It was a much quieter night last night. No wind, no big lake noises like waves and water lapping, no trees rustling in the strong breezes. I woke up a lot during the night but did sleep better overall. There's a bird that starts singing before the light starts, he calls "twit, twit, twit" over and over. I have no idea what kind of bird it is.
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| Today's route |
The smile of the day was when LT got up out of his hammock. He uses a sleeping bag liner, navy blue. When he goes to bed it's quite the acrobatic effort to get the liner, the sleeping bag, the blue foam mat, his pillow and clothes all sorted out. This morning as he walked away from his hammock, he was trailing his navy blue liner behind him. The edge was tucked into the back of his pants, the bottom dragging on the ground. He was like a backcountry bride, LOL striding over to the firepit and I burst into laughter, poor guy. It's usually me doing something goofy.
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| Waking up to a foggy morning |
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| Nice bear bag hang |
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| Someone's getting scratched up |
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| Canoeing selfie |
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| Last look at Biggar Lake |
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| Some of the smaller waterways to negotiate |
As we were gathering our stuff, an older gentleman came out of the woods and greeted us. He was here with his wife, his 2 kids and their partners. A canoe camping trip is their tradition, they've been doing it for 30 years, only missing one year. That explained the large number of bags with 6 of them total on the trip. He'd carried one of the canoes halfway up and left it at the canoe rest (pictured below). On longer portages often a canoe rest is provided around the middle of the trail. It allows the carrier to set down the canoe without having to hoist it back up from the ground. Although LT is pretty adept at doing that.
Shortly after we started along a very nice trail, very similar to a hiking trail in Gatineau Park (it must have been a road at one point), we met the kids. They had carried bags to the portage end and were going back to get a second load. Mom was waiting at the other end.
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| Criss-cross on a canoe rest |
Meanwhile, we came to the portage end and LT had to wangle the canoe in the water (yes, that is an official canoeing term!) around the canoe that was there already and the bags strewn around all over the place. He managed to place it, we wanted to push off as quickly as possible. I took off my shoes and socks so I could stand in the water. LT is extremely gentle getting into the canoe at all times. This was the only time I thought we might flip in the shallow water when he was getting in. I think it's because he had an audience of 2 cute young women standing on shore.
The first order of business was to hang tarps so we had somewhere dry to hang out. The bug shelter tarp went up first, then the flappy fly was added to that space to give us more room to pile bags in an effort to keep them dry.
Once the rain stopped we started hanging the hammocks. We tried sharing a tree, as usual. However the second tree I was attached to wasn't quite thick enough. As I sat in the hammock to test it, the tree would bend slightly and I'd end up only a few inches from the ground. Again I tested it by sitting and that's when I fell backwards onto the ground. I'm not really a crybaby, but in that moment I was. "I hate my hammock!" I wailed as soon as I caught the breath that had been knocked out of me. I moved it over to 2 trees that were closer to the front of the campsite.
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| Second hammock location |
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| Great parking spot |
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| High rock campsite |
I thought it might be tough sleeping tonight with all that food in my belly. I didn't make a full dessert, instead I chose to make a single serving of the banana nut bread pudding in my Thermos for LT. It would be ready to eat and stay warm for whenever he felt like it. His belly was bursting like mine and he ended up having it the next morning as "breakfast dessert". I think that sounds like a wonderful new course to add to breakfast!
Today we saw another heron, a grouse in the woods and a chipmunk. The chipmunks seemed to be hiding out. I guess it's a very industrious time of year for them, putting away food for the winter.
A note about today's portages, when reading one of Kevin Callan's books he had described today's portages as really tough, uphill climbs. Yes we did increase in altitude, especially on the 2nd one, going from 376m up to 413m, back down to 399m over a 1,040m length. But I have certainly been on tougher hilly portages. I think this part of the park gets a lot of traffic and the portages are really well used. My worry was for naught.
Today's numbers:
Portage #9: 520m
Portage #10: 1,040m
Portage #11: 320m
Portage #12: 1,220m
Total portage distance for the day: 3.1 km
Total distance for the day: 7.6 km
Total time spent travelling: 4 hours
Other posts for this trip:
