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PostPosted: September 20th, 2017, 6:15 pm 
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Location: Saskatoon
Hi Folks,
This summer I paddled for 10 days with 2 friends on Reindeer Lake, starting at Southend, Saskatchewan. On our second day (July 16th) we were hit by a storm minutes after getting to shore, and I had the good sense to turn the GoPro camera toward the water and hit record. Here is the video I made of the first 3 minutes of the storm hitting us.

https://youtu.be/z0niuHlXqAU



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GoPro video of a storm that hit us moments after we arrived at a potential campsite while paddling on Reindeer Lake in northern Saskatchewan. This occurred in the afternoon of the 2nd day of a 10 day trip. Our location: https://mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.php? ... 9&z=13&t=h

On the trip were Bryan, Jeff and Joe. We were travelling by sea kayak and camping at various spots in the southern portion of this very large lake. We are all experienced paddlers and wilderness campers. We all travel well-prepared for bad weather and we know that a storm can build quickly. However, we were surprised by the speed and intensity of this storm. It was actually good that we didn't get off of the water 5 minutes earlier or falling trees would have damaged at least one of the tents. Off the water 5 minutes later, and this could have been quite a different story (we were dressed for immersion).

We were very glad to have along a Terra Nova 4-person bothy bag (http://www.terra-nova.co.uk/tarps-bivis ... othy-bags/) as a quickly deployed emergency shelter. It worked extremely well, keeping us warm, dry and safe. We huddled within the bothy on the beach right beside the kayak you can see in the video, immediately behind the camera. I also appreciated my Kokatat Storm Cag (https://kokatat.com/product/tropos-ligh ... cag-pjutsc), a giant jacket that goes on over the PFD connects to the cockpit coaming, providing great weather protection whether on the water or off.


Cheers,
Bryan

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Last edited by pawistik on September 21st, 2017, 10:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: September 20th, 2017, 6:26 pm 
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Here are a couple of photos from a couple of hours before the storm:

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PostPosted: September 20th, 2017, 6:30 pm 
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And here is our campsite after the storm. We remained wind-bound for 24 hours, so the paddling photo is from the following evening when calm had returned.

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PostPosted: September 20th, 2017, 7:22 pm 
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Wow! Wow! :o :o
Glad you got to shore before the worst began. Really interesting on the video to see the storm approaching.
Good think you had the presence of mind to stay on the beach and not try to "shelter" in the forest. I spoke with Ric at CRCO about the July 16 plow wind and he had some scary stories to tell. Your story is another! A person has to be careful and aware out there. Good for you guys and glad it ended well for you!


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PostPosted: September 21st, 2017, 12:36 am 
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Location: Missoula, Montana
The storm did an impressive job of pushing over trees on the lakeshore. It's possible that if you had retreated further into the trees, they would have blocked enough wind so trees were no longer being pushed down. But staying out of the trees was a better idea. I've seen the aftermath of a number of microbursts which completely flattened huge swaths of trees. You wouldn't want to be in the middle of one of those swaths when the microburst hit!


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PostPosted: September 21st, 2017, 10:20 am 
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We thought that the storm was pretty impressive but when we drove south and saw the size of the trees that were snapped off or toppled in the Devil Lake area we knew that we were better off than folks in that area. The trees that fell around us were dead from a burn 5 years previous, so they were ready to fall. They also were much smaller than the stuff at Devil Lake. A friend had his truck smashed by a tree at the Devil Lake parking area. As far as I know, the vehicle was the only thing injured in the storm (other than a lot of campsites, portages and the Devil Lake hiking trail).

For us it amounted to a grand adventure and a day in a poor campsite on a beautiful lake (we built a wall of logs as a wind block to help weather the rest of the storm after the initial onslaught).

Cheers,
Bryan

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