New Trip Report posted by marsonite

Trip Name: Bloodvein Gammon Loop.

Entry Point: Other

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Well done Marsonite! Sounds like a great trip. Pretty amazing you went to such a wild place then got pinched for a campsite on the last night. Maybe more moose hunters? I’ve just made a note to add spare screws and bolts to my SR repair kit!

Thanks. I don't think there were moose hunters. The rvs looked like they stay there all year. No one was home in almost all of them.

This was the most extensive repair kit I've taken. The bolts pulled through the wood so that instead of holes I had slots. I tried reinstalling the bolts several times without luck. I wound up looping some wire around the thwart so the gunnel couldn't pull away from the thwart.

Great trip report marsonite! I paddled the Bloodvein 5 years ago and am considering a return next year. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I was a little reluctant after the massive fires, but it sounds like you can still find a little shade. Did you happen to see if the island campsite at X-rock Rapids (#26 in Hap's book) survived the fire? How about the one at Round the Bend Rapids (#30)?

ArrowheadPaddler: "Great trip report marsonite! I paddled the Bloodvein 5 years ago and am considering a return next year. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I was a little reluctant after the massive fires, but it sounds like you can still find a little shade. Did you happen to see if the island campsite at X-rock Rapids (#26 in Hap's book) survived the fire? How about the one at Round the Bend Rapids (#30)?"

Thanks. Yes we stayed at the island site at x Rock rapids. The island was spared so it was still a nice spot. Once to "round the bend" you are out of the burn so that's intact to.

If you go to Caltopo and click "Global Imagery" under map types, you can see the burn, but you have to be zoomed out a bit.

The burn on the Bloodvein didn't seem so bad in that it amounted to about a day with a respite at camp. We got tired of it when we went up the Gammon.

The campsites around Goose Rapids were pretty much unusable. We did camp there but were just too tired to take the portage.

It looks like y'all were about 3 days behind us going down the Bloodvein. We left Artery on the 3rd after coming from Wallace and went down to the bridge.

marsonite: "

ArrowheadPaddler: "Great trip report marsonite! I paddled the Bloodvein 5 years ago and am considering a return next year. Thanks for sharing your experiences. I was a little reluctant after the massive fires, but it sounds like you can still find a little shade. Did you happen to see if the island campsite at X-rock Rapids (#26 in Hap's book) survived the fire? How about the one at Round the Bend Rapids (#30)?"

Thanks. Yes we stayed at the island site at x Rock rapids. The island was spared so it was still a nice spot. Once to "round the bend" you are out of the burn so that's intact to. "

Thanks for the reply. Good to hear some nice campsites survived in the burn.

trsquirrel: "It looks like y'all were about 3 days behind us going down the Bloodvein. We left Artery on the 3rd after coming from Wallace and went down to the bridge."

Cool! So you paddled to Artery? What route did you take?

We put in on Wallace Lake, through the Obukowin portages then through Ford/Craven into Artery. We were on a budget so we avoided the float plane and used a shuttle out of Manigotagin to get to Wallace and then picked up at the bridge. The portages were rough but it was all worth it when we got going down the river.

How were the Craven-Ford-Artery portages? Looks like they got hit by the fire?

ArrowheadPaddler: "How were the Craven-Ford-Artery portages? Looks like they got hit by the fire?"

They were cleaned up by parks staff in 2024 so they are about as good as they're going to get. I heard they were pretty nasty before the clean up though, I know someone who went through beforehand and he struggled quite a bit on the south one and spent a lot of time on the north one too.

trsquirrel: "We put in on Wallace Lake, through the Obukowin portages then through Ford/Craven into Artery. We were on a budget so we avoided the float plane and used a shuttle out of Manigotagin to get to Wallace and then picked up at the bridge. The portages were rough but it was all worth it when we got going down the river."

Planning that route this summer with my wife. How was the Obukowin? I've done it twice but it was years ago...

Holy cow, what an adventure! Great report.

All things considered they weren't too bad. Just slow and boggy. Lots of bog to walk through but the trail was easy to find.