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Sunday, June 17: (22 km paddling, 1.5 km portaging) Most of the group was up around 7:30. Gillian and I slept/drowsed on. I was waiting for Gillian to get up and start cooking bacon. Gillian was waiting for me to say "Time to get up!". Around 8:30, Brent stuck his head around the corner and said "30 minutes to departure!". I got up, got the last little bit of coffee and started packing. By the time Gillian crept down to the fire, the breakfast food had been packed. We had thoughtfully left out 2 packages of instant porridge and a bagel for her. The porridge was a good idea, but the bagel may not have been. She decided to eat it while enroute... which meant that she stopped paddling to take a bite. I should know better than to give her an excuse to stop paddling. We started paddling around 9:30. Which wasn't anywhere near as late as it could have been. Our goal was to be at our next site by late afternoon, so we didn't want to get away too late. At this stage, everyone was feeling a little battered and bruised from the previous day. That's the price you pay for the portaging. But it was only a 20 minute paddle to the first portage, a pleasant little scamper, only 300 meters. This is in sharp contrast to my first time through, when Brent and I were unable to find the portage trail and were in a serious rush. That time we blazed our own trail. Not an easy thing, and far too easy to get lost, or worse yet, lose your canoe (yes, it is actually very hard to retrace your steps and it wasn't easy to find the canoe once we had dropped it off).
Where do you think the portage is? (click for a better view!) Kavanaugh is a nice lake with turquoise water. But, in our cloudy conditions, it was hard to notice the difference. Another hour of paddling took us to the next portage. Another hour and we were done the portage. The final (?) portage of the trip. We were all thrilled. After the abuse of the previous day, everyone's portaging capabilities or perhaps pain tolerance, were diminished.
Warren and Gillian: Last again. We pulled out onto Nipew Lake and headed for Boyle Island. It has a nice beach for a picnic. Lunch had originally intended to be bagels, with cheese and salami. Brent, Jason and I ate that. Gillian went for leftover kabobs, cooked the previous evening. Mike went for leftover hotdogs. Howard skipped the salami.
A wonderful place for a picnic. More easy paddling to Hayman Lake. As we went down the fast water joining the two lakes, I had Gillian try out a few whitewater type strokes and we successfully spun into several eddies. Once we hit the real rapids, just big bumpy boulders gardens, there really wasn't anything to do but sit in the middle and go bump-bump through the small waves. Not even a chance of getting wet. In previous years, we have gone down these rapids with 4 canoes lashed together, sail still up. We hit Hayman Lake and had another hour to paddle. Even though it was only 3 pm, people were starting to drag a bit. We arrived at the campsite at 4:30, with lots of time left for fishing. The hat rush was on. This time, Brent got the best site. I found another nice site, soft but bumpy. Gillian ended up sleeping in a long trough, while I was up along a ridge. But the moss was so cushy that it didn'r really matter.
Tent all nestled down in the moss. We set up our tents. I cleaned out a path through the deadfall around my tent. Something had come through and knocked down a lot of pine trees. Camp was ready. We had no need for a fire yet and the weather was finally decent for a change. People were starting to notice that they might now be a little sunburnt... Gillian wanted to start fishing right NOW, so Brent, Jason, Gillian and I got set up and started fishing. Mike, normally an enthusiastic fisherman, was desperate to try out his new spray cover. So, he worked alone getting it installed on his canoe. Mike was really looking forward to pounding through big waves without the canoe filling with water and swamping. Meanwhile, back at the fishing zone, the 4 fisher-people were pulling out a fish almost as fast as we could cast our lines in. Brent caught the same tree multiple times. Gillian, Jason and I learned to grab our own fish, rather than have Brent do it everytime. We caught and kept 8 big one Walleye, throwing back many small ones, and several Jackfish. This seemed to be a sensible time to stop, even though we were nowhere near our catch-limit. This was more than enough for a meal, even expecting Mike and Gillian to eat twice what a normal human being could.
Brent: 15 pounds of pickerel! So, the action returned to Mike in the backwater. I insisted that Mike and Jason tip once in calm water. It is no fun learning how to get out from inside the spray cover in a rapid. Mike was reluctant to get wet, having no doubts about getting out. Jason was willing. Eventually, Mike was talked into it, and Jason discovered that the spray cover did not allow him to kneel. If he did manage to kneel, he might never get out. So, they paddled out and tipped. Slowly at first, then SNAP, they were over. A moment of silence, then a large BUMP, then two heads came up. Mike looked fine, Jason looked stunned. We asked Jason if he was okay. He just looked at us, with his eyes wide open. We asked again. Still no response. It turned out that he was mostly shocked by the cold water, and found himself unable to speak. The loud bump had been his head hitting the canoe as he tried to get out. Getting out hadn't been a problem for either of them, but then again, it wasn't as easy as Mike had expected. Good thing to practice.
Mike and Jason: Going, going, gone! I couldn't resist having the chance to play with a spray-covered canoe. I went out, tried leaning it way over, and sculling to keep it upright. Things worked just great until I had it leaned up at 90 degrees, when it fell over on me. Without thigh-straps, there was no way to hold yourself in the canoe, or in this case, the canoe away from me! So, I got out, scrambled on top of the canoe, and paddled back to shore. And repeated the whole thing one more time, just to see if I could "flick" the canoe back upright. Strike 2. Although this sounds like a futile exercise, the practice was invaluable for my solo run the next day.
Warren: "Hey, no problem"
Warren: "Okay, maybe a small problem..."
Warren: "Rats..."
Warren: "That was fun. Anyone else? No? Why not?" I went to my tent to change into warm clothes (and an LONG warmup session, lying under my sleeping bag). The rest went and filleted fish. Mike got the fire going, and started cooking. He cooked all 5 pounds of pasta and Brent's old dried spagetti sauce. Then they started cooking fish ala Gillian. This means that you add butter until the fish fillets float. A full half-pound of butter was consumed this way. I didn't come out of my tent until the fish was almost gone (fine by me!). Although opinion was universal that the dried pasta had lost all flavour after being dried, taken on a canoe trip, taken home, frozen for a year two, then brought on this canoe trip, I still wasn't going to eat fish. It wasn't that bad, and I had two bowls of it. Everyone else ate plain pasta, soaked in butter that ran off the fish on their plates. Mike and Gillian both struggled to finish their last bit of fish. Neither made it. There was also a quart of spagetti sauce and a huge amount of pasta left. Shame on us! I ate a bunch of cookies to get a new flavour into my mouth... The sun started to set. It continued setting for the next 4 hours. By midnight, it still hadn't finished setting, so I went to bed anyways.
The view from our campsite.(click to enlarge) The rest of the gang stayed up and attempted to finish off the booze. Not an easy task, and if anyone had succeeded, they would have been running rapids the next day! |
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