Woke to drizzle that stopped soon after getting out of the tents. The winds were out of the west-northwest and while the sky has cleared, it remained a bit hazy. The wind was strong enough that we tried sailing a couple times today, but the direction just was not quite right and we gave it up.

Later in the afternoon, showers started to develop. When the first shower came through, the winds switched to the northwest and remained from that direction for the rest of the day. The wind itself was an interesting story today. It was like there were two winds, a hot wind and a cold wind. I think it must have depended on how much water the air traveled over before reaching us. Significant water=cold, land=hot. The clouds continued to build all day long, even as we made camp, but no thunderheads developed.

One surprising sight today was the sight of snow on the side of a hill! Snow?! Still on the ground, and by our calculations, it is the 21st of July today!

I spent the entire day in the bow in order to give my aching muscles a bit of a rest. They were pretty tired after yesterday’s effort.

We covered 21 miles today and if all goes well, we will move off of Nueltin Lake.

With no portages today and the difficulty in finding firewood when there are no trees, we made it a point throughout the day to collect whatever firewood could be found. This area is almost completely barren. By the time we made camp, and what would could scavenge around our campsite, we had enough to cook our spaghetti dinner tonight. It took some effort as the only trees we found would be in small groups and stand no more than three or four feet tall.

But what this area lacks in wood, more than makes up in bugs! Truly the mosquitoes and black flies are amazing! They just seem to be everywhere and I am surprised at the strength of the wind required to keep them away. But the bugs are just a fact of life here and while they are still bothersome, we are certainly becoming accustomed to them.

With wide-open spaces as far as the eye can see, I am absolutely amazed by the barrens. It is just a fantastic place and the stark beauty just leaves me in awe. The land is as rugged and tough as it gets, yet I am find it so easy to enjoy being here and traveling across the water and land. This trip is a fantastic opportunity and I know that this trip will shape who I am for the rest of my life.

Being behind schedule a few days has meant that we have not had the luxury to take our time paddling recently. That’s okay though, as there is a long way to go, and many more great days ahead.

After dinner, two rain squalls came through. The wind was very strong and almost started to blow away a couple of the tents! Both of the tents actually lifted off the ground (with gear inside) only being held in place by the staked rain-fly lines. If a tent gets away from you in the barrens, you could be facing a very long excursion to recover it!

This evening rainsqualls were very cold and came directly out of the north. As the squalls came through, the temperature really seemed to drop as well. Everyone scurried to the tents as soon as camp was secured as the squalls look to continue and it is really getting cold. Once the front associated with these squalls pushes through, we may see a freeze.

The water in the lake also seems to be getting colder. We can see some leftover ice in the bay across from our campsite. I went for a swim today at lunch, but the water was so cold that it instantly made whatever skin was in contact hurt. Fortunately the pain didn’t last, as I quickly went numb!

Today was the eighth day we have not seen any other people.

Day 22

Woke to a cold, windy morning. The winds were out of the west and there was intermittent rain during the morning. With a favorable wind direction, we were able to rig up the sails and covered about 7 miles riding the wind and a further 7 miles paddling before breaking for TL. After TL, the wind died however, and as the wind dies, the bugs dine!

When the wind died, it was an anti-climactic end to paddling on Nueltin Lake. It was almost as if the lake was rolling over on its back and giving up on trying to delay us and keep us on its waters. But while the lake may be giving up on us, it certainly had plenty of spite left as the black flies swarmed us by the thousands! As we paddled into the Thlewiaza River outlet, the black flies got even worse.

The river exits Nueltin into Sealhole Lake by two different channels. The northernmost channel looked to have good current and a good volume of water so that was channel we took.

This section of the Thlewiaza was a lot of fun, the rapids were almost continuous but were all straightforward and easy to run. The rapids were almost entirely standing waves, but there were a few small back rolling hydraulics thrown in just to keep us honest.

Nueltin Lake is at an elevation of 904 feet above sea level while Seal Hole is at 876 feet. Our starting point, Wollaston Lake is at over 1300 feet above sea level, so we’ve already dropped a fair bit and now just 876 more vertical feet to Eskimo Point.

We chose to camp near the bottom of the rapids dumping into Seal Hole Lake. We covered around 24 miles today and have traveled around 330 miles for the trip.

With no wind, the black flies were totally out of control tonight. They were so thick it looked like a cloud of smoke following each of us around and would instantly get into anything we were doing, including dinner! We were having mac and cheese and while we tried to keep them out of the cooking as best as possible by setting up a tarp over the food preparation area, as soon as you bowl came out from under that tarp, the black flies were instantly upon it! Your mac and cheese looked like it had a thick layer of pepper on it! But it was unavoidable, so you just ignored the fact that your dinner had a crust of black flies on it! What’s a little extra protein anyway?

After dinner, despite all the black flies, I just had to go down to the lake to see if I could catch any of the lake trout that were constantly rising. The fishing was quite good, but I was having problems with my reel again. Of the 9 lake trout that I hooked, I only managed to land 4 of them due to the faulty reel. Of those that I landed, three were in the 2-3 pound range, but one I estimate went about 8 pounds. These fish have a lot of fight in them and the big one took me quite a while to bring to hand.

We start our second watershed crossing tomorrow. The next 5 or 6 days could prove to be some of the most interesting of the trip. First, the watershed crossing takes us up to the Kognack River, which has a pretty steep gradient to it. It was on this river that a previous trip from Manito-Wish had to abandon due to one single rapid claiming all of the boats. The problem was that this section of the Kognack is essentially one continuous rapid. Everything was runable without scouting except for one particular section. All boats hit it, dumped, and group members were stranded on opposite shores and out on a rock in the middle of the river. The cold water and weather had hypothermia descending on the group members and the situation was grim as no gear was going to be recovered quickly, if at all.

But the group must have had a guardian angel looking over them as shortly after the accident, a helicopter from a nearby gold mine just happened to be flying overhead, and plucked them off the river.

We will be paddling this same section of river. We know this rapid is somewhere in an 8 mile section, but we don’t know exactly where. What we do know is that the goldmine is currently non-operational. There will be no helicopter rescue should we meet the same fate as the previous trip.

The third potentially tricky part of the next several days will be leaving the Kognack River and heading up to Henik Lake, where previous trips have been pinned often and for up to three days at a time by strong winds.

And lastly, we will have another watershed crossing out of Henik Lake. This watershed crossing is a complete unknown to us and hopefully, the watershed crossing will not turn into one 30 mile portage. But at the same time, there may be no portage at all! We have no information, and the maps are not clear about just exactly what we will find.

Tonight, after we were all in the tents, the wind started to pick up! What timing! It would be nice to have a sunny and windy day sometime soon to get everything dried out.

Today was the ninth day we have not seen anyone.

Day 23

Woke to another cold, overcast and rainy day. The dreary conditions caused us to linger in the tents. The fact that the noise from the sheer number of black flies was so loud that it kept you awake didn’t help either! Unbelievable!

With the horrid conditions this morning, we made a batch of rice and raisins and set off with a few long faces. Everything was wet. If you stopped paddling, you got cold very quickly. To keep warm, everyone seemed to putting extra effort into his paddle strokes! We cranked out 8 miles in no time. But despite making pretty good time, everyone was starting to get pretty cold. Especially when we stopped for a GORP break in the wind and rain.

Thankfully, the rain stopped and the skies looked as though they were going to start to clear. We started the watershed crossing and today we completed two portages and three other drags. We stopped for TL after the first portage and planned to do 3 more miles after lunch that included the second portage and two of the drags.

Though people were starting to warm up and dry out, the temperature was starting to drop as the day went on. We camped on a small, unnamed lake. The wind was blowing, which kept the bugs away and that was nice, but it was getting cold and was looking to be a very cold night.

We traveled 15 miles today and actually climbed in altitude back to 902 feet above sea level.

I had a really good day today. Even in the terrible conditions today my spirits remained high. That, to me, is important, being happy in even the worst of times!

We cooked a big batch of bannock tonight for dinner. Everybody got about 2lbs of dough to make up their bannocks! We made bannock pies and put cheese in one and peanut butter with brown sugar in the other. Oh, they were so good but it was a lot of food! Try as I might, I was not able to quite finish both of mine so I packed mine in the Wanagon along with a few of the others and that will be a nice treat for tomorrow!

It was a beautiful sunset tonight, probably the best we’ve seen yet. The temperature is plummeting this evening but the mosquitoes are very persistent and toughing out the cold in their efforts to get a meal! Even the mosquitoes are getting tougher as we head further north!

This will probably be our coldest night yet and the sleeping bag is going to feel so good! We are planning on getting an early start in the morning.

Today was the tenth day we have not seen anyone.

Day 24

Woke to a gloriously sunny, but quite cold day. We cooked up some pancakes this morning and well fueled, set out.

We were traveling by river today. Generally, one would think that it is pretty hard to get lost on a river if you are paying attention. However, as soon as we got to a slightly wider section of river that had some points and bays, our navigator, Chris, got lost! Sheesh. The wind was picking up and we paddled about an hour trying to figure out where we were. We eventually figured it out, but instead of paddling back to where we should have gone, we ended up just portaging across a little saddle of land.

Oh for crying out loud. Basically, the river widened into this lake-like area, the outlet from which is right next to the inlet. However, rather than directing us to the outlet, Chris, who we have now nicknamed “Columbus,” sent us into the lake. Columbus, appropriate besides the fact that his real name is Chris. We came up with Columbus, because like our own Chris, Columbus knew where he wanted to go, just didn’t know how to get there.

Right before making our corrective portage, we met a man paddling solo from Lac Brochet to Eskimo Point. He plans on arriving in Eskimo Point sometime in mid-September. He is generally following the same route we are except that he paddled up the Cochrane River. We talked for a while with the man, who seemed to really have a need to talk to someone! I can’t imagine doing a trip like he is, for that long, alone. You would have to be kind of nuts!

We parted ways with the solo paddler and began our portage. The portage was pretty flat, and very short, but it was treacherous because every five feet was a basketball-sized rock that was half underground, half above ground. Matt was carrying the TL pack, which at this point is the heaviest pack, when he stumbled on one of the rocks and fell over on his back (on the pack). He was still strapped to the pack and tried to throw his weight in order to roll over. The huge pack was far too heavy though and it didn’t budge. What was left was Matt looking like an over-turned turtle with his arms and legs flailing away! We scrambled to help him up, but as soon as he was up and clearly unhurt, everyone who saw it burst out laughing. It was a hilarious sight!

The new bay was also a boulderfield, exactly what we had portaged over, now just under a couple of feet of water. We paddled out of the bay into a freshening wind. We stopped for TL on a point at the mouth of the bay and the wind continued to build. After TL we put the skirts on the canoes to battle the whitecaps on the water. A rain squall went over head just as we pulled out and its accompanying winds of easily over 25 miles per hour made forward progress impossible. We were making no forward progress, even moving slightly backwards. Matt and Greg almost dumped their canoe twice, but the skirt saved them. We went back to shore and waited. About 5 minutes later the squall passed and we tried again.

We managed about 30minutes of traveling before another windy squall came through. This time we figure the squall lasted about 20minutes, during which time we were once again forced to wait it out on shore. After this squall, we finally reached our first intended portage of the day.

There were two small lakes between the lake where we were, and the Kognak River, where we were headed. The original plan was to portage to the first lake, then portage directly from that lake to the river, bypassing the small lake. However, after completing the first portage and then portaging half of the gear ¾ of the way to the river bypassing the second lake, we decided that for the balance of the gear, we’d portage to the second small lake, paddle it, and then portage from it to the river.

After reaching the river, we camped right there, too tired to continue! On the long portage, the wind had died and the mosquitoes had come out in force. What was so hard about the portage is that the entire portage was under about an inch of water with the round basketball-sized rocks sticking up. The ground was firm though, you didn’t sink into the muck, and that was probably due to the fact that there was permafrost not too far below the surface. I fell once during the portage, and was so tired by that point, I probably could have easily passed out from exhaustion right there. But the mosquitoes made sure that didn’t happen!

Changing the plan and portaging to the second lake and then on to the river was a good idea. It gave us a chance to rest, however briefly, our portaging muscles.

We have finally reached the Kognack River. I’m a bit relieved to be off the lakes and onto a river for a while as the weather will have less of an impact on our travel.

The weather has been pretty strange, and not what I expected, much more rain than I thought we’d get. It has rained practically everyday since Nueltin Lake. I think this is far more moisture than is typical for a summer in the tundra, which I think is very near a dessert for how dry it is supposed to be. Maybe all this rain is contributing to the hordes of mosquitoes and black flies? Who knows!

We completed only 10 miles today, but they were very hard miles. I’m really tired as I go to sleep tonight listening to more rain and the rapids of the Kognak River.

Day 25

Woke to another gray, overcast sky after a night of rain. We cooked a rice pilaf for breakfast. From the start this morning, we had the skirts on the canoes as today was expected to have a significant amount of whitewater. It was about three miles to the first lake, Hawk’s Hill Lake, and much of that distance was expected to contain whitewater. We had to carefully load the packs into the canoes in order to allow us to fully mount the spray skirts.

The rapids were straight forward, a few had some big standing waves, but the skirts kept the water out of the canoes so we never had to stop to bail them out.

After we crossed the Hawk’s Hill Lake we stopped for a GORP break on the shore. Not far from the lake was a large hill that rose probably about 500feet above the surrounding land and had a nice rock face on the side towards us. It was remarkable enough to warrant a few pictures before we continued on.

Today was planned as a relatively short day to Mountain Lake which was only about one mile of river paddling beyond where we stopped for our GORP break. The reason for the short day is two-fold: first, people are still pretty tired from yesterday; and two, there is a long stretch of whitewater that constitutes the next section of river and we want to hit that all at once. We think the rapid that took out the previous trip is located somewhere on this next, long section of whitewater. Best to be rested for that.

The last mile of river prior to Mountain Lake was a bit bigger, and a bit faster than the previous section. Perhaps indicative that tomorrow’s section may be bigger and faster still after accumulating more volume in Mountain Lake.

We reached Mountain Lake with no problem and found that it was on the other side of the big hill with the rock face. We paddled the length of Mountain Lake and made camp just before the outlet of the Kognak River. Once we made camp, the wind died, and yet again, the mosquitoes came out in force! I couldn’t stand sitting around in camp with them so I decided to go for a walk up on the ridgeline that rises above the lake on this side, undoubtedly giving Mountain Lake its name.

Unfortunately, the walk did not let me escape the onslaught of the mosquitoes, but it was still a nice walk. I set up my camera, with its stuck self timer, and took a few pictures with the hill and lake as a background.

I returned to camp, but decided to forgo dinner and escape to the tent. Though I willingly forfeit my share of dinner, the guys still brought my portion of M&Ms that they decided to have as a treat tonight. That was nice, thanks guys!

I did the trip log tonight and figured we paddled about 15 miles today and dropped over 80 feet in elevation. That means the river gradient was about 20feet per mile, including any lakes. Our current elevation is 813 feet above sea level.

I must admit I am feeling a bit of frustration with the weather these days. It’s been pretty gloomy and rainy, with the wind blowing during the day, and then becoming calm as we make camp. Then, once we’re in the tents, the wind picks back up! Just not fair! The weather caused me to have a rather depressing afternoon when I should have had a great one.