We flew with Adventure Air, which has acquired Bluewater Aviation. Very excellent, friendly service. They spotted our car at Wallace at the end of our trip.

Total cost for the flight and car service was about $1700 CAD (1250 USD) . Spotting our car at Wallace Lake was $150...FYI if you intend to do the whole Bloodvein they can spot your car there for 500 CAD.

For maps, I printed them off of Caltopo and laminated them so they'd be waterproof. I printed them at 1" to the mile. If I had it to do over, I'd do 2" to the mile. I hand drew what portage and campsite info I could find from Paddle Planner, Canadian Canoe Routes, and Hap Wilson's book "The Wilderness Rivers of Manitoba". I also downloaded topo maps on my phone for backup.

We just used our old Souris River Q17. Very definitely not a whitewater boat, but we got along fine. There are portages around every rapids, and while we ran a few very easy ones, we had no interest in that sort of adventure and mostly took the portages. I can see why the river is popular with white water folks, as the rapids are usually very clean and deep with few if any boulders.

The first part of the trip, Artery Lake to the confluence of the Gammon, is about 50 miles and took us about 5 days. The Bloodvein is quite spectacular, with countless picturesque rapids and waterfalls, and rock rimmed lakes, . It truly lives up to the hype. The river is pool and drop, meaning for the most part, you are paddling on small rock-rimmed lakes connected by stretches of whitewater.

Except for the first night on Bushey Lake, we camped on portages. Normally I avoid this, but we really felt alone…from faded tracks in the occasional mud, it looked like a single person had preceded us by a week or two. The first two nights after Bushey were on beautiful sites overlooking falls, though the 4th night was spent on a desperation site in a burned area moving around in our chairs to catch the shade from a single live tree.

This section was not without mishap. At one point, we were turning into an eddy from fast water which spun the front end around and rammed quite hard into the rock. No real harm was done, though the impact spread the hull to the point that the bolts holding the center thwart pulled out. Luckily, I had a repair kit along.

Part of this section burned in (I think) 2021. We estimated about 20 miles of burn, though some nice campsites were spared.

We spent our last night on the Bloodvein on the “Redrock” campsite just below the confluence with the Gammon (It isn’t in red rocks, it faces cliffs with a lot of red in them.) I did manage to catch enough walleyes for a nice meal in about 15 minutes.

As expected, the Gammon is more lightly traveled. There were portages around most rapids, although some swifts that were too fast to paddle upstream didn’t appear to have portages. Lining is difficult, because the water tended to be deep and there were always sections that were too steep. Plus, I’m too old to go stumbling around rapids, so we portaged if at all possible.

Unfortunately, the same fire that burned the Bloodvein also burned much of the Gammon; from close to the confluence to Wapeskapek Lake. Luckily, the campsite we found (again on a portage overlooking the falls–if you like sleeping next to moving water, this trip is for you!) was not burned. The next night however, we wound up at something of a desperation site once again. There was a fire ring, and moose bones, but it looked like it hadn’t been stayed at in years. There were enough trees for some shade however, and a decently flat tent site.

On our 8th day, we finally saw some people, four First Nation moose hunters. They boated over and chatted for a bit. I think mostly they wanted to know if we had seen any moose (we hadn’t). The First Nation moose season starts earlier than the season for everyone else, though they were the only hunters we encountered.

We spent that night at the base of Wawataynee rapids, a very scenic spot, and the next day we made it to Szykulski lake, which is separated from Aikens lake by a short swift. As expected, we saw a few fishermen in boats (Aikens Lake has several lodges).

A persistent southeast wind had been blowing for several days, and my Zoleo forecast predicted more of the same, so we set an alarm to get down the long narrow bay into Aikens lake proper before the came howling up there. Of course, Murphy’s law applied and, the one morning we planned to get going early, a thunderstorm passed us to the east, so we were delayed anyway. We did manage to get across Aikens before the wind really came up.

From Aikens, there are two choices to get to Wallace Lake. You can continue on the Gammon to Obukowin lake and take the “three mothers” down to Siderock, and paddle the Wanipigow down to Wallace. These portages are back to back long portages, the longest being over 2.5 km! The other route, the one we took, takes you through Kosteck Lake and the Broadleaf river to Wanipigow river, which you ascend to Wallace Lake. I’ve read that in wet years the Broadleaf route is preferable, and when it’s dry, take the Mothers as the Broadleaf route involves extensive paddling on wild rice beds which would be difficult or impossible if the water is low.

The portage out of Aikens is 1760 meters, about 350 rods. From the Aikens side, it starts out like a dream portage, but as all long portages is this country do, winds up traversing relatively flat bedrock, with swampy low spots, several stream crossings, and the inevitable steep, slick rock climbs. At least it was well-defined and clear where you needed to go, unlike so many of the portages on the Gammon. Eventually you get to the unnamed lake before Kosteck, crossing a floating bog to get there.. This whole drainage is deeply tannin stained.

After Kosteck, there are really no stopping points until Leaf lake. That is a fairly long day for a couple of 65 year-olds. 

After camping on Leaf, we had planned to spend our last night of the trip on the Wanipigow, but as fate would have it, we experienced our first real rain (after 11 dry days in a row!) and with it came clouds of mosquitoes. We spent a few hours huddling under a hastily pitched tarp, and decided we should just paddle out. We did cross Wallace in the moonlight, but it wasn’t that bad given that I had a downloaded map on my phone to use as a gps.

A note about the Wallace Lake Campground…we arrived at 9 pm, expecting a forest service style campsite, but it is filled with mostly seasonal RV’s. We couldn’t even find a site and wound up pitching our tent next to our car.

All in all it was a great trip, among the best I’ve taken in nearly 50 years of canoeing. We had it all, solitude, scenery, nice weather!