Hi All. I just returned from a trip starting at Smye Lake and traveling down the Flindt River. I hadn’t done much research on the route or recent conditions but I thought I would share what I found. Bottom line is that there was a large fire in that area last year. That is probably old news to those planning trips in the area, but was unexpected to me.

I was able to travel downstream from Flindt Lake to the 2nd of the 2 consecutive portages on the Flindt R that are approximately 2.5 km west of Heed and Null Lakes. The first portage was not burned, thus the nice campsite there is still intact. The second portage was burned over. I attempted to cut my way through, but broke my small saw in the process. Having no way to proceed, I turned back upstream and spent the remainder of my time back towards the Flindt Lake area.

After returning home I took a look on google sat images and found they had updated them post fire. As I expected it looks like most if not all portages downstream of my turn around point were also burned over as well as most of the marked campsites. If going that way bring a big saw and extra blades.

The road from Savant Lake was in good condition with the exception of one washout. It was easy enough to get around in my Ford van, but if you’re not paying attention and hot it at full speed it could be catastrophic.

Reply with any questions. Good luck out there this year

Mark

Somehow I did not see this post until just now.

I’m sorry you had to turn back early but hope it was a great trip anyway. How did the tree break your saw, and what type of saw was it? Any chance we will be seeing any Dogbrain videos of this?

BTW, I just watched a Kevin Outdoors vid where he did the Flindt River at the end of June. Seemed a portage crew had been through about two weeks before.

I, too, have been watching Kevin's vids.
I went thru there is 2022 with fairly high water the whole way.

jcavenagh: "I, too, have been watching Kevin's vids.
I went thru there is 2022 with fairly high water the whole way.
"

My favorite part by far was "even portage crews make mistakes".

yup...i know how that goes...