I had hoped that the crappy weather would have cleared itself out with the passing of the storm the day before but when I opened my tent-fly and climbed out I was greeted with more gray sky and misty rain. This was to be our moving day so we all set about cooking up and eating breakfast, striking the camp, loading up the canoe and hitting the water once again.

We went back the way we came; crossing Strup Lake into Kekekabic Lake. We had the wind favorably behind us on the big water so we made up a quick sail using a tarp and some found dead trees. Our time on Kekekabic Lake was tiring however. The rain kept doing the on-again, off-again, thing and we spent most of our time wearing rain gear and being pushed around (because of the sail) by the wind.

We reached the end of Kekekabic Lake around noon after a late start and the rain finally decided to give us a break. I was able to take some photographs of some of the toilets along the way and to get some pretty “moving water” shots of the streams that flow into Kekekabic Lake from the ponds flowing out of Eddy Lake. We were moving slowly though (due to being sick of the rain by this point) and the Kek Ponds portages tired us out considerably.

We made it to the last pond before the sky let loose and it started to rain properly. Not wanting to paddle in the rain we gave up on our destination (South Arm Knife Lake) and started to look for the first campsite that was open; which we found on the south side of Eddy Lake.

The rain was really starting to come down by this point and we rushed to set up camp. I quickly strung up all the lines I had in an effort to make a tarp shelter that we could store all our bags, as well as sit and cook, under. Gopher and Matt put up Gophers tent (it is hard enough to set up one tent in the rain so we decided not to set up mine) and got the rest of the camp in order before joining me under the tarp, where I had started to cook up some food (potatoes, rice and noodles) and make a comfortable lounging area.

We sat under the tarp for the rest of the day avoiding the rain as best we could. We joked about how shitty the weather was being as we ate and smoked cigars. It was another cold day so we also cooked up some water for tea, hot coco and coffee. There was nothing to do for the most part (none of wanted to fish in the rain, we were wet enough) so we passed the rest of the afternoon by eating snacks and GORP and telling jokes, stories, and who knows what else.

We all crammed into Gopher’s tent (a Eureka Mountain EXO 3) near night fall. We had all crammed inside of this tent before (on the Ashdick Lake portage in 2006) on our first trip to the BWCA so we knew we would fit. It turned out, however, to be a shitty night. The tent pad was not level and we kept sliding off our sleeping pads. I kept waking in the night with wet feet from the condensation and because my feet were at the lowest corner of the tent. It was not a restful night for any of us.