Monday May 5th

Joe and I woke to a glorious morning, bright sunshine and the remnants of the snow. It was calm and cold however which would not help in breaking and melting ice. I made a breakfast of buckwheat pancakes and bacon with real Vermont Maple syrup. It is a tradition of mine to make this breakfast once every trip. It never is turned down. Seeing we were probably not moving today we had plenty of time.

As we ate breakfast Joe and I discussed exploring the lake to see what options as far as portages we might have. First we would head for the portage out toward Fox in the Northeast corner of the lake. Joe also wanted to try to find and access the old hiking trail that was east of Stuart Lake and went all the way to Iron. We cleaned up the dishes and packed some spare clothes and food just in case the ice shifted stranding us somewhere.

The sun shone brightly giving us encouragement and the wind started to pick up from the west. Not sure this was a welcome sign however. As we paddled across Stuart we could see that we could access the east shore that entered the NE bay but just barely. We landed the canoe on a rock shelf and looked to see if we could portage the shoreline to the Fox portage. This was not possible. From here Joe bushwhacked into the woods to see if he could find the old portage trail while I explored the shoreline. As I explored I took a big rock and threw it onto the ice hoping to see if break through. It sat on top of the ice. It looked like there was still about a foot of ice in spots. My spirits sank thinking we would have to just head back out through Stuart River once our time was up. Of course we still had to see if we could get to the portage to the Dahlgren River.

Joe came back after trying to find the trail with no luck. Too much time has passed since it was used and is no longer visible. He also tried to figure a way to the portage to Fox with no success. I showed Joe the rock I threw and we threw a few more. Some stayed on top, some sank into the ice a little ways and some busted right through in thin spots. The good news is there were thin spots, the bad news is any idea we may have had of walking on the ice was definitely out. Trust me that thought never really entered our mind.

We got back into the canoe and paddled back south of the island and around it to see what the west side of the lake looked like. The ice had pulled away from the island so we could almost paddle around the entire island. Only the north side of the island was still blocked in. Unfortunately the ice was still covering the portage to the Dahlgren River as well as blocking access to any other campsite on the lake. Again we hoped no one would enter as they would have to share with us which we were fine with but assumed others would be disappointed. We paddled back to our campsite to relax, have dinner and talk about Tuesday. We really felt we needed to do something other than just sit on Stuart.

We felt if we were going to make it to Mudro to exit on Friday we needed to get moving considering we also had portage clearing to do. The problem was our route was blocked and it did not look like it would open on Tuesday or maybe even Wednesday. We could make it out on time if we left by Wednesday but that would be moving really fast and we did not know what ice conditions were on Iron, Crooked and the rest of our route. The small lakes we weren't worried about, but those big lakes could still have significant ice covering them which had us concerned as well.

That’s when we started discussing going through the PMA via Nibin, Bibon and Sterling. Yes it would be difficult but we both knew people who had done it and the husband and wife we met had just been through there and confirmed those lakes were open all the way to Sterling.

We looked at all the options and decided we would go through the PMA. We knew even though the route was probably shorter than our original route we needed to get moving as we were unsure how difficult it would be.

We had dinner, discussed it more and formulated our revamped plan. Tuesday we would get at least to Sterling and hopefully Sunday Lake. It would be an adventure that would not include clearing portages, but we would be moving.

That evening we watched the ice from a different perspective. We no longer worried about what it would do as long as it allowed us off the island.