Thursday, September 08, 2022
Our camp on the north arm of Quetico Lake was across from the spot where McAlpine Creek enters the lake and we'd seen the swans. As we were breaking camp and getting ready to leave, we saw a solo canoeist on the other side of the lake coming from the creek. He was the first person we'd seen in three and a half days. He paddled off in the general direction we were planning to go. The general direction we were planning to go was actually a change from our pre-trip plan. We were still ahead of schedule and had decided to take a slightly longer route than our original plan. Instead of portaging into Cirrus Lake right away, we planned to go down the north arm of Quetico Lake and portage into Cirrus further west. This was a little longer, but we had time to spare. In addition, there were pictographs along the north arm that we wanted to see. (Note: most pictographs in Quetico were painted on cliff faces above the water with red ochre and fish oil probably about 500 years ago by the native peoples.)

It was fairly windy when we left our camp. However, we were soon paddling on the leeward side of an island greater than a mile long (>1.6 km). As we reached the end of the island, we could see that there was a long stretch of exposed water ahead with large whitecaps on it. We decided to pull up at the end of the island and take stock of what was ahead. The solo canoeist we had seen earlier had done the same. I hated to pull over at the same spot he had. Usually people on solo trips value their solitude, as do I. However, that spot was the prime location to evaluate the situation. We introduced ourselves and had a nice chat. His name was Jeff and he was a couple of days out on a 22 day solo trip. We compared maps, and I got some useful information. I had marked up my map with locations of campsites but we were now off our expected route, and I hadn't marked up the area we were in now, but he had. We were actually at a campsite on the end of the island. I was glad to see that there was a site close by on the mainland and still out of the wind. If we both decided we were wind bound, I was happy to see that I didn't have too far to go and didn't have to brave the whitecaps to get to a site of my own. Jeff, however, seemed like his stop was in large part to eat a little before tackling the waves ahead. He said that he had only been wind bound once in the last twenty years, and it seemed clear he had many trips and some long solo trips under his belt. As we watched the wind would sometimes lessen and there would be fewer whitecaps. But every time I would mention this to my wife, the wind would seem to answer oh yeah by blowing harder. Eventually, Jeff decided to push on. We stayed and watched a while longer but soon decided to stay there for the night. We'd only paddled for a half hour or so and less than two miles (maybe 3 km) that day. However, we were ahead of schedule and felt no need the push ahead.