cyclones30 wrote on Feb 11^th, 2020 at 2:26am:

db wrote on Feb 10th, 2020 at 10:26pm: I found it! This shot was from the spring trip I couldn't get past the first island in the outflow from Russell to Sturgeon and decided to try the 'you gotta be kidding me' lower portage.   (You need to Login or Register   (You need to Login or Register Is that Chatterton? Unless that's an insanely high water version of Russell to Sturgeon flow...

  This is a great illustration of how water levels mean everything in places like that. That is the outflow to Sturgeon!  Hard to imagine you could ever paddle up there but you can IF the conditions are right.

  I've seen Chatterton falls after heavy winter snowmelt be roaring just like that. The year I took the Staircase was a high water spring. I paddled right over to Chatterton falls. Within a 1/4 mi of the falls the current was so strong, there were whirlpools forming and you couldn't paddle to the base of falls unless you hugged either shoreling. You could hear the falls roaring all the way across the lake.

My FUBAR trip the water level was low, you could easily paddle almost right up to the spill-out. The falls were not roaring but just a low rumble.

High water years you have all that water spilling from the falls that empty into Chatterton down into Russell then out the spillway with tremendous volume and force to then empty into Sturgeon Narrows then west and down the Maligne River. The difference in snowmelt affects all those areas greatly.