Five Mile Rapids, French River - High Water In Late Summer

Five Mile Rapids is the most concentrated stretch of rapids on the French River, Ontario, Canada. This video was filmed when we travelled down this section of the French River in high water levels. It was late summer going into early fall but the summer had been very wet and there was a lot of water flowing down the various channels of the French, which is quite a complex system of waterways. The river is also important from an historical perspective, particularly during the fur trade. The French River was the first river to be designated a Canadian Heritage River, in 1986. The Five Mile Rapids section is an absolute classic of canoe travel in this part of the Canadian Shield.
The French river flows 105 km from Lake Nipissing to Georgian Bay but drops only 19 metres along its entire length. Flowing out of the middle French, which is more like a lake with islands, than a river, the main channel of the French River starts with Little Pine Rapids, which also marks the beginning of the Five Mile Rapids stretch. This is followed by Big Pine Rapids, Double Rapids, Blue Chute, Big Parisien Rapids, Devil Chute, Little Parisien Rapids then, a little further down, Crooked Rapids. The latter marks the end of the Five Mile Rapids run. After this it's flat all the way down to Dry Pine Bay.
We canoed this section of the river as part of the Eighteen Mile Island Loop, which links a downstream journed on the main channel, a.k.a. the south channel or Voyageur channel, with an upstream journey on the north channel. You can start at Dry Pine Bay or at Wolseley Bay, completing the loop and ending back where you started. This is a really nice canoe-camping trip, which you can easily do in a long weekend.
If you'd like to see more of the whole journey that the video above is taken from, then you can check out my article via the link below, which has lots of useful info on the route, camping, canoe hire, accommodation, etc.
paulkirtley.co.uk/2017/french-...

[@nigelgregory4777]

Thank you Paul, as interesting today as it was then, and will still be interesting and relevant in ten years, look after yourself and your family. Many thanks once again. Nige.

[@checkmate610]

Beautiful!

[@GerryDX]

Water was very high last year. Good call at Big Pine. The force of the water is so powerful that it can hold you under water even with a life vest on. Happened to my brother and he luckily made it out alive. Great video.

[@PaulKirtley]

Cheers. Glad you liked the video. Warm regards.

[@felipfelop8220]

So much better than many other clips on here about the french River,well done

[@scottbainetwisted_keel_adv5821]

What an awesome river. Great trip and great awesome video thanks Paul

[@PaulKirtley]

Cheers Scott

[@psycholocke4090]

what a nice trip. and an enjoyable different kind of video you put up. thank you Paul and Amanda.

[@PaulKirtley]

Our pleasure. Thanks for your feedback. Glad you enjoyed your time on the river with us :-)

[@wrzlgummidge7663]

I think this is one of your best vids Paul, really atmospheric and gives amazing views of the water dynamics. Nice one. atb

[@NagualeroArt]

Great video Paul. Wishing you happy holidays to you and family. God Jul!

[@ThePursuitofPassion]

I've paddled the French many times, including that section and never seen it that high in the summer. Pretty unusual water levels which can be both good and bad as you've experienced. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[@allanhewick168]

Great video for trip planning.

[@PaulKirtley]

Glad it was useful

[@douglasnewlands47]

Fantastic video of your adventure in a beautiful place. Thank you for sharing. I enjoyed every twist and turn along the way, trying to read the water with you. I hope that you and yours enjoy relaxing over the festive season and wish you all the very best in the coming year. D.

[@PaulKirtley]

Thank you Douglas. All the best to you and yours for the festive season too. I do enjoy the winter months, the ice and the snow but I also look forward to another paddling season. Warm regards, Paul

[@canoeguide]

I've never seen such a thorough and comprehensive treatment of this section of the river, especially in video form. Excellently done all around! "Boil-y as F" is going to be in my river vernacular from now on!

[@canoeguide]

Also: the number of mishaps I have seen and been a part of in Big Parisien is quite a lot for how ordinarily simple it seems!

[@PaulKirtley]

Haha, thanks. Glad you liked the video and the language ;-)

[@RandomAndrew]

Thanks for sharing this, it gave me a bit more insight as to what a canoe can handle through faster moving waters. I have not hard an incredible amount of experience with rapids but I'm becoming more confident.

[@PaulKirtley]

Glad you found it useful Andrew.

[@downeastprimitiveskills7688]

Powerful water! A lot of flow.

[@PaulKirtley]

Yeah, it was good! :-)

[@NorthwalesBushcrafters]

Looks great there Paul 👍

[@PaulKirtley]

It was great. We had a ball :-)

[@highlandtrekker]

A beautiful river that was made for canoeing !. I feel a very important stroke for a bow paddler to learn is the cross draw, it helps you when you're entering a set of rapids and maintaining that line once the current has a hold of you and as a bonus it slows you down a little. Great footage , thanks so much for sharing

[@PaulKirtley]

Agreed, a cross draw, with strong body position is very useful.

[@Etienne938]

Amazing video. The music combined with the footage at the end really let my imagination fly. Thank you for sharing! Love the article as well. The amount of litter you found around the fire sites is sickening though.

[@BushcraftNotMinecraft]

Lovely video! It looks like canoe heaven. I am jealous. ;))

[@PaulKirtley]

Yeah, my kind of heaven :-)

[@runninblue9415]

Wow. A complex skill set so far from help. And to have to film as well. Excellent effort. Inspiring. 😁

[@PaulKirtley]

It's good to build these skills up and then apply them on a journey. Every time you go out, you are learning. It's nice to be out there and self-sufficient in your journey too. It's a good feeling of freedom. Glad you enjoyed it Davi. Cheers, Paul

[@florentinvonfrankenberg7102]

Thanks!

[@cliffordwright1603]

Great video Paul always enjoy your videos. I love the French been on it a few times. It’s nice to live only 3 hours from it. Greetings from Ontario Canada

[@PaulKirtley]

Hi Clifford, it's good to hear from you. Yes, it must be nice to have these places in your back yard :-) Warm regards, Paul

[@xnbomb]

Excellent video, Paul. I really enjoyed the use of Google Earth imagery to give a bit of a landscape view. Nicely done!

[@PaulKirtley]

Glad you liked the Google Earth maps. First time I have tried this so thanks for the feedback. I think it adds a good bit of context to where the footage is from. All the best, Paul

[@RolfKraiker]

Hope you don't mind a few $.02CDN comments from someone who's taught a lot of white water courses in that section of river. I have noticed that at the time of year you were there they often lower the level of water in Lake Nippising so it's not uncommon for the levels to be higher but I've only seen it that high once in the spring. I didn't notice the use of a back ferry at any point in the video. There are several lines that you can take through Big Pine that are quite safe and manageable but you need to do a back ferry in one or two key spots. Pretty sure lining that rapid would have been easier on the river right shore not the side you chose. Even in the relatively easy section you did line, I'd have used a bridle on the upstream end of the canoe and made sure the downstream end of the canoe had more weight in it. There was one section during the lining where the stern was close to being drawn into a recirculating wave that could have resulted in swamping the canoe if you had to pull hard with the rope attached to the top of the deck. Pulling on a line attached to the top of the deck results in an upstream lean and that's bad, pulling on a bridle results in a downstream lean which avoids swamping. On Blue Chute there's a nice eddy river right just past the big rock at the first drop. It's easy to hit that one then set up for the best line through the wave train downstream. At Parisienne rapids, there's a good eddy on river right about half way through that makes it easy to get lined up for the rest of the drop river right. Had you used that it would have been easy to avoid that near miss with the rock wall. There's also an eddy river left farther down above the last drop that you can use but it means doing an upstream ferry coming out of the eddy to line up with the calmer water for the drop on river right. The eddy at the bottom of the drop on river right is always strong and there's a very big boil line before you get the calm water. If you had gone closer to shore after entering the eddy you wouldn't have been pulled back into the flow. I'd suggest it also might help to pay attention to the timing of strokes as you rise and fall through the waves. If you plant the paddle in the crest of a wave it'll pop out as you ride over and not provide much power. Better to either plant in the trough of a wave or wait until you are past the crest and plant on the other side. It is great that you provided such a detailed description of what you encountered. I'm sure it'll help paddlers who want to go there for the first time. Thanks for posting.

[@CJR12212012]

Thank you for a great POV segment. Such a great reminder of different skills and concerns of river travel with a canoe. I am a kayaker.

[@PaulKirtley]

Thanks for your comments. I'm glad you enjoyed the POV segments and the different perspectives brought from canoeing rather than kayaking. Warm regards, Paul

[@inthewoodswithbigfoot3941]

Looked like a fun game of chess in a canoe. Brilliant!

[@derekhellam9861]

I live not far from the French river. Wouldn't live anywhere else. Love the boreal forest

[@PaulKirtley]

Lucky man :-)

[@anthonypayne2526]

I like following along with your and others' videos using google maps. Interestingly, google maps has Little and Big Parisien Rapids reversed in order. I was so confused trying to match up your run of Big with the map...until you mentioned Devil Chute in the left channel of Little. Then I figured it out. I really like when you use the satellite views of the map when describing where you are. I feel like I could go find this now! Great stuff.

[@wildernesscanoeassociation]

We agree that the labels on the Google Maps satellite photos are incorrect. The video has some errors as well.

[@marczabroski]

"Boily as F" lol. Looks great fun!

[@PaulKirtley]

Haha, that was the best description I could come up with at the time ;-)

[@willk5413]

I didn't know you were in Ontario!! The French river is very beautiful, the boundary, you could say, of northern Ontario. I haven't paddled it yet, plan on it eventually.

[@PaulKirtley]

Yeah, I do get around :-) I love Ontario. I've had some great adventures there. Definitely get yourself to the French.

[@willk5413]

Paul Kirtley, have you done any trips in other parts of Ontario?

[@PaulKirtley]

I've been up to Woodland Carbou/Atikaki on the Ontario-Manitoba Border and have paddled the Bloodvein a couple of times. Also, the Missinaibi from Missinaibi Lake to Mattice, via Brunswick Lake and Brunswick River. All good trips. Do you have any recommendations/particular favourite areas to trip?

[@willk5413]

I haven't been to Woodland Caribou yet, but I've done some good trips in Quetico. The boundary waters of Minnesota and Ontario near Atikoken are very nice as well. Some lakes in Quetico have some pictographs on the rock faces which are pretty cool. The one thing I really like about canoeing in Quetico and other areas in Northern Ontario, is that the lakes aren't over fished. The same can't really be said for Algonquin. Another nice area is near Temagami. I've done some old logging routes in that region and they were a lot of fun.

[@wildernesscanoeassociation]

Unfortunately, the naming conventions through the Five Mile section are not written in stone, and we do have a few objections to the labels that were applied here.

[@gregthomas2732]

Great video Paul. Just moved close to the area. Wondering if anyone has any experience of SUP, along the French river or in the Provincial park. Ideally looking for a nice stand up wave to surf nearby, when the water levels are kind. :)

[@HanzgohFilms]

Hi there-- I enjoyed your perspective of this stretch. I am in the states.. Ohio. Hoping to make a trip up there to kayak. I have a group of guys who have done kayak trips that past two years. curious about kayaking up there? mostly Canoes in videos. Due to portages? also - for camping is it possible to hammock camp on the french?

[@microslavery]

We used to Kayak it every other year when I was younger - just had to unpack the kayak and make two trips - or just one very uncomfortable trip.

[@Trailtraveller]

Great trip ! And lining is taking responsibility! Nothing worse than losing gear or canoe.

[@PaulKirtley]

Very true! Glad you enjoyed it :-)

[@stephenfox1238]

I can’t believe none of you local guys hasn’t pointed out it’s actually called 5 Finger Rapids. You guys who’ve been looking for 5 mile rapids on a map and scratching your head? You’re welcome

[@PaulKirtley]

That's because Five Finger Rapids is a different place, where the Little French flows back into the central section of the French.

[@wildernesscanoeassociation]

We agree with Paul.

[@gojumpintothelake]

Those are not rapids there bumps the whole river is for starters

[@mbwilson2625]

Too bad they dynamited little pine rapids back in the 1960's. It used to be better.

[@PaulKirtley]

:-(

[@amigo439]

NOOBS! Learn how to manage your canoe!