Wednesday, September 05, 2018 We woke up to clear skis and it is a bit breezy so our loop could be interesting. We also need to get some more firewood, we love our camp fires. We have a nice big breakfast, pack up our day pack and off we go. 

Today our plan is to cross Gaskin into Henson, cross Henson into Omega, through Omega in Winchell. The breeze is making crossing Gaskin a bit of a chore going into the West wind. The first portage of the day is over 90 rods and will be the toughest one of the day. I will say, at this point in the trip my shoulders and back are struggling to get the canoe up and carrying it through these portages but totally worth it.

Planned on doing some fishing on Henson but the wind is pretty gusty and we need to paddle just to keep moving forward. It takes a lot of work to cross Henson and our arms are feeling it. We get over to Omega which is setup better with this wind to do a little fishing. I see why this lake is so popular, it is a very cool lake. We fish for about a half hour and manage a couple decent northern, but now we have been traveling for a good amount of time and we are getting hungry. So we decide to portage over to Winchell and find a campsite over there to have lunch. 

WOW......Winchell is a whole new ball game. Easily the biggest lake in the BWCA we have ever been on and just beautiful, so glad we came over here........but.......with the strong West wind it is rocking and rolling pretty good. There will be no fishing on this lake, we will need all of our attention just to keep the boat upright! First campsite we make it to we decide to stop for lunch, today we are having Packet Gourmet cheese spread and crackers which was awesome! After lunch we put on our life jackets and come up with the best strategy to get across the lake safely. The bad news is we have to be on our toes and make sure we don't get sideways in the waves, the great news is that it made for a super easy paddle. All we pretty much did was just course correct and we were cruising! Such a cool lake, but it is a bit intimidating. We cross the lake in good time, the longer we went the more comfortable we got with the waves. Once we got to the East end we found a little cove to do some fishing but got nothing. Coolest part of our trip is the fact that we had spent all day traveling and we never saw another person, every campsite we passed were empty too. I still wanted to collect some firewood so we got moving. The portage from Winchell to Gaskin wasn't bad, but when I got to the Gaskin side it was super mucky and I ended up sinking to me knees and it was struggle to not lose my portaging shoes. We headed over to the burn area and collected some more wood and at this point we have been traveling for 7 hours and I am ready to be out of the canoe. Time to jump in the lake and bath again, I am a sweaty mess! 3 baths in 4 days?? What is up with that?

The bad news is that when I left this morning I must have not closed the leech locker all the say and I lost all of my leeches, that is drastically going to hinder our chances for a fish fry! Oh well, we spend the rest of the night making dinner and sitting by the campfire! Stars are amazing tonight but we need to get to bed, tomorrow is moving day! 

    ~Gaskin Lake, Henson Lake, Omega Lake, Winchell Lake