Wednesday, July 28, 2021 - Our final morning started a bit frustrating because my MSR whisper-lite stove would not ignite! After the pre-heating phase, I couldn't get the burner to fire for more than a few seconds. No hot breakfast! No Coffee! Oh well, I could tell my girl was excited to get home to Mom and the dog so we had some granola bars and started to take down camp.

During the takedown, I had a dilemma... While hanging the food pack, the rock I tied my rope to became wedged under a branch and I tried everything I could to get it down. It was so lodged in place that I was able to use it as the anchor to hang our food pack for the entire stay. The problem was, I couldn't get it down. I tried everything I could short of climbing the tree. I just wasn't going to risk injuring myself. So, in the end I had to cut the rope and leave it hanging from the tree :( This kills me because I believe in the 'leave no trace' principles but I didn't know what else to do. The struggle to hang a pack plus issues like this has got me seriously considering other options. 1) Barrel tied to a tree away from camp or 2) Ursak tied to a tree away from camp. I welcome thoughts and ideas.

We were on the water by about 7:30 heading back to Baker Lake. The final morning was beautiful. The water was like glass and it was a real treat to see how far my girl had come with her paddling. We also learned our lesson from the way in and both wore our water shoes. Knowing we were going to get wet made it much less of a pain.

By 9:30 we were driving away from the landing and heading back to Sawbill to return our gear.

Other Notes: * Traffic: Kelly lake is pass-through lake so we did have regular traffic past our site but it didn't bother us it all. It didn't feel like too much at all. Other than people paddling by our site we only saw/talked to 2 other groups. 1 on the portage from Burnt to Kelly and the other as we pulled up to the landing at Baker Lake.

* I brought waaay to much food. I probably could have cut out 10 pounds at least! I brought 'options' because I wanted to make sure my little girl was happy but I ended up packing most of it out.

* I am buying a weather radio before my next trip in September. * My new Helinox one camp chair is fantastic. I will never go again without it. I'm getting older and having a chair with back support at the end of a long day is worth the 2 lbs.