Trip Report, Day 3 and Day 4
Day 3: the beginning
We got up before sunrise at the cabin, made breakfast (scrambled eggs and grands cinnamon rolls.) packed up the food bag, threw everything in the Explorer and we were on the way to the Boundary Waters.
Having been to the same entry point 2 years earlier, we knew our way there and found it with no difficulty. As we were getting the canoe ready and all the gear situated in the boat, I noticed 2 canoes heading our way, and our canoe was taking up most of the launch area. I picked up one end of our boat and started dragging it back. I tripped over a rock, fell backwards and smacked my head on the ground. As I was falling, I thought “great… I'm going to get a concussion and the trip is over.” Fortunately, where my head hit was relatively soft, with loose gravel. No damage done. We talked to the group that was coming out as we were putting in - a family with three young boys. They were very nice folks.
Day 3 was set to be our difficult day. Little did we know how difficult it would be. We decided that we would cover as much ground (water) as we could in order to make day 4 and 5 as leisurely and enjoyable as possible. It started off easily enough, Lake Kawishiwi was as smooth as glass, and there was no wind. But that turned sour soon enough. Lake Kawishiwi is very difficult to navigate using the maps we had. It is full of islands and inlets and points, a good number of which do not appear on the map. We got turned around and wound up on the other side of the lake from where we were supposed to go to catch our creek up to Square Lake. It took us several minutes to figure out where we were and where we needed to go. Once we got two points of reference on the map, we got it straightened out and were off and running. We finally found our creek and headed up north and east from Kawishiwi to Square Lake. This was the section that we were warned of by the outfitter. She told us that it would be craptacular (my word, not hers.) And lord, was it ever craptacular.
Photo: This was before it got really bad
Basically we spent the better part of a mile shoving our paddles into mud, heaving with all our strength, and moving the canoe one foot. Repeat. Over and over. This stuff we were in was about one inch of water on top of deep, smelly, sticky muddy muck. I suddenly was able to somewhat identify with the animals that got trapped in the LaBrea tar pits. Once we cleared that, we hit Square lake, which is quite small. A quick paddle across that, we had a small portage (20 rods or so) into Kawasachong lake.
Portage: A portage is how one moves one's canoe or kayak over or around water that is not navigable. When canoeing rivers, it usually means getting out of the river and dragging your canoe around rapids that are unpassable, around dams, or other obstructions. In the Boundary Waters, the lakes are not all connected, though they are generally pretty close together. But it involves getting out of the water, taking all your camping gear out of the canoe, picking up the canoe and putting it on your shoulders, and walking from one lake to the next. Then go back, pick up the camping gear and the food back and the paddles, and make the hike again. Portages are measured in rods, rather than feet or yards or meters. A rod is roughly the length of a canoe, which is about 17 feet. So a portage of 20 rods is 340 feet.
After Kawasachong, the portages were not nearly so friendly. From Kawasachong to Townline lake, a portage of 95 rods (1615 feet, or about 1/3 mile. Townline Lake was very small, hardly worth paddling over, then the mother of portages, 190 rods (or about 6/10 mile.) At some point during or before the big portages, it started raining - and I had neglected to put on my rain jacket until after it had been raining for a while. After this backbreaking section, we were on Lake Polly (where we camped 2 nights of the last trip) … Polly was a nice paddle. Even though it was raining, the wind wasn't blowing, and it wasn't cold. Polly is almost as difficult to navigate as Kawishiwi. We did lose our way for a couple minutes, but it was quickly resolved and we were moving north toward Mallberg. But not before we had to so a series of small and moderate and one large portage… most of them were 20-40 rods. One was 127 rods. The bad part about this chain of portages was that the paddles in between were tiny. Then we were on Lake Mallberg, which was our goal for the day. We wanted to get to the far end of the lake to set up camp, and had three potential campsites targeted for our use. We found one at about 7:00, quickly set up camp in the rain and cooked dinner (hot dogs.)
It's now 8:45 and it's been raining since before 1:00. I'm tired of rain. I suspect that we will be dealing with it for most of the trip. My clothes are wet - especially my shirts and my underwear. Fortunately, I brought several pair of underwear, but I neglected to pack my extra shirt. My short sleeve shirt is quick dry and my base layer long sleeve shirt is capilene and they should be mostly dry by morning.
We learned a lot of lesons from the last trip here. Packing lighter being the primary lesson. Despite the rain and the low water, today went very well.
Day 4
Didn't sleep well last night. Big surprise. I never do - sometimes I don't sleep at all on camping trips, particularly the first night. I actually fell asleep somewhat early, but things went south from there - I woke up around midnight, then dozed off and on (mostly off) until we got up in the morning. Fortunately, I had my Sony MP3 player to help pass the time and keep my mind from racing like it usually does when this happens.
I got up and immediately realized that this was the first time in several years that I had a 'warm' sleep on a cold weather night. I attribute that to my new sleeping pad, which is closed cell rather than open cell. Meaning if it gets poked or punctured, it still insulates against the cold and pads against the hard ground. The drawback is that it takes up a LOT of room compared to an inflatable pad like I used to carry. The next thing I noticed was that neither of my shirts dried at all overnight. I had hung them up inside the tent to get them as much air as possible. Unfortunately, the air inside the tent was already extremely humid, so there just wasn't much of a drying opportunity. But I put them on and went about the morning camp chores… cooking breakfast (not much to cook - I had a Cliff bar (cool mint chocolate) and some beef jerky - Chris had a pouch of granola with powdered milk) and taking down the tent and packing everything up. By the time we were ready to go, my shirts were mostly dry and I was feeling better about the day.
Photo: Chris
Photo: Me
We launched the canoe and headed for the next campsite, which was on the next lake over - which was actually the Kawishiwi River. But it didn't flow and where we were camping was much wider than a river. This site was to be our basecamp for the next two days. When I'm out camping, I'm much happier working from a basecamp than I am moving camp every day. It makes the morning and evening much easier, mostly the mornings. As most of you know, I'm not a morning person and don't like to get up early. So any morning where we don't have to break camp and pack everything up is a better morning. It took us about an hour to get from camp 1 to camp 2.
Photo: Getting from camp 1 to camp 2
We had 3 spots targeted as good sites on the map. We got to the first one and determined that even though it was nice looking and had a good view, none of the tent pads were flat or level or even enough to pitch a tent on. They were either sloped, or the ground was lumpy, or there were roots and rocks… so we moved to the next one and found what turned out to be an excellent site, with a view of the lake to the west, which we thought would give us a good chance to see a nice sunset or two. So we re-set camp, cooked lunch (the rest of the hot dogs) and headed off for Fishdance lake, which was a couple hours away. It was a pleasant paddle, only one small portage (with no camping gear, so it was one trip) and miles of good water. It rained about 15-20 minutes of every hour, but it only got annoying a couple times, and likewise, wind was a problem only a couple times. The problem that wind causes is that a Kevlar canoe is very light, and doesn't displace a lot of water - so it's easy to paddle on flat water - it moves fast. And it's easy to carry on portages because it's lighter than fiberglass, aluminum, or royalex. But it doesn't have a keel, so that plus the high profile of the boat means that it can get easily blown off course by a moderate crosswind or a quarter wind… and it takes a lot of work to keep it on course. When you're fighting a sustanined wind of 20-30 miles per hour, you have to paddle full strength on one side of the canoe for several minutes at a time… and the arms and shoulders quickly tire out just paddling leisurely on one side… switching sides frequently is the secret.
But mostly this day was a really nice pleasant paddle. Easily, my favorite day on the Boundary Waters so far. We saw some old Ojibwa pictographs on the Kawishiwi River heading into Fishdance lake, which was really cool - worth the whole trip, in my opinion.
Photo: Pictographs
Photo: Same Pictographs, better picture
Someone found what I believe to be a moose skull in this campsite, and left it on one of the logs that has been set up as a bench. It's somewhat unsettling, but has also been adopted as our unofficial mascot. Also, someone left one sandal.
Photo: Camp mascot
At some point today, I dropped my fleece hat. It was quite cold when we started off this morning, but it got warmer and I took it off and put it in my rainjacket pocket. I have no idea where I dropped it, but it is gone. I hope this doesn't become a problem throughout the trip - I'll need it mostly to keep my head warm at night.
Dinner tonight was pre-cooked chicken, which can be bought in foil pouches. We heated those up on my camp stove, put it in pita pockets with mayo, pre cooked bacon and Tabasco sauce. Very tasty - that'll be a big player in future trips. After dinner, we tidied up the camp and stargazed for a long time, just chatting and relaxing. We saw 3 shooting stars. After a while, we got cold, dove in the tent. I took some nyquill, put the earbuds in and and now I'm ready to fall asleep to the sounds of Rush.
Photo: At a portage on Day 4
Photo: A little fall color
Photo: Camp 2
Photo: Me, waiting for the sunset
Photo: Chris, contemplating the sunset
Photo: Said Sunset
We got up before sunrise at the cabin, made breakfast (scrambled eggs and grands cinnamon rolls.) packed up the food bag, threw everything in the Explorer and we were on the way to the Boundary Waters.
Having been to the same entry point 2 years earlier, we knew our way there and found it with no difficulty. As we were getting the canoe ready and all the gear situated in the boat, I noticed 2 canoes heading our way, and our canoe was taking up most of the launch area. I picked up one end of our boat and started dragging it back. I tripped over a rock, fell backwards and smacked my head on the ground. As I was falling, I thought “great… I'm going to get a concussion and the trip is over.” Fortunately, where my head hit was relatively soft, with loose gravel. No damage done. We talked to the group that was coming out as we were putting in - a family with three young boys. They were very nice folks.
Day 3 was set to be our difficult day. Little did we know how difficult it would be. We decided that we would cover as much ground (water) as we could in order to make day 4 and 5 as leisurely and enjoyable as possible. It started off easily enough, Lake Kawishiwi was as smooth as glass, and there was no wind. But that turned sour soon enough. Lake Kawishiwi is very difficult to navigate using the maps we had. It is full of islands and inlets and points, a good number of which do not appear on the map. We got turned around and wound up on the other side of the lake from where we were supposed to go to catch our creek up to Square Lake. It took us several minutes to figure out where we were and where we needed to go. Once we got two points of reference on the map, we got it straightened out and were off and running. We finally found our creek and headed up north and east from Kawishiwi to Square Lake. This was the section that we were warned of by the outfitter. She told us that it would be craptacular (my word, not hers.) And lord, was it ever craptacular.
Photo: This was before it got really bad
Basically we spent the better part of a mile shoving our paddles into mud, heaving with all our strength, and moving the canoe one foot. Repeat. Over and over. This stuff we were in was about one inch of water on top of deep, smelly, sticky muddy muck. I suddenly was able to somewhat identify with the animals that got trapped in the LaBrea tar pits. Once we cleared that, we hit Square lake, which is quite small. A quick paddle across that, we had a small portage (20 rods or so) into Kawasachong lake.
Portage: A portage is how one moves one's canoe or kayak over or around water that is not navigable. When canoeing rivers, it usually means getting out of the river and dragging your canoe around rapids that are unpassable, around dams, or other obstructions. In the Boundary Waters, the lakes are not all connected, though they are generally pretty close together. But it involves getting out of the water, taking all your camping gear out of the canoe, picking up the canoe and putting it on your shoulders, and walking from one lake to the next. Then go back, pick up the camping gear and the food back and the paddles, and make the hike again. Portages are measured in rods, rather than feet or yards or meters. A rod is roughly the length of a canoe, which is about 17 feet. So a portage of 20 rods is 340 feet.
After Kawasachong, the portages were not nearly so friendly. From Kawasachong to Townline lake, a portage of 95 rods (1615 feet, or about 1/3 mile. Townline Lake was very small, hardly worth paddling over, then the mother of portages, 190 rods (or about 6/10 mile.) At some point during or before the big portages, it started raining - and I had neglected to put on my rain jacket until after it had been raining for a while. After this backbreaking section, we were on Lake Polly (where we camped 2 nights of the last trip) … Polly was a nice paddle. Even though it was raining, the wind wasn't blowing, and it wasn't cold. Polly is almost as difficult to navigate as Kawishiwi. We did lose our way for a couple minutes, but it was quickly resolved and we were moving north toward Mallberg. But not before we had to so a series of small and moderate and one large portage… most of them were 20-40 rods. One was 127 rods. The bad part about this chain of portages was that the paddles in between were tiny. Then we were on Lake Mallberg, which was our goal for the day. We wanted to get to the far end of the lake to set up camp, and had three potential campsites targeted for our use. We found one at about 7:00, quickly set up camp in the rain and cooked dinner (hot dogs.)
It's now 8:45 and it's been raining since before 1:00. I'm tired of rain. I suspect that we will be dealing with it for most of the trip. My clothes are wet - especially my shirts and my underwear. Fortunately, I brought several pair of underwear, but I neglected to pack my extra shirt. My short sleeve shirt is quick dry and my base layer long sleeve shirt is capilene and they should be mostly dry by morning.
We learned a lot of lesons from the last trip here. Packing lighter being the primary lesson. Despite the rain and the low water, today went very well.
Day 4
Didn't sleep well last night. Big surprise. I never do - sometimes I don't sleep at all on camping trips, particularly the first night. I actually fell asleep somewhat early, but things went south from there - I woke up around midnight, then dozed off and on (mostly off) until we got up in the morning. Fortunately, I had my Sony MP3 player to help pass the time and keep my mind from racing like it usually does when this happens.
I got up and immediately realized that this was the first time in several years that I had a 'warm' sleep on a cold weather night. I attribute that to my new sleeping pad, which is closed cell rather than open cell. Meaning if it gets poked or punctured, it still insulates against the cold and pads against the hard ground. The drawback is that it takes up a LOT of room compared to an inflatable pad like I used to carry. The next thing I noticed was that neither of my shirts dried at all overnight. I had hung them up inside the tent to get them as much air as possible. Unfortunately, the air inside the tent was already extremely humid, so there just wasn't much of a drying opportunity. But I put them on and went about the morning camp chores… cooking breakfast (not much to cook - I had a Cliff bar (cool mint chocolate) and some beef jerky - Chris had a pouch of granola with powdered milk) and taking down the tent and packing everything up. By the time we were ready to go, my shirts were mostly dry and I was feeling better about the day.
Photo: Chris
Photo: Me
We launched the canoe and headed for the next campsite, which was on the next lake over - which was actually the Kawishiwi River. But it didn't flow and where we were camping was much wider than a river. This site was to be our basecamp for the next two days. When I'm out camping, I'm much happier working from a basecamp than I am moving camp every day. It makes the morning and evening much easier, mostly the mornings. As most of you know, I'm not a morning person and don't like to get up early. So any morning where we don't have to break camp and pack everything up is a better morning. It took us about an hour to get from camp 1 to camp 2.
Photo: Getting from camp 1 to camp 2
We had 3 spots targeted as good sites on the map. We got to the first one and determined that even though it was nice looking and had a good view, none of the tent pads were flat or level or even enough to pitch a tent on. They were either sloped, or the ground was lumpy, or there were roots and rocks… so we moved to the next one and found what turned out to be an excellent site, with a view of the lake to the west, which we thought would give us a good chance to see a nice sunset or two. So we re-set camp, cooked lunch (the rest of the hot dogs) and headed off for Fishdance lake, which was a couple hours away. It was a pleasant paddle, only one small portage (with no camping gear, so it was one trip) and miles of good water. It rained about 15-20 minutes of every hour, but it only got annoying a couple times, and likewise, wind was a problem only a couple times. The problem that wind causes is that a Kevlar canoe is very light, and doesn't displace a lot of water - so it's easy to paddle on flat water - it moves fast. And it's easy to carry on portages because it's lighter than fiberglass, aluminum, or royalex. But it doesn't have a keel, so that plus the high profile of the boat means that it can get easily blown off course by a moderate crosswind or a quarter wind… and it takes a lot of work to keep it on course. When you're fighting a sustanined wind of 20-30 miles per hour, you have to paddle full strength on one side of the canoe for several minutes at a time… and the arms and shoulders quickly tire out just paddling leisurely on one side… switching sides frequently is the secret.
But mostly this day was a really nice pleasant paddle. Easily, my favorite day on the Boundary Waters so far. We saw some old Ojibwa pictographs on the Kawishiwi River heading into Fishdance lake, which was really cool - worth the whole trip, in my opinion.
Photo: Pictographs
Photo: Same Pictographs, better picture
Someone found what I believe to be a moose skull in this campsite, and left it on one of the logs that has been set up as a bench. It's somewhat unsettling, but has also been adopted as our unofficial mascot. Also, someone left one sandal.
Photo: Camp mascot
At some point today, I dropped my fleece hat. It was quite cold when we started off this morning, but it got warmer and I took it off and put it in my rainjacket pocket. I have no idea where I dropped it, but it is gone. I hope this doesn't become a problem throughout the trip - I'll need it mostly to keep my head warm at night.
Dinner tonight was pre-cooked chicken, which can be bought in foil pouches. We heated those up on my camp stove, put it in pita pockets with mayo, pre cooked bacon and Tabasco sauce. Very tasty - that'll be a big player in future trips. After dinner, we tidied up the camp and stargazed for a long time, just chatting and relaxing. We saw 3 shooting stars. After a while, we got cold, dove in the tent. I took some nyquill, put the earbuds in and and now I'm ready to fall asleep to the sounds of Rush.
Photo: At a portage on Day 4
Photo: A little fall color
Photo: Camp 2
Photo: Me, waiting for the sunset
Photo: Chris, contemplating the sunset
Photo: Said Sunset
posted by Jeremy at 10/03/2006 06:19:00 PM
2 Comments:
GPS? They're great.
Really interesting narrative so far!
Thanks for reminding me about the GPS! There was actually a GPS anecdote for the following day's update that I forgot to include. It's there now.
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