Monday, July 19, 2021 The plan is to get to Oyster Lake stay a night there then go up to Lady Boot for a few nights on LLC and then paddle LLC over and down through the Boulder River, Agnes, and out Nina Moose. We are up and at it early and get going towards the portage to Ruby lake. This 265 rod portage certainly felt long but its not too bad. You walk along a beaver pond for some of the distance and it does climb a bit but it’s a pretty walk. We are both double portaging, so we leave the kids at the other end and head back to get the other packs. After finishing up we load up and head across the lake to the Hustler portage. The portage is super short.

Hustler is a beautiful lake and hopefully Ill be back to stay there. Noah catches a decent pike trolling across the lake.

Upon getting into the bay where the portage to Oyster is I see two people on the portage just finishing it. They are USFS folks and when they see us and we get closer I got the feeling they were going to tell us something important. The guy who seemed in charge asked what day of the trip we where on and then was like “So I assume you haven’t heard of the closure order?” Austin and I looked at each other and we both knew it was game over for this trip. The guy was very nice and apologetic about it. He advised us to at least get to Nina Moose tonight then exit the next day understanding that from Hustler to exit is a push with kids along. It turned out this guy married a women who grew up not far from our hometown and actually knew the wife of one of my Dads employees. We thank the rangers and wished them safe travels.

So here we are with a still very heavy food pack and a long way to go to get where we need to be with the longest portage ahead of us. We get going all along looking to the sky as we walk. Distant thunder becomes not so distant and by the time we are on the Oyster lake side of the portage its clear we are going to get hit. We are fortunate that we're on this side of the portage as the topography really blocked much of the wind and we were able to ride out the storm under the canoe. We later learned that a guy drowned on Loon Lake in this same storm.

Its about 11:00am when we are able to start our way across Oyster. We decided to book it out in one day as a stay at Nina Moose Lake didn’t appeal to us. We made our way through Agnes and down the river not seeing anyone until the 2nd portage from the takeout. It was a large group of younger 15 -17 year-olds. We eventually got ahead of them on a portage and then the next group we saw heading out was a crew of Stu Osthoff’s finishing up there carry to the parking lot. Stu speaks often in his magazine about how he brings gallons of milk and lots of fresh food on his guided trips. It was apparent these guys didn’t appreciate having to carry fresh milk and milk jugs of ice out of the park. We had our heavy packs too. At the end of the portage near the parking lot the Sheriff had put a road closed sign in the middle of the trail and yellow tape across it. He then took down our names. He talked deer hunting with Noah and Brody while we went down for our second trip. Austin and I were beat. That’s as much paddling and portaging as I’ve ever done in a day all with a food pack that was still nearly full. Lynx to Oyster to Nina Moose EP is a jaunt by my out of shape standards.

Not wanting to go home so soon we decide to stay a few nights in Crane Lake. We had Andersons move the truck from EP14 to EP16 so we had to go and pay the bill anyway. After settling the bill we went over and talked to Beth at Pine Ridge Motel. We have stayed here numerous times before and hoped she wasn’t booked up. I explained our situation and she moved a group to the cabin they have and put us in a motel room. Beth is awesome and I so appreciate her being able to accommodate us. After showering up and making the required calls home we went on down to Trails End Resort to eat. They have some really good burgers and we usually hit them up whenever we are on this side of the BW.