, and very little current across the impoundments, so I woke up fairly early and got started before first light. It was slow going across Loud Dam Pond, because it was so dark and weedy, so it was a bit tricky to find the right route through it, but I was at the portage around sunrise. It was a nice easy portage; I didn’t even have to unload my boat.
I was feeling pretty optimistic when I finally reached the second portage. This one was not as fun! I struggled out of my boat onto the steps and was unloading it to bring it down the big hill past the dam when I noticed that my Inreach Mini was missing! I looked around for it and realized that it had fallen off my tow belt where I had it attached when I was leaning on the steps. The water was clear, and I could see it at the bottom of the lake… no problem, recovering stuff out of the water is my specialty. The water was cold, but I had a light wetsuit on and the air wasn’t so bad that I thought I couldn’t warm up afterwards. Fortunately it was only about 7' deep, and I grabbed it on the first try, but then I had a bit of a cold swim to climb out of the water, and then had to unload the boat and send it on its way down the slope to the river.
After that portage and time-consuming equipment rescue, there was only a small stretch with current before it was back to being an open pond. The wind picked up and was hellacious, the wave size is limited but it was definitely impeding progress! Regretfully, the wind was mostly at my side during the large impoundment crossings. I was tempted to take my headphones off because it was so splashy with the waves, but the audiobook was keeping my morale up so I could not.
By the time I managed to get to the final dam, I was pretty exhausted from dealing with the wind. My body was mostly doing okay, but my knees were getting stiff, so I had to get out of the boat more often than I wanted to for stretching. My boat is pretty small on me, and it doesn’t allow much leg movement. That’s normally fine, but it was a bit constricting for such long days.
The final dam was also a challenge. I misunderstood the location of the access, and got out at the wrong spot. Because of that, I ended up having to walk the boat pretty far to get to the other side. There was some heavy equipment blocking the normal portage area, so it wasn’t really accessible anyways. And then there was a dam release, so I had to get past that! All with the wind howling. It was a relief to be done with the portages, but after a little ways the current slowed dramatically, and it was slow going to Oscoda. When I finally saw my car at the takeout I had a moment of pure relief.
Third day: 35.55 miles, 11 hours (that felt more like 15!)
As for wildlife, I saw a few bald eagles, lots of ducks, including a ton of common mergansers and a pair of wood ducks, a partridge at the riverbank, herons, muskrats, and a couple of river otters. I only saw one turtle, enjoying the sun on my last day. On the first day, I was trying to get a video of an eagle when an otter came up, saw me, and splashed back down:
All in all, it was a great trip, even with the challenging final day. That day wasn’t unexpected, and I was happy at least two of the days were decently warm and that it only rained at night. High wind gusts for only one out of three days and well over freezing on two out of three isn’t bad for November! It was strenuous to do that mileage for three days in a row, and very satisfying. I wouldn’t be surprised if I want to do it a third time eventually.
Total trip: 120.49 miles, 33 hours over three days
Here are more photos of the trip, some with captions. If you'd like to learn about kayaking safely, check out my sea kayak safety classes.
~Lisa
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