Thursday, August 02, 2018

We woke up to a beautiful morning.

I was soaking up the sun rays after it had rained all yesterday.

Unfortunately, the sun was fleeting as it gave way to more clouds. We packed up early and hit the water. We decided that since we went way farther than we had planned the first day, we could now probably do a layover night—something I’ve never done. We were thinking either South or North Temperance. Everyone was in a much better mood today. No rain. No threat of camping at a portage trail. There was even talk of grilling up the steaks for lunch if they didn’t seem to have spoiled yet. Here’s a group picture just after our longest portage of the trip – a 225-rodder.

It just dawned on us, we hadn’t met anyone on a portage trail yet. We could only assume everyone had stayed put yesterday. But as we traveled north, we didn’t encounter anyone until we got to the portage between North and South Temperance. We didn’t see anyone on South Temperance, and there was a beautiful unoccupied campsite on a tall rock formation that we passed. At the portage, we waited 10-15 minutes or so while the other group (travelling south) got all of their people and belongings launched. No worries, there was no rush today.

On North Temperance, we were delighted to find all three campsites unoccupied and decided to call that home for the next two nights. We initially decide on the seclusion of the northern most site on an island. (By the way, the map makes it look like the campsite is on the west side of the island, but it is actually on the east side.)

So we land and cook up our lunch that was supposed to be yesterday’s dinner, composed of steak and corn on the cob. Mmmmm… So good. And none of us got sick, so the vacuum-sealed steak must have been just fine. During lunch, I throw out that I would prefer a site with more of a view. Now, as the trip leader, I’m not about to leave a site everyone else likes just for my own personal preference. But, I wanted to see if anyone else agreed with me. Well, almost everyone else agreed they would like a view, so we headed back to the southernmost site. It had a great view, a nice rock peninsula for swimming/lying down, and some great hammock trees. It was a push to set up 4 tents, but we made it work.

The rest of the day was classic B-dubs: swimming, lying in the hammock, fishing, cooking, eating, talking around the campfire, and watching the sunset.

We tried pizza for dinner, but I don’t have any sort of reflector oven. As a result, it was not super successful, but everyone made their own creations of pizza crust, cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni and we made it work. I wouldn’t do this meal again without some better equipment (or better technique?).

~Jack Lake, Weird Lake, South Temperance Lake, North Temperance Lake

Thursday, August 02, 2018

We woke up to a beautiful morning.

I was soaking up the sun rays after it had rained all yesterday.

Unfortunately, the sun was fleeting as it gave way to more clouds. We packed up early and hit the water. We decided that since we went way farther than we had planned the first day, we could now probably do a layover night—something I’ve never done. We were thinking either South or North Temperance. Everyone was in a much better mood today. No rain. No threat of camping at a portage trail. There was even talk of grilling up the steaks for lunch if they didn’t seem to have spoiled yet. Here’s a group picture just after our longest portage of the trip – a 225-rodder.

It just dawned on us, we hadn’t met anyone on a portage trail yet. We could only assume everyone had stayed put yesterday. But as we traveled north, we didn’t encounter anyone until we got to the portage between North and South Temperance. We didn’t see anyone on South Temperance, and there was a beautiful unoccupied campsite on a tall rock formation that we passed. At the portage, we waited 10-15 minutes or so while the other group (travelling south) got all of their people and belongings launched. No worries, there was no rush today.

On North Temperance, we were delighted to find all three campsites unoccupied and decided to call that home for the next two nights. We initially decide on the seclusion of the northern most site on an island. (By the way, the map makes it look like the campsite is on the west side of the island, but it is actually on the east side.)

So we land and cook up our lunch that was supposed to be yesterday’s dinner, composed of steak and corn on the cob. Mmmmm… So good. And none of us got sick, so the vacuum-sealed steak must have been just fine. During lunch, I throw out that I would prefer a site with more of a view. Now, as the trip leader, I’m not about to leave a site everyone else likes just for my own personal preference. But, I wanted to see if anyone else agreed with me. Well, almost everyone else agreed they would like a view, so we headed back to the southernmost site. It had a great view, a nice rock peninsula for swimming/lying down, and some great hammock trees. It was a push to set up 4 tents, but we made it work.

The rest of the day was classic B-dubs: swimming, lying in the hammock, fishing, cooking, eating, talking around the campfire, and watching the sunset.

We tried pizza for dinner, but I don’t have any sort of reflector oven. As a result, it was not super successful, but everyone made their own creations of pizza crust, cheese, tomato sauce, and pepperoni and we made it work. I wouldn’t do this meal again without some better equipment (or better technique?).

~Jack Lake, Weird Lake, South Temperance Lake, North Temperance Lake

Friday, August 03, 2018

Wow, layover days are nice. It was amazing being able to wake up and know that we had nothing we had to do! After a hearty breakfast of French toast and shelf stable bacon, we parted ways and everyone did his own thing. Tim and I decided to check out a bluff in the southeastern bay. We paddled to shore and bushwhacked our way up the hill to see if we could get to a decent overlook. Here’s the vantage point we had.

Another day of swimming, fishing, cards, and hammocking made it a good rest day. I do like to explore, so I wouldn’t want to do more than one layover day, but it was a good change of pace. Kyle caught a particularly large creature while fishing from the point.

After about 20 minutes, we were finally able to break the turtle free from the hook, and the snapper swam away quickly!

Tonight the other two sites filled up. In the evening, we saw a couple canoes portage in and we could tell they had their packs in the canoes with them. We briefly discussed with each other and decided that we would absolutely let them stay at our site if they asked. (If we hadn’t had troubles of our own a couple nights earlier, we may not have come to that same conclusion.) However, they never ended up coming near our site.

Another beautiful sunset tonight.

The weather radio says possible storms in the area and that it could rain most of the day tomorrow. We decided we need to get up early tomorrow if we want to have any chance of making it through Cherokee and back to Sawbill to camp our last night.

Side note: Today is the day that $h!t was going down in the real world. It would be 48 more hours until I knew anything. I can't ignore that when I recap the day.

~North Temperance Lake

Saturday, August 04, 2018

We arose early and roused the rest of the group to get an early start. The goal was to camp on Sawbill tonight, if the weather allowed. It was cloudy when we woke up, but no rain yet. We portaged into Sitka and were surprised to see a group of nine at the other end of the portage so early in the morning. Then we remembered that when we were at the outfitters, they talked about a group of 54 they were outfitting that were entering the day after us. This was evidently one of the groups. The group informed us the Sitka-Cherokee portage was quite difficult. After some slight difficultly finding the portage, we were on our way. It was definitely up and down (this one goes over the Laurentian Divide), but going north as we were, you are definitely going downhill for more of it. There was one particular spot I remember where I had to jump down from a rock and veer my canoe at the last second to avoid hitting a tree directly in front of the rock.

The landing at the Cherokee side is definitely cramped, much to the chagrin of another group of nine who had just approached the portage from Cherokee. I suggested waiting for the rest of our group as were single portaging and would just be a couple minutes, but the group leader (the lone adult among some middle/high schoolers) seemed very impatient and was intent on starting the portage immediately. He started to portage a canoe up the very steep landing while our second canoe was coming down, and he had to retreat back to the water. He decided to just wait at this point, but let everyone know how frustrated he was. I’ll give him a pass since he was the lone adult in the group and probably had other things to be frustrated about as well.

Cherokee is beautiful. I feel that we missed out by not camping on Cherokee. We wondered if we could pass to the south of an island on the way to the Cherokee Creek, noting a small amount of blue on the map. It turns out that it is navigable, though does get fairly narrow! The Cherokee Creek is also beautiful.

I love the elevated walls during parts of it and the intimate nature of the more narrow part of the creek. I was nervous that the landing would be difficult to spot for the portage to Skoop, but it was extremely obvious. Still no rain!

The next 4/5 portages were full of boulders and muck, as I recall. It looked like one part (Ada Creek) must be navigable at times, but we had to take the longer portage around the entire thing. The landing at the north end of Ada also proved difficult. It was a huge mud pit and I believe unavoidable in order to get access to the water. But, we made it through just fine at the end of the day.

The last portage to Sawbill was very easy and we all celebrated upon completing our final portage. We decided we would take a campsite on the northern end of the lake so we could enjoy one final paddle Sunday morning. The first few campsites we passed were unoccupied, but we were hoping for a little more elevation.

We were all just paddling along when all of a sudden, one of the canoes tipped and all of its contents spilled into the water. We immediately made sure the two guys were okay, and they frantically grabbed for their packs and threw them back in the canoe. We ended up pulling their canoe to shore while they swam over so they could easily get back in. I guess one of the newbies shifted his weight very suddenly, then they both overreacted to the initial weight shift and in they went! Unbelievable! Because of that, we chose the next site we came to so they could dry off. And lucky us, it had elevation and a great view of the lake!

No sooner had we set up camp then did it start raining again. And it rained the entire rest of the day.

So people read in their tents, or sat in the rain soaking up the outdoors. One highlight of the day was when we all emerged from our tents (getting some tent fever) and we decided to have a pancake party! We passed the stove around as one by one we each made our own pancakes.

That was the highlight of the day for me and by far the best pancake I’ve ever had! Dinner was chili which was also delicious.

~North Temperance Lake, Sitka Lake, Cherokee Lake, Skoop Lake, Ada Lake, Sawbill Lake

Sunday, August 05, 2018

We awoke and as is true for every trip, we somberly packed up, sad to be leaving the BWs. And of course, it was turning out to be a nice, sunny day.

Good for our last paddle, but makes you want to stay all the longer. It was about an hour paddle back to the dock where we unloaded our things and carried the canoes back to the outfitter.

I went inside to settle up and got the message nobody ever wants to get: ‘Call your wife ASAP.’ Well this is the first time anyone in our group has had cell phone service. I call my wife and she drops the bomb that her brother had died (unexpectedly, he was 27) two days earlier. My heart sank and I couldn’t stop the tears from filling my eyes. All at once a million thoughts flooded my brain. I couldn’t reconcile that I had just been spending the past couple days enjoying my time in the wilderness while my wife and her entire family were reeling. The fact that I couldn’t be there for my wife was making me sick to my stomach. By the time I met up with the other guys, they already knew. Of course, everyone had been trying to contact all of us for the past two days, so everyone had messages on their phones.

The ride home was very quiet, as I tried to wrap my head around what had happened. Is the BWCA the real world? It didn’t seem like it at all. It seemed like some playground I was in, isolated from the pain of the real world. A few months later, it is still difficult to talk about the good parts of this trip, given that I know what was going on back home at the same time. This is one of the risks you take going into the BWCA with no satellite communication device. Who knows, maybe my future trips will be including one of those.

~Sawbill Lake