Woke to sunshine and cloudless skies. We were on the water at 9:00, which is more typical for us. We paddled toward the portage into Montgomery, and near the portage saw two men in a canoe—first people we'd seen since Sunday Lake the afternoon of Day One! The wind was strong, so there was no chatting as we dug in with our paddles. The portage into Montgomery was steep and narrow. At the top of a hill was a large tree across the trail—I had to push the canoe onto the tree, walk around the tree, then pull the canoe on through the blockage. We had lunch on an island in Montgomery, then headed for the creek with pictographs. We decided we'd hike to the picto site if there was a clear trail to them. There isn't. I bushwhacked ~30 minutes, but never found a cliff or trail. We need to go back with clear GPS coordinates for the site.

Paddled the length of Montgomery into the wind. After portaging into Shelly the wind was light until we approached our prospective campsite for the night. There the wind was a gale across a worn and exposed site, so we elected to go further, even though it was 3:00 and continuing meant four or five more portages. We portaged into Kahshahpiwi Creek, and hoped to portage into Heronshaw Lake, but couldn't find the portage. We continued down Kahshapiwi Creek, whose portages weren't bad, just time consuming. At 5:45 we stopped at a site in Cairn Lake we'd used years ago and quickly set up camp and started dinner.