It was another warm morning when we got up on the seventh day of our trip. As the sun rose it lit up the cliffs just west of our island -

Me enjoying a first mug of coffee but looking a little goofy -

Piwi still looks sleepy in this picture - she's not really a morning dog -

We tore down camp and hit the water by 9:15 - pretty early for us. We circled around the north side of our island to take a look at the other campsite on our way out. The people who were camped there were already gone. If we hadn't seen the camp was occupied when we bushwhacked over there yesterday evening, we would never have known we had neighbors a hundred yards away. I wonder how often we have thought we were alone in the wilderness when other campers were near by?

It took us about 30 minutes to paddle the two miles to the 210-rod portage to McNeice Lake. We last took this portage in 2005. Since then, the portage and lakes beyond had experienced a lot of fire activity, and we were eager to see how the area had changed.

Piwi at the landing saying goodbye to her namesake lake -

A bog stretches out behind the takeout -

The first leg of the portage skirts the south side of that bog up on a dry ridge -

Then you descend a bare rock slope to cross the bog -

The portage climbs back out of the bog, then goes through the woods to another drainage, which you follow upstream a good ways. Our previous time through here we had been going in the opposite direction, and I didn't realize how much more uphill there is going toward McNiece. It was definitely hot and sweaty work on this warm, humid, and mostly windless day.

The fire zone begins around where we started going up that drainage -

Some trees were killed, others were not. The understory was decimated, but that seems to have opened things up for the abundant wildflowers -

A giant pine that survived -

And one that did not -

After climbing a ways, the last leg of the portage descends to McNiece Lake, which seemed almost to steam under the hot and hazy sun -

Until the recent burns, McNiece was surrounded by one of the great pure stands of old growth pines in Quetico. The fire killed many of those old pines. But even in the most heavily burned areas, some granddaddies survived to tower above the future forest -

Here it seems the shoreline burned hot while the forest just behind was barely touched -

In some sections it looked like the fire had cleared out the understory but left the pines unscathed -

To me, McNiece is still a beautiful lake, and even more interesting than before. Sadly, the fire devastated several of the nice campsites on the lake (though if I recall correctly, at least one looked like it was still in pretty good shape).

From McNiece we crossed the 30-rod portage into Shan Walsh Lake (which is unnamed on many maps, including the one above). Fire had also raged through the forest around this portage, but a grove of old cedars at the Shan Walsh end was left untouched -

The portages into and out of Shan Walsh are both at the lake's south end, whereas most of the lake stretches to the north. Like McNiece, Shan Walsh is (or was) a lake of old growth pine, and we thought it would be fun to paddle off the beaten track up to the north end of the lake. Here again, many - but far from all - of the old pines had succumbed to the fire -

By the time we turned around and paddled back to the south end of the lake it was around 1:00. We were hungry and sweltering in the hot sun. Time to find a lunch spot in the shade. We pulled up on a small island with some shady rocks open to what breeze there was. There is a tiny primitive tentsite back in the trees on this island. While we ate lunch, Piwi went back to the tentsite to explore and came back chewing on a moose vertebra. When we investigated, we found a pile of old moss-covered moose bones (we returned Piwi's chew toy to the pile before leaving) -

After lunch we had three shorter portages to cross on our way to Grey Lake, where we thought we would camp. First up was a 30-rod portage into Yum Yum Lake, then a very short paddle to a 15-rod portage into Armin. The channel at the Armin end of the second portage was speckled with colorful lilypads and flanked by more large (and unburned) pines -

Monet in Quetico -

We enjoyed pretty little Armin Lake as we arced through on the way to our last portage of the day, 60 rods into Grey. It was only 3:00 when we got to Grey, but we were ready to camp. We were hot and tired, and going further would have required crossing Boggy Portage, which we were not eager to do right now. We also thought that if we stayed on Grey we might cross paths with our friend Jon, aka Banksiana, as he was planning to start his own Quetico trip around now and head in this direction.

We had camped once before on Grey, on the larger island in the middle of the lake. I recalled it as only a so-so campsite. But we were not aware of a better one on Grey, so we headed that way.

When we got to the island, the campsite was even less desirable than we remembered, particularly for current conditions, because the camping areas were mostly exposed to the hot sun. But like I said, we were not aware of a better site on the lake, so we decided to stay. It must have been in the mid-80s, so our first order of business was a swim. Man did that feel good!

While we were cooling off in the water, I noticed a solo paddler entering the lake from the direction of Boggy Portage - the first and only other person we saw today. I thought it might be Jon, but there was this weird white thing on the paddler's head that didn't look right, and he started paddling straight toward the portage to Armin instead of looking to see if it was us splashing around the campsite. So for a minute I didn't think it was him. But then we decided it must be and started waving our arms to get his attention. Soon he was headed our way and came into closer view. Okay, the white thing around his head was Jon's extra-wide Tilley hat - I had forgotten how, um, humorous that thing looks on him. As he got even closer to the island, Piwi started barking at him, until he called out to her and she recognized him. Then she jumped into the water and doggy paddled right up to his canoe, wagging her tail underwater the whole way. Piwi loves Jon - he's one of her favorite chew toys.

We all got back on shore and quickly turned to the subject of our substandard campsite. Jon took a look around and then suggested there might be a better site just down the lake. He went ahead to scout while we loaded our gear back up and followed behind. Sure enough, not far away there was a much better spot tucked away on the mainland where we probably would never have seen it. This site had good tent pads and much better shade, plus a giant rock that we climbed up after dinner to enjoy some whiskey. The only downside was that the swimming spot was one of those underwater moss-covered rock slopes that lacks all friction. It was hard enough getting into the water without slipping; getting out was almost impossible without tossing yourself up on shore belly-first like a walrus.

Incidentally, by moving campsites, we broke our streak of camping on islands this trip. Somewhat surprisingly, this was our first mainland campsite.

We enjoyed our evening of camaraderie and went to bed well after dark. The only downside, at least in retrospect, was that we forgot to take any pictures. But we did take some of Jon and the site the next morning, so tune in to tomorrow's episode for visuals.

Total distance traveled Day 7: 12.1 miles (including all trips across portages).