One of the most legendary and definitely one of my favourite paddles of all time was the search for the Tunnel of Love. Around the Niagara District, there are wooden signs placed all over the rivers and harbours. Some a directional markers, some are high water marks but none is mysterious as this one.

As an interesting side note: a few years ago when the water levels were high all over the Great lakes, the killer swan sign was washed away. That summer, we happened to notice it in the back of a guys pick up truck at Jordan Harbour and asked him why he had it. It turned out it was the mysterious sign maker. He had made a new sign to replace the damaged one, and was on route to replace it. But not before he fixed the sign in the Harbour.

For those of you wondering about the killer swans route, this is the same launch spot as the 15 Mile Creek post. The killer swan post is the route I followed here. If you go in the direction of the tunnel of love, usually there is a massive beaver dam that is pretty much impassable about 400m up the creek. On this incredibly lucky day, it had been opened up by someone with a chainsaw. After years of wondering, we could finally explore.

There were quite a few obstacles to get through but once we rounded the first corner, it really opened up and the scenery was just awesome. I felt so lucky to finally be able to do this stretch. After we wound our way through the many trees and logs, we paddled up to the first tunnel. The tunnel’s lore states that it is made of the same stone as the Welland Canal, it is large and in a wall on the side of a hill.

It just didn’t seem right, it doesn’t fit the description at all. We need to keep looking. After another few KM, we got a glimpse of a wall….on the side of a hill… wow, we found it! HOW COOL IS THIS!

It’s not a very far distance from the launch, so we decided, we should keep exploring. The scenery was just stunning and we even found a cool little rapid to mess around in.

There were no shortages of logs to weave through. Amazingly, we didn’t have to get out of our kayaks. After a bit of squeezing, we found a small rapid. Naturally, we played around in it for a while.

Again, it seemed like we could keep going, so we did.

I am sure if we went over this small tree, we could have kept going, but it was getting dark and we didn’t want to get wet. So it was time to head back. We had some really good luck spotting birds and stopped to look at the tunnel again.

Notes:

• This paddle isn’t that long, you can combine it with 15 Mile Creek if you have the time.
• I am making no promises that it will be doable. It depends on the log jams.
• In the spring during the melt, this would be sweeper city. I would definitely not do it if the water wasn’t flat.
• Kate is not my gf/wife/date/valentine hahah, I can’t believe I had to say that.

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This trip would require a minimum of level 1 or higher skills depending on the conditions.