This morning dawned clear and warm. We dallied some this morning as we expected to make an early stop, leaving us a short trip back to the car on Friday. We found the portage from Steep Lk into South Lk to be one of the more "interesting" of this trip. It dropped quite a bit and even though it appeared to have received some extensive work by a trail crew, it would be a real challenge in wet weather. Once we got to South Lake we found the entry to be mostly exposed lake bed, only recently starting to dry. As we looked around the shore it was obvious that the water level had dropped over 2 feet very recently. I speculated that a beaver dam at the outlet of South/North lake into LLC must have failed, sometime in only the last couple of weeks, causing the catastrophic water loss we saw. The portage to Section Pond was also newly drying lake bed and a mucky mess. Once it dries it won't be a problem, but it took us a bit to finally hoist the gear and move off down the trail. Having traveled alot in the blowdown or fire affected areas of the BWCA in the last few years, I have to say it was a real treat to move through this country wich had large stands of exceptional white pine. Section Pond and Slim Lake were no exception. We found a large beaver dam at the connection between Section Pond and Slim. We were able to pull over the beaver dam, making a big improvement over the 65 rod portage. We were off Section Pond and onto Slim Lake in no time. This was a truly pretty paddle. Then it was on to the East Bay of Loon Lake and Loon Lake proper and finally back onto the LIS. By now the wind had come up out of the south and by the time we reached Upper Pauness lake it was blowing quite hard. Now back in the more heavily trafficked area, all of the camps on Upper Pauness were taken, but we found an acceptable home for the night on Lower Pauness. We were on the second site north of the 40 rod portage between upper and lower Pauness. While it had the best landing of any camp we used, it had only very poor tent pads. The one we chose had a bit of a pitch to it, but we managed. It was also the home to several very large ant hills. They were pretty much everywhere.