Milk River

This is a great 4 or 5 day trip, but can be done as shorter trips, depending where you start or end. The campground in the town of Milk River is a great place to start. The first section to Gold Springs Campground is mostly an easy float. Right before Gold Springs, we hit our first rock garden - a shallow section where we dodged some rocks and scraped over others. After Gold Springs, these become common, and there start to be some bigger rapids too. The combo of rapids with lots of rock dodging make this tricky. Most sections are shallow and low consequence if you do dump or get hung up on a rock, but there are some undercuts that you have to watch out for. There are hoodoos throughout this section until just after Writing on Stone. Poverty Rock is a beautiful campsite that is a little more remote, but there is a shelter, picnic tables, and outhouses. Around Poverty Rock is ideal for hiking, as the hiking rules in Writing On Stone are very restrictive. After Writing on Stone, the river slows down quite a bit and sand bars become much more common. The valley widens out and there are very few cliffs. This section of the river until highway 880 is not paddled as much, but I loved it. We saw the most wildlife in this section too. Hot days or drypants are recommended as we did get stuck on quite a few sandbars.

This river can't be paddled below 15cms and 20cms is ideal. Check https://rivers.alberta.ca/ to find the current flow rate.