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04/01/2015 10:34AM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
Educate me my brothers on the adventures that await me. Looking at these portages for a solo trip in May.

I know the second portage is marked wrong on Fisher maps but correctly on Chrismar maps.

Poobah to Conmee direction.
 
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RC
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04/01/2015 05:13PM  
I have some notes on those three portages. I don't remember where I got the notes or who wrote them but here they are below:
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Going from Pooh Bah to Conmee. They are named the Memory Lane portages. I will describe each one for you.

The 1st portage (200 rods) starts out in a low area on the south end of Pooh Bah. Then you have a 50 foot incline to climb, mostly dirt. Then the trail becomes thick with bush branches since this is not used very much. After 10-15 minutes or so, you reach a mudhole/creek area. After crossing that, it seems pretty normal for a Q portage until the very end where you have to wade through knee high mud created by a small beaver dam to get to the unnamed lake/pond.

The 2nd portage (300 rods)is easy to find IF you have a Quetico Park Map. This portage is marked incorrectly on both the Fischer and McKenzie Maps. The portage is on the east end of the lake and there was a moose shed marking the spot. It is the easiest of the 3 portages. It is long but very flat and a very nice path to follow. Not any problems I remember with this portage.

The 3rd portage (280 rods) is the most difficult. The portage is a little more east of where it is marked on the maps. I starts out fairly normal until you hit a swampy area. This was long and difficult. Much sinking going on. We took our time and only one item (canoe or pack, not both). The remaining half was typical until the end where there is a small cliff to negotiate.

04/01/2015 10:46PM  
I've been through those portages twice in the past three summers. There is a big difference between wet and dry years as to the difficulty of the portages. Here's a description from my 2012 trip journal:

"I don’t think we got onto the water until 10:00a, but before long we were at the beginning of the first of the three Memory Lane Portages. The portage was not hard to find, but it was clear that it’s lightly used. Everett headed out with his pack and our paddles, while I donned pack, canoe, and rod case. The trail was brushy and dripping wet, and after a mucky stretch climbed about as steeply as any Quetico portage for a good 50 feet. Apart from keeping the bow of the canoe off the ground, I was concerned that my feet might slip, causing me to land on my face.

Continuing on, the trail meandered through brush, trees, and wet areas until ending at an unnamed lakelet after 970m. Having worked up a good sweat, we quickly loaded the canoe and headed out onto the lily pad covered water before the insects were able to feast. The lake deepened to the NE, and some stands of ancient white pines tower over its shores. The Chrismar map of the park identifies the location of these portages accurately, and we quickly found the start of the second portage. Depending on the Fisher maps would lead to a lot of fruitless searching.

Portage number two is not overly difficult, but is a mile long (1670m) and brushy in places. The trail is actually scenic over much of its length, as it passes along a ridge wooded by semi-open, jack pine forest, with an open bog to the north. The temperature was by now probably topping 80 degrees, and the sweat was dripping off of my face, but I liked the feeling of getting a good workout while carrying a heavy, but well-balanced load over a long portage. The portage ended at another dark-water lakelet on a shoreline of floating bog. Pretty cool. Fortunately, a good breeze was blowing off the water to cool us down and keep the insects under control.

Back on the water, we passed a campsite located on a bedrock point on the NW shore of the lakelet. This wouldn’t be a bad place to camp if a group found itself here in fading light, a storm, or with an injured paddler.

The third and last of the Memory Lane Portages is 1220m long and is the wettest of them. However, it was not nearly as wet as I expected, and due to the amount of logs placed over muskeg, we never sank deeply into muck. I kept waiting to become mired in bottomless muskeg like I experienced on the Cache Lake Portages years ago, but happily, it never happened. With each wet area we crossed we were closer to the end of the portage, and sooner than expected we found ourselves at Conmee Lake, about two-and-a-half hours after leaving our Poohbah campsite."

From last summer, 2014:

"The first, 970m carry was wet in places, meandered a fair amount, and passed through a flooded beaver pond area where I had to put down the canoe to find the trail before continuing the final couple hundred meters to the small lake at the end of the portage. The mosquitoes were pretty thick. Emergent vegetation covered the west end of the lake.

The second portage, 1,670m long, climbed a short distance and then leveled out for several hundred meters before dropping into intermittent wet areas. Eventually, it ended on floating bog at a second, small lake. There, we encountered a group of teenagers from a YWCA Camp out of Ely or Grand Marais who were nearly out of sunscreen. We barely had enough for ourselves, so couldn’t spare any.

The third portage was 1,220m long and passed through muskeg and some upland forest. The trail was definitely wetter than it had been two years earlier, but not brutal. It was great to get to Conmee Lake, though, exactly two hours after leaving Poohbah."

GraniteCliffs
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04/02/2015 11:44PM  
I can attest to the need for a Park map on the second portage if you are heading to Pooh Bah. We made a decision to leave Conmee fairly late in the day. We did NOT have the Park map and wasted 30 minutes looking for the portage. Got to Wink at dark.
MagicPaddler
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04/03/2015 07:31AM  
I plan on doing those portages this summer and thanks to the above posts there are some notes on my map about those portages. Thank you! any information on the portages out of Conmee going east?
04/03/2015 07:39AM  
Magic Paddler, there was a thread a time ago about the Death March. I will bring it to the top.

Thanks for all the information on Memory Lane guys.
MagicPaddler
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04/03/2015 12:47PM  
Kiporby I think that will help get me through also. Thanks
04/06/2015 09:51AM  
Here and the correct portage locations (I think) :)

RC
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04/06/2015 09:59AM  
If you take a GPS with you and you send me the tracks I will add the portages to quetico.info

If anybody has GPS info for these portages or if you go there this summer and have a GPS with you, please email me your tracks so we can all benefit.
RC
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04/07/2015 08:20PM  
I got some GPS tracks from butthead (aka Ken) for those portages awhile ago and the tracks correspond exactly to the image you have. I misplaced the tracks, but I will put them on quetico.info later this week.

According to the GPS, the first portage is 0.5 mile, uphill all the way, rising 100 feet from start to finish. The second portage is 0.8 mile. The third portage is 0.7 mile.

Thanks for the memories Ken.
mastertangler
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04/08/2015 07:59AM  
Check out my blog at Mastertangler@blogspot and scroll down to the Down Memory lane trip.

A few thoughts you should be aware of;

If coming from poobah to Conmee the first leg seems to end in a beaver cutting. Look to the right and continue up a rocky run-off going uphill. Fairly straightforward but took me 3 or 4 minutes to find. I actually had walked it the evening before and was glad of it as it might have been more complicated with a boat overhead.

The second leg might throw you for a loop depending on your map. The map we had showed the portage at an improper location. Throw in a cut stump and a bit of a wore landing and a few blazes and you can end up on an old trappers trail real quick. Pass the false trail and continue on towards the end of the small unnamed lake and you will see a rock carin and an obvious sandy landing (look ma, dry feet).

I considered the Memory Lane trio of little consequence but I was fortunate to have done it under ideal conditions. It was cool and dry. Throw in some heat or if the trail was wet and it could be a tough slog.
 
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