Tuesday, September 21, 2021
Day 4 – ‘Raingear Goes on TOP’ – The next morning was definitely cold but we were happy to be up and moving again. All the bacon was gone so we moved on to our oatmeal and backpackers breakfast. Our goal for the day was to make it to Ge-be-on-e-quet Lake and find a nice site. It felt good to paddle again after a day of sitting under the tarp.
Our first portage to Thumb lake was a nice gentle downhill portage. With all of the rain we got, it was like walking down a tiny rapids at some points along the trail. Thumb to Finger was shorter than what was marked. Basically we hopped from one rock to the next until we could put back in. The portage to Finger Creek was pretty as they get. I garden stroll with views of the babbling creek along the way. The put in was a challenge and I ended up going knee deep and soaking one of my boots. Hate that… I have wet shoes and dry shoes and I like to keep them that way.
As we paddled across Pocket Lake we could see a rain shower heading our way. No problem I thought… I put my raingear on top. Turns out… I buried my raingear on the bottom! I was about to get soaked and it wasn’t very warm. I learned my lesson. Double-check where you put the rain gear if there’s rain in the forecast. It rained on us pretty steady all the way from the entrance to Pocket Creek until the portage into Ge-be-on-e-quet. The rain let up as we paddled to find a campsite. The northernmost site wasn’t what we were looking for and the site to the southwest was taken. We ended up in the easternmost site and it was beautiful. HUGE Red pine trees throughout this elevated site. The largest was near the latrine and it was so big that two of us couldn’t touch hands from opposite sides.
We set up camp including the CCS tarp so we could get things dried out. Once camp was set up we set out for some fishing. I couldn’t bring one in but my buddy caught two eater size smallies. Fish for Dinner! The evening was calm with a nice sunset, but the weather radio had another frost warning for the morning.
Another new item in my gear list was an arborist’s throw weight and line kit. This is a game-changer. My previous method was the ‘tie-rock-to-rope-toss-and-hope’ method. If you’ve used that method, you know how tedious and potentially painful it can be. I highly recommend picking up an arborist’s throw weight and line. Our new method was to throw the light line over our branch with the weight. Then we would tie that line to our heavier duty bear pack line, pull it over, and tie it off. My bear pack rope has a pulley system on it so all we had to do was repeat that process on the opposite end and tie the pulley off at the right spot. Bear pack duty went from stressful to fun!
~ Lakes Visited: Thumb Lake, Finger Lake, Pocket Lake, Ge-be-on-e-quet Lake