2007 Flying Start to Quetico
by TrailZen
Awoke to cloudless skies and heavy dew on the tent. The site's eastern exposure let us dry gear before packing up, but still get on the water by 9:00. Because we're now so near the major entry point of Agnes lake, today's portages are wide, well-worn, and easy to spot. Portaged into Agnes, then paddled up the west shore to find Quetico's only petroglyphs, then north to an island for more pictographs. Turning back south, we started to fight winds that would last the rest of the day—never strong enough to generate big whitecaps, but enough to be tiring. Wind seems to funnel right up Agnes' big water, so we tried to get a break by portaging into smaller East Lake and found it windy, too. East Lake had seen a burn right up to the portage—we'd noticed some burn areas in Agnes, but nothing like in East. Took the Meadows Portages--560 meters and 970 meters—from Agnes into Sunday. Hit Sunday around 4:15—time to start looking for a campsite. Found a site on an island not too far from the portage. Weather that started with blue skies slowly became grey and overcast as we paddled today. Had dinner and crawled into sleeping bags early, setting a watch alarm for 5:00—we hope an early start will help us avoid winds on some of the big water we'll cross tomorrow.