Another early, beautiful Saturday
morning! We were doing well with the
routine, getting up, making tea, making the fresh lunch for later that
day. We opted to have Tim Horton’s drive-through for our breakfast sandwiches – that maple biscuit sandwich sounded
delicious! (Yeah, not so much so.) We headed out, hit the Tim Horton’s in Bells
Corners then made our way to the 417.
But the noise!
The horrible, awful noise that was coming from the canoe on top of the
car! The straps were vibrating so loudly
we had to yell at each other to be heard.
It was truly unbearable. We
struggled through this until we stopped in Cobden and LT decided to put a twist
in each strap. Aha! We’d been given valuable information in
disguise and did not recognize it until now.
We got back in the car, headed out on the highway and the noise was
gone! Phew!
The drive to Deux-Rivieres is much further
than getting to the Sand Lake Gate. I
had a 2006 version of a popular atlas to help give us an idea about how far
we’d gone and how much further there was.
It took several hours until we were off the highway and at the office
getting our permit. I used the bathroom,
last toilet I would get to use for a few days, I thought. Back on the gravel road, we went 18 km in to
the left turn off to Wendigo Lake. Wendigo is not in Algonquin Park.
We met our first obstacle on that road. Water from the swamp on either side covered
the low point of the road, not once, but three times. LT got out to test how deep the water was
before driving the car through. We parked
our car and realized that there were already a lot of people out on the
water. The parking lot was more full
than I expected. I pulled out my camera
as LT did his preparation. I grabbed my
backpack and carried it down to the lake.
There was a cement ramp here for people to put motorboats in (I
assume). Then I heard an “Oh no!”
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| Concrete boat ramp |
I get very excited about these trips and I
was trying to contain that excitement as we loaded up the canoe. I was taking pictures of daisies and the
lake, happy-happy! We finally got into
the canoe and out on the lake. Despite
the number of cars we’d seen in the parking lot, we didn’t see anyone on the
lake. We made our way down the lake to
the end, did the 180m portage into Allen Lake quite easily. Happy-happy!
We didn’t even have half the lake length to
go before our first black portage ever!
Yeah, this is not something to get excited about. They are tough and we were going to learn
that. We thought we’d learn it today,
but it was a lesson we’d learn even harder tomorrow. This one looked like it went straight up the
side of a tough hill. We did all our
carries as double carries today. This
portage was 665m and we could hear the North River cascading to our left. It was a bumpy portage, going from 310m to
340m just before the end. We set in to
the river.
This would be my first trip on this type of
river, marshy, winding left and right and left and right again, where you
wonder if you’ve taken a wrong turn. As
we approached the next portage LT suggested we go into the river just a bit,
tie up and eat lunch there. At first I
balked (I claim reflexes made me do it).
Once I realized we were going upstream and wouldn’t be tossed down some
impassible rocky rapid, I was okay with the idea and very glad we did it.
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| North River - mucky put-in |
The start of the portage was barely
discernible from the shore. We could see
the sign, but long weeds required some orientation to get onto land. This would be our longest portage we’d ever
done (tomorrow would exceed this one).
1305m, it went from 338m to 352m in height. It was more overgrown than what we’d ever
seen before. Baby trees growing up to
waist high filled the trail and we struggled with the heat, the bugs and the
slow progress. I had my homemade bug hat
on. I was wearing a long sleeved white
Columbia shirt, and I was getting warm.
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| So close but yet so far |
Out of the middle of nowhere, we crossed a
dirt road, with a practically brand new bridge over the river, still at our
left. We dropped our bags and had a bit
of a rest. LT decided to go back for the
canoe and I did some exploring. I walked
over the bridge, took pictures of the river, up and down. I decided to follow the rest of the portage
to see how far it was. It wasn’t! I went back and struggled to get my backpack
on. I can carry it, but picking it up
from the ground and putting it on by myself, is something I can’t do easily.
I had decided to bring my hiking poles
along for this trip (thank GOD!). I found
a small bump in the ground, lifted my bag onto it, sat on the lower ground with
my back to the bag and slipped my arms into the shoulder straps. Then I used my hiking poles to stand up. Did it!
I walked the rest of the distance to the portage end and tucked my bag
out of the way under a tree, one of the few dry spots. Another feature of black portages is the
put-ins. This one was a muddy one. I walked back to LT’s backpack. His is much heavier than mine. I needed a different strategy to get his on
my back.
I sat flat on the ground and put my arms
through his backpack straps. I couldn’t
lift it up on the same mound I used for my own bag. Fortunately I was alone for the contortions I
would go through to stand up with it.
First I rolled over onto my hands and knees with my hands being on
higher ground than my knees. I
straightened my legs and slowly pushed away from the higher ground to stand
up. Holy cow his bag was heavy! I carried it to the portage end and gladly
dropped it next to mine.
More than anything I wanted to get some
body parts into the rushing water to try to cool down. I went back to the bridge to see if I could
crawl down one side to the water’s edge.
No luck. I went back to the
portage end thinking I could walk over the muck to some rocks, by then LT was
coming back with the canoe. We had a bit
of a snack then loaded the canoe and continued on.
The river was the same as we’d experienced
before the portage, winding, the weeds and grass bending with the flow we were
paddling against. It didn’t seem very
strong, but it was pretty constant. We
had some distance to paddle, impossible to tell how far on the map with the
winding back and forth.
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| Underwater grass indicating the river flow |
Around one of
the earlier corners we saw him – a great, big male moose! He was on the right bank of the river, eating
his fill of plants. He immediately
started to cross to the left side of the river.
Just before the bank, he stopped and looked at us, almost to say “do I
really need to move for these guys?” He
did move, he climbed up on the bank and disappeared in the woods.
I had managed to get my camera out and got
some good shots. I had my small camera,
not my bigger DSLR. It’s pretty heavy
and I didn’t want to take a chance on this long of a trip with it.
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| My first moose-in-the-wild sighting - he's a beaut! |
We continued on the river, pretty thrilled
we’d seen that majestic, strong moose.
He would be one of three we’d see on this trip. After what seemed like hours, I could hear
rushing water around the corner. I got
excited - the next portage was a short one and would lead us into North River
Lake. Yahoo! Almost there!
Nope.
It was a beaver dam that was across the full river. There was no way except to climb over
it. We went from left to right back to
left to decide where to get out of the canoe and lift it over. This is something we’d never had to do
before. It was tough, but something we
could tick off the backcountry canoe camping list!
Another corner, more rushing water, more
false hope, another beaver dam. But by
now we were pros. We saw a moose at this
point in the river as well. By the time
we got over the dam he was gone.
Finally we came upon the portage. 75m in length, it had a campsite on it which
was as poor as the map advertised. We
put into the lake and paddled looking at the beautiful landscape. We decided on a campsite close to the portage
site into Merganser Lake, the first portage we would do tomorrow. The site had a lot of logs set up as benches,
and several tables at various heights.
It looked like there had been a blow down of a bunch of trees within the
last few years and the park rangers had made the most of the downed trees by
making them furniture. We went back out
in the canoe to get water to filter.
We looked at the site, trying to decide
where the tents would go. Because of all
the downed logs, we decided to not put up the mosquito shelter. LT would make a campfire to keep the bugs
away. They weren’t that bad so far. A bit of a breeze from the lake was keeping a
lot of them away. But they were
there. LT had brought his saw and a
newly purchased hatchet. We figured that
the campsites we’d be at wouldn’t have high traffic so there’d be more deadfall
for us to use for campfires.
I started the water filtration system
going, I was going to have to boil the water before putting it in the Nalgene
bottles we carried. I was very
lucky. When I first started putting
boiling water in my bottle, I foolishly picked it up by the open lid and the
bottle slipped out of the warmed noose of the lid and splashed the newly boiled
(and not cooled) water onto my face as it hit the table. I was fortunate the water cooled slightly
when it flew through the air and I was only very slightly burned. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
We had pizza for dinner. I had purchased an “oven” at MEC to use with
my stove. It came with a metal diffuser
that sits on top of the flame and a fabric tea cosy-like cover with a hole in
the top. It is designed to go over a
certain pot, which I didn’t have, that has a top on it where you place the
loonie-sized button style thermometer. I
couldn’t get it set up properly and we could smell the metallic fabric burning
slightly. We played around with it and
managed to cook the pizza without burning it too badly on the bottom. It was delicious anyways. Dessert was the favourite banana nut bread
pudding. We lingered around the fire and
went to bed around 10. It was going to
be a really long day tomorrow.
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| Pizza oven in action |
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