I saw the Sept Chutes de Sainte Anne in a video about a year ago and have wanted to go there ever since. This amazing stretch of White Water is a hidden gem that has only been paddled by a few token Quebecers.

The 30 footer on the Malbaie, lots of water=lots of fun! (Photo by Steve Arns)

My journey started at home in Nova Scotia. I was there for a couple of weeks dealing with my teeth, or lack there of. (see pervious entry, All I want from Teva Mountain Games is my two front teeth ) I woke up at 3:30 am to catch my flight back to Ottawa from Halifax. Billy Harris met me at the airport and took me back to Beachburg, what a champ, he had to leave at five to be there on time. I packed up my stuff and headed to Montreal to meet Chris Gragtmans and paddle at Lachine, I was a Zombie, I wanted to go to sleep sooooo bad! Chris wanted to drive to Quebec city…unfortunately, we did. We woke up the next morning way to early and headed to the Sept Chutes de Sainte Anne, or what we thought was the Sept Chutes de Sainte Anne. We paid the entrance fee, took the shuttle, looked at it, took the shuttle back to the car, and proceeded to the actual Sept Chute de Sainte Anne.

Krusty firing up the entrance slide on the Sept Chutes de Sainte Anne. Imagine this with four times the flow!

We were luck enough to meet up with Steve Arns, Bob Butler, and Christy Thompson who had worked out permission with the park to run the falls…usually you have to pay a $100 fine per person. Meeting them was a pure coincidence since we were only the second group to run this section of the river. The river was amazing, seven really big drops all in a row, the only thing that would of made it better was more water…. Our call was soon answered, it poured that night.

I like the Pyramid wave, very nice! (Photo by Chris Gragtmans)

The next day we ran the Malbaie River and headed back to the Sept Chutes de Sainte Anne, the flow had quadrupled! With the three guys we had meet gone back to work Chris and I questioned weither or not we should run some of the drops since they would leave us walled in with no choice but to run some of the not so nice stuff. We decided we could always hike back out if we got to a point that looked bad and it worked out perfectly for us. The water was definitely really high but everything still went smoothly. After a successful creek mission we headed back to Montreal for a couple of days at Lachine.

Kelsey Thompson