Trip Journal/Log/Report/Diary:
We ran this route on the Labour Day weekend 2000.
To our surprise, the Desert River turned out to be a place of solitude - in three days we have not seen any other people along the way.
The marked campsite on the left side of a small lake after Grande Rapids is very small. However, there are no places to camp on until a marked site near Chute de Pin.
After Rapide a la Cauene the river meandres a lot, but the current is fast. There are a lot of sand beaches
Comments
As noted, good campsites are scarce until Chute de Pin. Unfortunately, the Chute de Pin site now features a brand new bridge and road. It's still a nice place to camp, if you like logging trucks. They seem to work all night, but really get busy at about six-thirty in the morning.
The river itself is lovely -- fun rapids and, in the lower meanders, heavenly beaches -- but we were almost always within earshot of heavy machinery. In this particular "zone d'exploitation contrôlée," the "exploitation" is a little out of control, and the loggers have been rather casual about concealing their work from the river's recreational traffic. From the water and access roads you glimpse some pretty ugly cuts.
des info sur la zec
Kevin Callan, describes in his book, "an obvious portage on the left that we missed". He says that this was a mistake and cost him a half a roll of duct tape and some fibreglass. Well the Rapide Penche portage does not exist and doesn't look like it ever did. Bring some duct tape.