We can usually expect to paddle in the floodlands area near Tranquille by the end of May. High water lasts for 2 – 6 weeks, but usually it has receded by the end of June. On May 12, I was able to launch my kayak into the floodlands using a hand launch in the Tranquille Wildlife Management parking area. There was enough water to paddle over the tops of barbed wire fences. Many of the channels were full of debris, but there were also open water channels out to the river.
Later in the season we can paddle across the river and go up more floodlands channels on the south side of the river. A 10 km loop through the floodlands is possible during freshet.
A few moments of the morning of paddling are found in this YouTube video:
As the snows melt in the mountains, freshet will swell the South Thompson and North Thompson Rivers and the Thompson River will flood the lands near Kamloops Lake. From the start of June through the first week of July we can launch our boats near Tranquille and paddle various routes through the bays and channels.
In early stages, grasses and logs rise above the water.
As the floodwaters rise, there are more routes to paddle between the Airport and Cooney Bay.
On days with little wind, reflections onto the floodwaters give the area a dreamy effect.
Longer routes can be paddled of up to 11 km, but most days we paddle between 5 and 8 km, choosing an eclectic route through the channels:
When the river fully fills at freshet, the lowlands near Tranquille fill, creating lagoons, bays, and channels among the tall shrubs. We can launch from a parking area near Tranquille and create our own route.
On a calm and cloudy day we are rewarded with reflections in the glassy waters.
On such days there can be a surreal, peaceful experience, best found with a kayak or canoe.
Each year we get about a month of paddling the floodlands, right in our backyard.
On a mid-July day, I launched my kayak at the Tranquille Wildlife Management Area and paddled out into Tranquille Bay. The plan was to paddle a large loop, crossing the river to the floodlands on the south side. After many days of paddling in the floodlands, I have developed routes through river channels and with the water starting to fall, I wanted to do a longer (10 km) loop. Under sunny-cloudy skies and light winds I did the 2 km crossing to the far-side channel, then turned east, upriver, winding through a maze of channels. The route goes all the way to the edge of the wastewater ponds. From there I follow a route out to the river and work my way back.
Some grey clouds were moving across Kamloops Lake as I crossed Tranquille Bay.
Cloud-filtered sunshine to the east created silver light on the river.
But blue skies over Mt. Mara looked like good weather would last for the paddle.
At the east end of the river channels some rain clouds moved in, bringing large raindrops
Geese and ducks headed for cover as I turned onto the stormy river.
Stronger winds and drifts of rain washed over the kayak as I paddled back across the river in choppy conditions.
Much of the squall hit the south side of the river and by the time I reached the north side of the floodlands some clearer skies broke through dark clouds.
The final part of the paddle emerged out of the rain showers into calmer conditions, some bluer skies, and easier paddling.
The 18 foot ocean kayak weathers wind, showers, and waves well. I have lots of experience in paddling in adverse conditions, I know and have practiced self-rescue techniquesl, I had all my safety equipment and I would have gone to ground on the shoreline if conditions were dangerous. I had my spray skirt on which kept my legs dry, but I got pretty wet on my torso and arms. Another adventure on the water.
By the middle of June this year, the river had dropped at least a metre so the floodlands were reduced to channels. On a windy day, I Iaunched from the pullout near Tranquille into Tranquille Bay.
A strong wind from the east made paddling more difficult as I crossed the bay to the fenceline. I could clear the top wire of the fence in a couple of places still, but if the river drops another foot, access to the rest of the floodlands may be gone.
I followed channels wherever there was some open water, finding watery channels around the fences. The sun was coming up behind clouds in the east behind Mt. Mara.
To the northeast Tranquille flanked the shoreline with Jag Hill in the background.
I explored the channels fighting winds upriver and enjoying easy paddling back downriver toward Kamloops Lake.
The upriver paddle was very slow and crossing the wind was not easy either, providing a good workout on a soon-to-be-stormy day. I took a track while out paddling for 1 hour and 40 minutes. I do not anticipate paddling in the floodlands again this year.
During freshet, the lands near Tranquille flood and we can paddle the bays and channels on both sides of the river. We have to wait until the water rises above the fences which is usually the end of May. I launched from the parking area near the junction of the road into Tranquille and the Tranquille Criss Creek Road and paddled out and cleared the fence into the bay.
It was a calm day and the hills reflected into the lagoon.
Willow stands rise above the floodlands like small islands.
We can paddle right down to Cooney Bay, but on this day, I paddled through the bays and channels in a clockwise 6 km loop.
The water is fairy still in the bays and back channels. but the river continues to run down to the lake. On other days, i paddle across to the other side and go up the channels to create a loop route. On this day, I wound through channels on the north side of the river.
The pasture in from of Mt. Mara becomes Mara Bay with the mountain reflected in the still water.
The floodlands provide the best paddling of the year in June each year. We will be back a few more times.
When freshet brings the North Thompson and South Thompson Rivers to a high water point , the area at the head of Kamloops Lake floods. The flat floodplains near Tranquille get covered in several feet of floodwaters. In addition, Cooney Bay floods, the beach disappears, and the shoreline recedes. We paddled out of Tranquille Bay then followed the river downstream to Cooney Bay. the feet of the cottonwoods are under water and a barrier of logs covers all parts of the shoreline. A river buoy was untethered from the channel and also ended up along the log-covered shoreline.
The piling up of logs on the shoreline started about a kilometer upstream and continued all the way to the north end of Cooney Bay. The gate to the Cooney Bay Road has been closed for a few weeks now, but there would be nowhere to walk anyway.Ducks, ospreys, loons, and bald eagles are still resident at Cooney Bay. This eagle had caught a sucker and landed on a pot in the logjam.
The shoreline past Cooney Bay was log-free all the way to Battle Bluff.
Paddling back upstream, we enjoyed seeing the sheltered floodwaters reflecting the images of logs and stumps on the shoreline, this time creating a loop in the water.
Lenticular clouds formed over Tranquille Bay. Lenticular clouds, scientifically known as altocumulus standing lenticularis, are stationary lens-shaped clouds that form at high altitudes, normally aligned at right-angles to the wind direction.
Mount Mara and the shoreline reflect in the calm waters of Tranquille Bay on the paddle back to the launch area.
Freshet brings meltwaters from the north and the east to Kamloops and the South Thompson River and the North Thompson Rivers join to bring floodwaters to the area near the head of Kamloops Lake. On the north side the 2km x 1km flatlands become covered in 2-3.5 meters of water to become Tranquille Bay. On the south side of the river the 2.5 km x 0.7 km areas also become inundated and channels and bays form among small islands and willow groves. If we paddle through channels into both areas, crossing the river twice, we can cover 10km in our kayaks.
By mid-May the floodwaters reach the shoreline near Tranquille, but we need to wait for the waters to rise enough to cover the barbed-wire grazing fences too. We can usually launch and paddle through this area for 6 – 7 weeks.
When there is no wind, the waters of Tranquille Bay are mirrors of the shoreline features.
Mara Mountain provides colorful background terrain, standing above Tranquille Bay and the Floodlands.
Willows stand out in the floodwaters like floating islands.
We often paddle south for 1.3 km to the river then we have a 1.1 km crossing of open water. Our seaworthy ocean kayaks handle any wind and waves well. Smaller boats without rudders should probably stay on the north side of the river on a windy day. All kayakers should be carrying a paddle float, tow rope, a bailer/pump, and some kind of communication device if crossing Kamloops Lake or the open river of this area. Too few kayakers have practiced self-rescue but they still venture into exposed conditions.
Once we are on the other side, the river channels provide protected paddling. The channels are a maze of navigable routes and dead-ends, but in general if we stay close to the shoreline we can paddle all the way through the south floodlands to the east end.
The channels of the south side have a special quality not available anywhere else in the Interior. There are some grazing fences on this side, but when the water is high, we drift right over them.
We take any channel that leads back to the river which we cross, using the current to take a long diagonal route northwest. Once we are on the other side, we look for more channels to work our way into Tranquille Bay. We took our time and paddled for 3 hours in a large loop.
On other days, we stay in channels and bays on the north side only (a good plan for smaller boats or less-experienced paddlers). We watch for wetland birds, turtles, raptors, muskrats, river otters, carp, and water-tolerant flowering shrubs as we explore the floodlands. We will continue to explore these “water trails” as they change with flood volumes right up to the point when the rivers drop at the end of June.
The delta lands at the head of Kamloops Lake are covered in water now, but in early spring there were large sand/silt islands with shallow channels to explore.
We launched out of Cooney Bay, then went across the lake to the south shore, working our way back into shallow channels, landing on sandy islands.
At the end of the flooding season, a few logs and river debris lodged into the shallow waters and as the river continued to go down, the logs became stranded on silt/sandbars. When the snows melted in late winter, seasonal ponds and shallow bays formed among the islands.
The deltalands lie at the “gateway” to Kamloops Lake.
Before freshet, the river waters are less muddy and flow silently through the river valley into Kamloops Lake.
We walked on the islands a bit, then went upriver. Upstream paddling is still hard work so for this day of exploratory paddling, we went up to the Tranquille Conservation Area and back down, turning the point into Conney Bay and along the shoreline of the lake.
A few ducks and geese used the sheltered waters of Cooney Bay and the lee of Battle Bluff. The gravel beaches on the shorelines were wider and deeper than spring or summer, but will soon be covered by the rising waters of the freshet.
These “deltalands” are only exposed from late fall through early spring when conditions are colder so they are rarely explored. Some of the shoreline can be walked on foot, but much of it requires a short paddle to cross the river channels.
We walked some of the shoreline earliert (link provided below), then we returned to paddle the island network. We will return again to paddle the area, but will explore the floodlands several meters above the deltalands.
There are 3 access points to launch a boat on Kamloops Lake – Savona, Tobiano, and Cooney Bay. To paddle into Cooney Bay, drive to Tranquille, but stay left and drive to the end of the bumpy road. From the parking lot, boats have to be hauled down to the edge of the river through the cottonwoods. From the beach paddlers can launch into the river to get around the point past the outlet of Tranquille Creek and into Cooney Bay.
Even on a windy day, Cooney Bay is partly sheltered by bluffs. Rocky hills and dry slopes rise above the north side of the lake. This is a good area to spot bald eagles, ospreys, loons, and sometimes pelicans.
A great blue heron launched from the beach as we paddled down to Battle Bluff.
The paddle around the bay and down to the rocky cliffs of Battle Bluff is 3.2 km. Winds may be stronger around the first part of Battle Bluff, but if not, the additional distance is another 1 km. A return shoreline paddle is 8.4 km. The shoreline past Battle Bluff is less interesting. On a calm day we have also crossed the lake and have done a loop route.
We spotted a number of birds from our kayaks, including one of the newly-fledged immature eagles from the aerie near Battle Bluff.
Kamloops Lake is not a good choice for most paddlers on a windy day, but on a calm day, the paddling is excellent and there will likely be no one around, especially on a weekday.
The whole area is very scenic and worth the extra effort to get the boats down to the shoreline and back.
Each year the rivers rise in May and they usually peak in June. When both rivers rise enough, the area near the east end of Kamloops Lake floods upstream for a few kilometers. We can launch our kayaks and paddle from Tranquille Bay to explore the seasonal channels.
In 2016, freshet was early and by the first of June access was limited to launch spots to the floodlands. We will return again each spring.
We paddle into the floodlands in freshet each year. The meltwaters from the North and South Thompson Rivers expand to fill the riverbanks and raise the rivers considerably in May and June. We enjoy launching from a small parking area near Tranquille once the river rises enough to clear the grazing fences. The area is part of the BC Parks Tranquille Wildlife Management Area.
Willow “islands” stand above the floodwaters in Tranquille Bay.
The Thompson River, the flooded areas, and Kamloops Lake merge into one body of water in freshet.
On a windless day the hills reflect in the river offering a wide optical illusion.
We paddled across the river and up channels on the south side, quiet “bayous” where muskrats, river otters, herons, and painted turtles can be spotted. On the way back across the river, the hills surrounding the river and lake reflect into the floodwaters.
From the middle of the 1.1 km crossing of the river is a wide perspective on the hills surrounding the floodlands. The return route into Tranquille Bay aims for the ragged slopes of Mara Mountain.
Of all the paddles in our area, this one is the finest, available each year only during freshet.
In June each year, we can launch our boats from the Tranquille Wildlife Management area and paddle out into the flooded lands at the head of Kamloops Lake. We have a 10km circuit that we can do, but each time a different channel is taken. At the peak of the freshet, all the channels are connected, but as the water recedes, many of them are dead ends, requiring some back-paddling. The area is full of birds. This year we have spotted bald eagles, golden eagles, great blue herons, ducks, geese, marsh wrens, yellow-headed blackbirds, and a number of smaller birds. The cottonwoods, willows, and dogwoods stand in deep water for a few weeks, but still seem to thrive. Groups of trees/shrubs look like floating islands in the bays.
Past the last of these “islets” is the river, slow-moving as it runs into the lake. The crossing is 1km to the far shore. The channel mouth starts to the left of the gully ahead. This image was probably taken in May before the area was fully flooded.
Any series of channels can be taken, but we usually paddle the one closest to the far shore and return back through the middle. Views extend down the lake past Battle Bluff and up the river toward Mt. Paul. Mount Mara overlooks Tranquille Bay and the rocky hills along the south shore rise steeply above the floodlands.
This is one of the yearly great wonders of the region and just a few of us venture out in our kayaks to experience the sights of this wet wilderness each June.
White pelicans have been spotted in the Tranquille Wildlife Protected area and in Cooney Bay over the past 3 years. These large birds migrate to the BC Interior over the spring-summer, then return to the southern U.S. for winter. A full grown pelican can stand 5 feet high and have a wingspan of up to 9 feet, the second largest bird in North America.
They usually work together in small flocks, to drive fish toward waiting bills, consuming about 2 kg of fish each day. They breed in March-April and nest a month later. They nest in colonies and the chicks leave the nest after about 4 weeks. The pelicans we see in our area are non-breeding birds. They are here to feed on the fish coming up the Thompson River. A popular spot is right where the river empties into Kamloops Lake. In 2013, they could be seen from
In the fall, they can be spotted on migration routes from the Cariboo, on their way south. A flock of 10 spent a few days in Campbell Lake at the end September.
A few shots taken by me from the shore and from kayak are also shared here.
On Campbell Lake at the end of September
Cooney Bay in September
On Kamloops Lake
In the flooded Tranquille Wildlife Management area
The floodlands out from Tranquille invite paddlers an opportunity to paddle for about 10 km through channels, bays, and lagoon-like mazes of wetland vegetation. Launching out of Tranquille, both sides of the river await exploration.
As the freshet approaches in June, the wildlife also moves in. The earliest residents are ducks, geese, blackbirds, and other nesting waterfowl and wetland birds. Under the water, fish and aquatic invertebrates proliferate and the larger birds like great blue herons and pelicans also move in. With the abundance of life also come the predators. Bald and golden eagles, ospreys, red-tailed hawks, and even kites and peregrines can be spotted. Painted turtles sun themselves on logs. All are best seen while drifting quietly.
Paddling requires both hands and attention to balance, so calm conditions and a slow approach facilitate seeing and photographing wildlife. When we paddle out into this area in June and July, we try to take our time and keep the focus on exploration. On the last venture, a number of dead-end channels were found. As the river recedes at the end of freshet, through channels start to disappear, but new surprises can still be found – wild asparagus, knotweed in flower, amphibians, and wading birds.
Framing all of this are the hills and skies of the Thompson River Valley, a favorite place.
A few moments of the morning of paddling are found in this YouTube video:
The floodlands provide the best paddling of the year in June each year. We will be back a few more times.
