The Little Fort Ferry has reopened although the North Thompson river was on the rise again on Saturday June 7, 2025.
Duncan McGrath is the ferry attendant for the Little Fort Ferry and told Black Press the river is back on the rise with the heat.
"It's just slowing coming up again about 10 centimetres over night and probably about five centimetres today. It's been a bizarre year this year. Long cold spring, not much snow."
McGrath keeps informed through the Environment Canada Hydrometric Data which records data from water stations throughout Canada.
"There's a station on Lemieux Creek, there's a station in Birch Island on the North Thompson River and there's a station just upstream from Clearwater," he said. "I can look up the water levels reported from those stations. What I find interesting is the Clearwater River is actually bigger than the North Thompson River. The drainage area is the land base that collects and flows into the North Thompson above Birch Island which is 4500 square kilometres. The Clearwater drainage is 10,000 square kilometres. Twice the size. It's fed by everything in Wells Gray whereas the North Thompson is inside the valley and has small drainages coming into it. We are at 450 cubic meters per second in volume on the North Thompson River here compared to the Clearwater River which is 750 cubic metres per second."
McGrath finds the Environment Canada Hydrometric Data search is a very helpful tool that provides information for all of the stations in Canada, calling it a "brilliant resource" for those interested in learning more about specific data as recorded and reported from water stations positioned strategically along our waterways.
