Day 8 Friday June 3 – Day 2 of Portage Trail (the right one this time)

May 25, 2016

• Wake Up Time: 3:30 am


• Departure Time: 5:00 am


• Distance Paddled: 3 kms + 4 kms portage (Total: 204)


• Total Paddling Time: not sure but couldn't have taken too long


• Weather Conditions: Very Good until we hit the current

Station temporarily out of service due to portaging. Please check again tomorrow!

Video sound is not static, it's the sound of those damned rapids. I hear them in my sleep every night.

The basic plan for the day was to hop into the boats and paddle upstream to the point that Theo told us about. This would knock off about 2 kms of portaging. The trail itself would be very close to the water if we could get to this calm pool out of the current. That was another bonus to help us along.

Leaving from our cabin.

So off we went. After getting a ways up, almost where we needed to go, we started feeling the current. At first we were able to manage paddling against it. But, shortly after, the current started getting much strong to the point where we were hardly able to move the boats forward at all. Marie and Arnie were ahead of me and I could see that they had almost come to a dead standstill. I quickly looked at the shore next to me while paddling and noticed that I wasn't moving forward at all. I started thinking that I wasn't going to be able to make it.

At that particular moment the kayak started veering left further out into the river and into the current. I shouted out to Maria and Arnie that I was losing it, more or less just to let them know that I was being turned around. I didn't think that they could do anything about it but, rather, I just wanted to let them know. As this was happening, Maria and Arnie managed to pull out of the current and into the calm pool area. They were in the clear as I was getting into more trouble.

My kayak had actually almost completely turned sideways against the current and started getting pulled to the other side of the river. I don't know how I did this but, somehow, I got the front of the kayak turned back upstream against the current (i.e. got it going straight again) and started to paddle as hard as I could. I gave it everything I could to get moving upstream. The kayak still wasn't moving forward as far as I could tell and, for a brief moment I thought that my efforts would be futile. Then, all of a sudden, it was as if the river had released me and the kayak started moving forward. Before I knew it I had made into the calm pool zone. I was actually beside myself when I made it there. Now that was an experience.

We got to shore and immediately found the portage/hiking trail. Without a doubt Theo was right on the money regarding the type of trail it was. We quickly realized that we would be up for quite a challenge.

Clearing some dead wood at the shore where we could get onto the trail. This is at the quiet pool area away from the fast moving current.

The start of the trail just above the water where we landed. This saved us 2 kms of portaging.

Unloading boats and getting set up to start portaging.

The trail looking ahead from our starting point. It was ok at first but eventually got too rough to use canoe and kayak carts.

Rather than going into a lot of detail about the portage, it would be fair to say that we completely burned ourselves out. I eventually had to carry my kayak over my shoulders for about 1 1/2 kms through some fairly rugged trail after the front handle on my kayak broke. All three of us had to go back and forth on this trail (four to five times) to carry gear and boats. Maria's hands got so sore that Arnie and I had to carry the canoe the full 3 kms (with many breaks). Arnie should not have done this but he did it. We had no choice. There was no other way out.

Maria did over 31 kms of hiking back and forth with full packs of gear. I did about 27 kms and Arnie did about 10 kms. Keep in mind Arnie's condition please. When Arnie and I got close to the weather station with the canoe, where we would set up camp for the night, I said to Arnie that we should consider taking a full day off tomorrow. He immediately, without hesitation, agreed that this is what we should do. This made the most sense because we were completely drained of energy at this point. There was no way that we could get up early and paddle in the morning. We still had to lug all the gear and boats from the weather station down to the launch point, another 200 meters. We weren't completely done at this point. The only question was whether or not we could convince Maria to do this.

Another noteworthy item to mention was that we were working so hard that day that we were drinking a lot of water to keep hydrated. Normally we would have pumped water from the lake/river through our water filters to avoid any diseases. But we were so tired that even the action of pumping water through filters every 15 or 20 minutes seemed arduous.

We had heard that the water in these lakes was so clean that drinking straight out of them should not be a problem. We took a chance and scooped water right from the running rapids section of the river into our water bottles and drank it. Everything is fine. We did not get sick. A risky thing to do I guess but this water is so fresh, right from glacial run off. Over the past 25 years I have taken drinks from clear mountain streams that come from ice fields or glaciers many times and have never gotten sick. So, given our circumstances, we felt the risk to be minimal.

We finally got the canoe up to the weather station and decided to pull out our camp chairs and just sit for a while. Maria, in the meantime, was back on the trail to get more gear. We decided that we should wait for her to come back to see how much gear was left on the trail and whether or not we needed an extra backpack to get the rest. This was a good decision.

While I was sitting in my camp chair after about 10 minutes, Maria finally appeared on the scene with her head down, looking completely exhausted. In fact, I think she was almost in tears. She told us that all three of us needed to go back with one backpack each to get the remaining gear about 1 1/2 kms back down the trail. So Maria took a small break and during her break Arnie talked to her about taking a full day of rest tomorrow. We told her that she was outnumbered on the vote and she conceded. After that we all got up with empty backpacks and did one final hike. This was the last of it.

We had to work so hard today that there was very little time to take photos. So, needless to say, there aren't many photos for this day. The following photos were taken up at the weather station in the evening when we were done eating dinner and sitting around our camp .

After all of this work Maria still prepared a great meal. We had chicken Shepherd's pie for dinner. She said that this was easy for her to prepare and that it would be easy to chew. Maria was right about "easy to chew" but it was also really good. After dinner we had some whiskey and relaxed for the rest of the evening knowing that we didn't have to break camp in the morning. The plan for tomorrow was to sleep in, relax, and take our time to organize our gear for the last part of the journey. Taking the day off tomorrow would be the best thing we could do.

We were very fortunate to have a ready made bear cache for our food that night. At this weather station was a small tower with a platform and a nearby ladder to allow us to climb up this tower. This small structure was high enough to keep bears from getting at our food barrel. Easy solution for us and, needless to say, we needed it to be easy, being as tired as we were. So that's it. Good night.