Black River, Paddling 100km in 4 days

This summer our friends Lyndon and Shane took a canoe trip down the Black River. Black River is a beautiful shield river that winds it’s way through Nopiming Provincial Park, here in Manitoba. Their journey took them 4 days and they covered over 100km of river as well as numerous tough portages.

Nopiming Park, pure shield

Nopiming Provincial Park, as you may know, is my absolute favorite place to spend the summer. I’ve done many camping trips there and I fish on various lakes throughout as often as I possibly can. The smallmouth bass fishing simply can’t be beat, and the terrain is the best example of pure Canadian shield that you will find in Canada. You will find a mix of rocky hills and cliffs, evergreen forest, swamps and hard-bottom lakes all with shallow rivers and streams connecting everything.

Black River, the route

The Black River itself is one of only two rivers that cuts across the whole width of the south Nopiming area. North of that is the Manigotagan, and each river is littered with small lakes, rapids, and of course portages.  Black River starts at Black Lake, and winds its way west until finally dumping into Lake Winnipeg. Being a shallow river, the Black features many fast flowing rapids and dangerous rocky areas. Campsites are few and far between, and because they see so little traffic, are often hard to pick out. Travelers commonly need to clear out existing sites or simply create new ones along the way. All told, this route is not one for the faint of heart, or anyone afraid of a lot of hard work!

black river

Video Montage

Here you can see a video montage of the trip, filmed by Lyndon. Due to limited battery length and space for extra batteries, these video clips show only a fraction of the whole experience!

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