Thursday, August 24, 2023

If you've read this far, you can guess exactly what we woke up to, but there is hope as the forecast says its supposed to be clear skies by late morning and low 70's in the afternoon. The portage from Fat to Slim is long, but not hard in any way. There are a few downed trees to step over and one area with some steep rocks, but it's in better shape than many maintained portages I've used in the past. Jaden did get stung by some angry wasps that had a nest right above the portage trail, but we avoided them for the most part thanks to heads up from other BWCA.com members about them being there. We also did the 1 1/2 portage technique on this portage and for the rest of the trip. It was a huge time saver but will only work for us on days once the food pack is getting empty.

After the long portage, we paddled down a glassy Slim Lake to another longish portage into Little Loon. There are some rough footing areas on that portage but its really not too bad either. Once on Loon Lake we started noticing a lot of flying insets dead on the lake surface, but not like mayfly or similar hatches I had seen before. We didn't pay much attention to it though. Little Loon, East Loon Bay and the rest of Loon Lake passed by quickly and we stopped back at the same campsite from our first two nights for an early lunch. Once we were there we noticed the same insects covering every rocky area we could see. They appeared to be some sort of winged ant and whatever they were doing, they were very busy doing it. They would be all over at our site on Lower Pauness when we arrived as well, but for the most part they didn't bother us in any way like flies or mosquitoes would. Shortly after leaving our lunch stop, we experienced one of the strangest moments I have ever had in nature. We could see something small floating on the surface just ahead of the canoe. As we moved closer, it began to move slowly and steadily towards shore. It was a red squirrel swimming from the direction of the island towards the mainland. It eventually made it to shore, shook off and ran off into the woods. Those 2 pieces of land are 100-150 yards apart and we still have no idea why a squirrel would make a swim like that, but it did and we got to see it and that island will now forever be referred to as Swimming Squirrel Island. Devil's Cascade once again loomed before us and after two long portage already that day, it seemed distinctly harder to complete this portage going from north to south. We entered Lower Pauness and starting encountering people, some fishing, some headed north towards Loon Lake. The site on the point near the portage was occupied and the site to the west of the portage is one of the worst I've ever seen in the BW, so we passed those by and headed to the southernmost site on the lake (site #42). It's also not an ideal site as it's in a mucky area without much fishing opportunity or exploration possibilities and promised to be a mosquito haven later in the day, but it was either that or head over to Upper Pauness to take our chances. Tired and ready for rest, we decided to make it work. Again we laid out everything to dry, only this time we were rewarded with sunny skies a few hours later and things actually fully dried. I made note of it in my journal- 3:30 PM on Thursday was the first time we had seen the sun since it set on Sunday evening. Absolutely mind boggling. Once it got sunny and things dried, we decided to go exploring. We checked out the short portage around the rapids between Upper and Lower Pauness, which would require an extra canoe unloading to make it work with a fully loaded canoe. The rapids were basically a trickle and although we caught one small pike below them, fishing was pretty much a bust. On the way back to our site we landed the canoe on the southeast shore and made our way up the slopes to the top of the overlook. It's a tricky climb and care is definitely needed while doing so, but the views are worth it. With nothing left to accomplish we decided that after dinner we would just relax. We watching eagles flying over, saw trumpeter swans swim by and watched as two busy beavers went back and forth all evening. The worst mosquitoes of the trip (as expected) finally drove us inside at 8:30. I listened to our exit day forecast just before heading off to sleep. Thunderstorms. Lovely.