Friday, July 6 - Day Five

Now into the big water, easy-paddle portion of the trip, we had plenty of time to cover the small remaining distance so our goal for Friday was modest - simply cross Insula. But we still wanted to get on the water early while it was calm, as Insula was perhaps the biggest water we'd cross on this trip. We got up, broke camp, ate a Clif bar, and were on the water by 7:45. As we first left camp, the water was like a mirror; as we passed through the channel onto the main body of Insula there were some small ripples on the water, but it remained calm, and the day was gorgeous. Especially after all the wind and all the traffic the day before, it seemed almost surreal to be in complete solitude and complete calm as we paddled south.

We made really good progress south, and we'd only been going about 45 minutes when - right by "The Rock" - the terrain radically changed as we entered the burn zone of the 2011 Pagami Creek fire. I'd only experienced the foreign landscape of the burn zone for the first time in May on a BWAC trail clearing trip on the Pow Wow Trail; for M, this was the first time in a burn zone, and she was struck by the strangeness of it.

Before our trip my wife had encouraged me to get a PLB of some sort, and part of the reason I decided to get one and chose the InReach Explorer+ was that I was a little concerned about navigating the various islands in the southern part of Insula, and I liked the idea of having a GPS map backup in case we ran into trouble; however, I've always navigated by map (and compass when necessary) and so M and I had resolved to *try* to navigate it without the GPS, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that we didn't have any trouble navigating it. As a parent, I was especially pleased that M's navigation skills had improved so much (thanks in part to Camps Menogyn and Birchwood) that in the couple of instances I wasn't completely sure, she was able to meaningfully assist in navigating. We arrived, without navigational issues, at the west portage off Insula at 9:30 AM and decided that we might as well cross to Hudson before stopping.

The portage from Insula to Hudson has substantial elevation change and at 95 rods it isn't short; and yet it has a reputation for being a spectacular portage, and I think we would agree. Especially because of the burn, it allows gorgeous views in many directions, most notably back toward Insula:

As we were approaching the Insula-Hudson portage we'd seen another person heading down the portage away from Insula, and as we reached the far side of the portage we found six young guys, three boats, and a bunch of gear all over the portage. They apologized for being in my way as I walked through their stuff out into the water, and set down our canoe. I heard one of them say, "That's brilliant - why didn't we think of that" but I have no idea what I'd done that was brilliant. I went back for my half-portage, and as usual M finished her 1.5 before I'd finished my 1.5; by the time I got back they were pushing off into Hudson. She mentioned some things that indicated that they didn't really know what they were doing, and once we were on the water we caught them really quickly, only for me to notice that every one of them was using their paddles backwards! Now, I'm a pretty outgoing person but I also don't like to call people out on stupidity; I waffled for a while and then asked M's opinion, and she agreed I should say something. So we pulled alongside them and mentioned as politely as possible that they were using their paddles backwards, and showed them how you're supposed to do it. The guys in the canoe right there laughed, one said "oh my god" and the other said, "where were you two days ago?" They then spread the news to their other boats, and they commented how much more useful the paddles were. I was glad they took it well. But it left me wondering what kind of outfitter hands out bent-shaft paddles to people who clearly aren't from northern canoe country without explaining to them which way to use the paddle - in the south people only use straight paddles, and it's hard to fault them for not knowing how to use them. Shame on the outfitter for not explaining.

Anyway, we were now paddling across Hudson Lake and getting hungry, it being about 10:00, so we wanted to find a site. We were deep in the burn zone and all the sites were burn sites, and I became a bit of a Goldilocks trying to find a good site, but M was game and we passed by all the sites on Hudson Lake proper without finding one we liked. The very last site before the first portage toward Lake Three was already taken, so we looped back to the site immediately before it, site 1376, pulling up on the landing at 10:30 after 8 miles of paddling. Though it wasn't among the best sites we stayed at, it was strikingly beautiful in its post-fire recovery, and we took several photos and videos of the site throughout the day. Some right after arrival:

It was still morning when we arrived, of course, and we hadn't had breakfast, so we did one of the things I love more than anything - we fixed breakfast after arriving at our new site. We had biscuits and gravy, bacon, and coffee, and even though there was no protection from the sun and the day was getting quite warm, the coffee was delicious.

With breakfast so late we decided to skip lunch, filtered a whole lot of water, and took the only sun shelter we could get in the burn zone, our Nemo Bugout bug shelter. The point of the site was exceptionally windy, and the ground was quite rocky, so we did have a bit of a struggle getting the tarp to stay put; apparently the wind exceeded the design specs from Nemo, as we did get a rip at one of the ridge tie points, but the shelter did its job and we had a good day of dodging the sun and the wind. I still managed to get a wicked sunburn, even with the shelter and plenty of sunscreen; it's hard to even imagine how exposed to the elements you are in the burn zone.

After a bit of a struggle over dinner - M doesn't like mashed potatoes but I'd thought I could get away with fancy mashed potatoes late in a trip, and it turns out I couldn't - the sun started setting. Sunset in the burn zone is perhaps the most beautiful of anywhere in the BWCA, as the sunset stretches across the entire horizon almost unhindered. We actually had a 360 degree sunset briefly, which I couldn't capture with my phone camera (unfortunately M's GoPro was dead by this point), but here are some pictures I got:

And here are some more that M took, you can see she has a more artistic eye:

We slept with views of water out both sides of our tent, and cool breezes blew through all night long, making for a fabulous sleep.

~Insula, Lake, Hudson Lake