North Sask - Bighorn Dam to Nordegg

This section is roughly a day's paddle. The scenery is beautiful, but this is only a trip for advanced paddlers. There is a significant portion of this trip where you are picking channels and dodging trees. We found a few places where there was no navigable path and we had to line our canoes through really shallow water flowing through gravel bars to be able to avoid all the trees in the water. I didn't take pictures at the worst parts because I was too focused on keeping the group safe, but there's one photo with lots of trees in the middle where we were scouting from our campsite in the morning before we resumed our trip.

There are a few choices for where to put in below the Bighorn Dam. For most of the summer, this area will likely be filled with RVs and ATVs and generators running. As soon as you get on the water, all the noise dies down and it feels quite remote.

Most people continue this trip from Nordegg to Rocky Mountain House.