You win some and you lose some. And this one we lost, but I suppose it makes for a good story and lesson, and nothing tragic. We had all day the 4th of July to paddle, and then, not all day because storms were supposed to come in. We thought about where we wanted to go, what was high enough, too low, how to avoid lakes on a holiday.
We almost went for the Flambeau near Ladysmith (more lake-like), but then switched to the Jump River due to the holiday. The pamphlet said ‘Short leisurely trip with no major rapids and great fishing along the way.’ What more could one want? After all, the other section of the Jump it covers stated ‘Low water periods during the summer can make the trip much more challenging.’ Ryan checked the river gauge at Sheldon and it said it was at 3 feet. That’s deep enough.
We showed up to drop a bike at Sheldon. Ryan pretty quickly observed that things didn’t look too promising. “Is the river flowing the wrong way?” he asked.
I chalked it up to the woman in the water trying to teach her chocolate lab puppy to swim, the ripples going outwards from them. About this time, I was glancing at the book we had that mentioned this section: ‘…this trip becomes more difficult during low periods.’ Ok, well, we were there, and wanting to get on the river. We dropped the bike and took off toward the town of Jump River…
…and ran right into a huge 4th of July crowd gathering for a parade. If you’ve never heard of Jump River, I assure you, hundreds of people have, and they come for the parade and tractor pull in town. We came into town from the south, on Bridge Drive, and that was about when we realized we had happened upon something big. Just a mile or so from the landing it was hard to get across the bridge because there were cars going this way and that, tractors getting ready for the big events, parade exhibitors lining up and parade-goers parking and walking to Highway 73 to get a coveted spot on the shoulder of the road. Luckily, the parade hadn’t started yet, and we could get onto Highway 73 and drive our last mile, slowly, through the busy thoroughfare (wait, they close a state highway for a parade?)
We arrived at our landing, and at least the water looked like it was flowing the way we thought it should. There was an open area to bring the kayaks down and get in. But actually getting in to float downstream was more of a challenge. There were rocks, or riffles, or maybe small rapids (if enough water), with water flowing through them. We kind of walked, I got in the kayak to float a little ways and push myself through, down to the promised pools that must have been good for fishing (‘concentrate your fishing efforts on the heads of some of the larger pools – this little river can get surprisingly deep in places.’) We weren’t there for fishing, and while one didn’t have to drag their kayak through these deep pools, we also had hoped that the river’s flow might… help us a bit. These pools were pretty pool-like, not flowing much at all, so we had to paddle to move forward at all.
Onwards we went; I ogled at the pretty rock wall with arbor vitae on it, and stopped paddling, thus not moving forwards. We came to more… riffles to push through, (or walk through). Another pool to paddle. And on it went a few more times. The book said to take the river left around the island near the bridge in the town of Jump River. That yielded… a dead end. Well, not one that we could paddle down anyways, so we turned back the other way where we could at least drag our boats across the rocks.. again. Before we moved forward (which at this point, the river was pushing us to do), Ryan questioned the wisdom of going on at this (very slow) rate, hating the river, just coming back another time when we’d like it. I said, we’ll be fine, let’s keep going we’re here. But also knew that we’d gone not far in 45 minutes.
We came below the bridge and the water was actually moving me forwards, I was taking in the riverbanks, when Ryan questioned yet again, and said it was time to bail. I was upset that we’d changed course (to a different river plan) but conceded since there were storms coming, and we’d gone all of.. maybe a mile. There was a campground below the bridge where I sat while Ryan walked back up to the car. I listened to the national anthem and tractor pull start, a few fireworks going off to celebrate the day, while sitting at Linda’s G-Spot (Tavern and) Campground. Ryan brought the car back to me, we put on the kayaks and cut our losses.
We drove back to the bike to retrieve it, and did the nature hike at the landing there instead, avoiding the poison ivy. We did live up to the timing that the pamphlet said, but only because we bailed at Jump River and drove back: ‘If you paddle straight through from the put-in to the take-out in Sheldon, the trip takes less than three hours.’ Well, don’t believe everything you read, or at least don’t believe that you have all of the information that makes each statement potentially true!
Other beings seen include: silver maple, ebony jewelwing, yarrow, reed canary grass, yellow birch, sugar maple, maple, cottonwood, white birch, hemlock, interrupted fern, red pine, TONS OF CRAYFISH, kingfisher, marsh milkweed blooming, vervain, black eyed Susan, blue spruce, walnut, oak, ox-eye daisy, Joe pye weed, sensitive fern, ostrich fern, clematis, wild parsnip, dogbane, bindweed Crown vetch, and tearthumb.
Paddled July 4, 2023
We used maps from the similar pamphlets ‘Wild Rivers and Glacial Lakes Northwest Wisconsin (paddlenorthwestwi.com)/’Rusk County Rivers’ (www.ruskcounty.com) and Wisconsin’s North Central Canoe Trails by A. William Jipson, Gerald R. Lowry and Genevieve Schreiber.
Weather: sunny, 80s (into stormy afternoon)
northwestwisconsinpaddling 