Maitland River

Trip report from June 14, 2015 – Little Maitland River

On June 14 our group of four canoes met at the McDonald Line on the Little Maitland River and paddled down to Wingham in a mixture of drizzle and pouring rain, which certainly helped our rapid progress down this river that is normally unnavigable during summer. Paddling time was only about 4 hours with the steady, abundant flow.

The river gauge at Bluevale read about 15 CMS that day, which was an ideal level since we had no problem through any rapid sections yet river features were still well defined without being washed out. There are no problems with cattle fences along the route and there are only a few small swifts to shoot so the entire route is Class 1. There is a dam at Bluevale Conservation Area that must be portaged on the left and we only encountered one major sweeper as an obstacle enroute. I checked out the upper south tributary as far as Molesworth on Highway 19 and it looked navigable although there may be some timber obstacles through the densely forested section between Highway 19 and Bandon Line. I wish we would have done that section because it looks like veritable swamp jungle with tight, deep channels running through it. The Middle Maitland tributary also looked good up beyond Ethel at 40 CMS on the Belgrave gauge.

By Peter Hafemann