Kayaking the Jock River west Mahoney Creek to Moodie Drive

Kayaking the Jock River between Moodie Drive and Old Richmond Road

This is a great area to paddle around if you love wildlife. You won’t run into many people, but you’ll see lots of turtles! Go on a sunny day to see them basking and enjoy hearing them plopping off of their log perches.

(see it on YouTube)

The paddle for the above video May 13, 2020. Terry Carisse Park was closed so I parked on Old Richmond Road and climbed down the bank to put in from the side of the road - easy to do, and a 20 minute drive from my place.
(see it on google maps)

Need to know

• Who: any skill level paddler/nature lover
• Where: section of Jock River between Old Richmond Road/Carisse Park to Moodie Drive, about a 15 minute drive from where the 416 leaves the 417
• When: I think this section is navigable all year, certainly into early summer
• What: Flatwater with one small ford to portage past. Lots of wildlife, a nice side trip in Mahoney creek… 11 k there and back as I did it, including Mahoney Creek (2h 40 min easy paddling and some clambering around obstacles)
• Why: painted turtles, snapping turtles, ducks, geese, muskrat, beavers, water rats

Putting in

You can put in at the dock in Terry Carisse Park off Steeple Hill Crescent. There’s parking for about 10 vehicles in the park.

Alternately you can pull your car off (alongside Old Richmond Road)[https://goo.gl/maps/NvKzkRKsGXpjdCou9]. It’s easy to put in just about anywhere at the roadside here without getting your feet wet.

Mahoney Creek

This is a nice little creek that is just north of Terry Carrisse Park.

A few hundred meters in there is a fallen tree blocking the way to the Steeple Hill bridge.

If you can get past that (I almost get drenched here), head under the bridge.

There's about a kilometer of good kayaking ahead of you and maybe more, along with some side creeks. I saw a beaver peeking at me from under a log, a couple of turtles, and an annoyed duck wimming underwater ahead of me. I had no idea what was in the water until the duck popped up!

Eventually you find yourself kayaking alongside a farmer’s field and then you hit another fallen log situation.

This is probably the place to stop, but I portaged ahead until I hit a set of culverts in a farmer’s field.

The creek continues through the farmland, but I headed back to the Jock.

Ford

Back at the river, you’ll eventually hit a farm’s ford across the river - it looks like a small rapids.

Early spring you can just kayak over but by June you'll need to get out of your kayak to get past in. I suggest doing this on the right-hand side as you face downriver.

I saw a couple of beavers near here.

Turtles turtles turtles

Up-and-downstream of the ford takes you into some meaty turtle sighting area.

First some little (painted?) turtles:

And then a couple big old snappers:

Train Bridge, Moodie Drive, and rapids

Eventually you will see a train bridge in the distance.

Moodie drive is just behind it

And then soon you hit more rapids - not easy to see in the photo below. It definitely looked like it would not be much of a deal to continue down the river, although a portage would be required to get back up.

It was getting late so I had to turn around… with a big smile on my face after one of the best kayak outings of my life.