So this is the day! We make pancakes and grill salami for breakfast and then get ready for the departure. Fly through the river and get to Sunhigh again. I choose the southwest side and plan to walk straight west and hope to hit the top of Sunlow…pending the river which I assume is bog. It is discovered at this point that no one brought a compass :/ Slightly annoying because I cannot remember a time that I didn’t have mine in my personal drybag that I bring almost everywhere in the bwca. I had my phone so I checked to see if it was reading our location with any decent accuracy. Turns out it was pretty spot on so long as I could keep the battery life decent. We crashed onto the shore and pull everything a decent ways into the woods just in case someone came by we didn’t want them to see anything.

So in the middle of the river there appears to be a pond and that was the direction we aimed for. First walk in we did not carry anything. Had to make sure we could do this. I took a couple decent falls annoyingly as that is uncommon for me but everything was like a sponge so it did not hurt except when my one leg went through the moss into a hidden hole. That was a tad bit scary but still unscathed. Outside of the uneven squishy terrain it was fairly easy to walk through all this stuff. We made it to the pond and it is complete bog. Not a great way to go in cold weather. We follow what is some kind of shoreline to the southwest end of the “pond”. Once at that spot the river is quite wide and the beaver dam that is holding it in is about 2 inches wide and also not a great idea to cross. But we are almost 3/4s there I estimate and we all decide it is time to get the gear. My father is a little worn out so we tell him to stay in the area and we will be back with poles, paddles, canoes, and most importantly water as it is a ton of work walking through the sponge woods. Feels like 2 feet of snow.

The three of us grab everything that we think we need and just one canoe and plan to take turns carrying it through the woods. I lead the way with the phone and try to choose the best path for Zac who is carrying the canoe. My other brother Tony has to help at times find passable areas as its near impossible to take the same route. WE make it back to the southwest end of the pond and put the canoe in to cross the river. My dad has wandered on the wrong side of the river and is a long ways away. The river paths do not extend to him and it appears he is waist deep in water. So I drop Tony and Zac off on the west side of the river and then I push the canoe as close to my dad as possible. He is drenched but he is having a great time. Also the temps must be hitting 50s by now… or at least it feels like it.

The three of us grab everything that we think we need and just one canoe and plan to take turns carrying it through the woods. I lead the way with the phone and try to choose the best path for Zac who is carrying the canoe. My other brother Tony has to help at times find passable areas as its near impossible to take the same route. WE make it back to the southwest end of the pond and put the canoe in to cross the river. My dad has wandered on the wrong side of the river and is a long ways away. The river paths do not extend to him and it appears he is waist deep in water. So I drop Tony and Zac off on the west side of the river and then I push the canoe as close to my dad as possible. He is drenched but he is having a great time. Also the temps must be hitting 50s by now… or at least it feels like it. My dad and I park the canoe where I dropped the other two off at. Luckily we are on some game trail highway. Almost like walking a trail in a Duluth park. Super easy and nice. I give a shout to find out their location and it is way farther north than anticipated. I try to cut west but it is immediately clear why they did not choose that direction. It is all bog and tons of water. So we head north. Zac meets us right before we turn west. He tells my dad the direction to Tony and he tells me we have to go get the canoe and gear. So back to the pond area to load up. He again carries the canoe while I get the leftovers that Tony didn’t take. Cut back to where Zac met us right before I was about to cut west to the lake. This was by far the hardest part to walk in. I have zero idea how he even did it with a heavy canoe. It felt like 100 yards of walking through 4 feet of snow… it’s the only thing I can compare it to. Every step was a nightmare and wet and you sank in the moss. But we made it! The lake. We all load into one canoe and paddle around. I grab a rock and take depths every so often. I also caught a pretty nice pike. My brother also had a decent sized pike he pulled in. So definitely fish here. The deepest depth I took was about 9 feet. I am sure some areas go to about 12 feet but I am not sure if it goes deeper than that. We did a circle and then found an island where we all laid down on. Sun was out and it was a perfect day. We decide we can stay until 4pm and then we have to head back before it gets too dark as no one brought a flashlight outside of my phone which is already getting low on power. We paddle around some more and then depart.

Tonights dinner is fish and rice so once on Wonder we have to start fishing for our food. We pull in a ton of smaller pike. We decide 3 will probably be plenty. Drinks and then bed.