It’s was a beautiful day and as the sun rose and I could feel the heat building already. We skipped breakfast this morning and got on the water around 8:30 AM. We had a short easterly paddle across the top of Agnes to the portage that would lead us into the West Channel of the Agnes River. This should have been less than a mile, but by our lack of paying attention to the map we had overshot the bay and ended up on the top most eastern bay of Lake Agnes. (See Map) After briefly searching for the portage that didn’t exist we referenced the map and identified our error and we were back on track with only about 45 minutes "lost" exploring paradise.

As we got to the portage, there was a rushing stream to its right. Steve always the adventurer decided that we should just walk the canoe through. As a group we eyeballed it and decided to give it a go. I took the bow and Steve the stern with Matt on dry ground in an over watch. The water was moving pretty swiftly as we negotiated our way from rock to rock. At one point, I got my leg pinned up against a rock and it wouldn’t budge with the pressure of the water. Within seconds I realized that this was dangerous situation and the pain of my leg was increasing, I needed to do something before I hurt myself, so I rolled in the water and freed myself as my DryPak of Marlboros and Bug Spray began to drift from my sight downstream. After a few more minutes we were into calm water and we retrieved my floating articles and were on our way. Close call!

The day wasn’t starting out too well but Agnes River was a beautiful paddle and it was great day to be in Canoe Country!

We soon approached our 2nd planned portage of the day. There would be no walking the canoe on this one.

I had done a lot of research on this route and found that there are two groups of portages that lead from the West Channel of the Agnes River into Murdoch Lake.

The 1st group was on the east side of the stream and was allegedly two long portages into a pond and one short portage into Murdoch itself. The 2nd group is on the west side of the channel and consists of 3 shorter portages with a couple of brief paddles in between and the final portage from the pond into Murdoch. Many comments that I had read from the portage database rated this as Difficult to Never Again! I had emailed Ho Ho who had taken the western portages in 2007 and he felt they were no problem and it was a beautiful route. He was right; this was one a beautiful area and the portages in my opinion should be rated as easy. Again, the key here is to take the portages on the western side of the creek.

The beauty of the final pond and the reeds.

After we crossed the final portage which was nothing more than a 70 meter lift over it was noon and we were all hungry after skipping breakfast. We dined by the little waterfall on Jerky, MRE Cheese packets and some homemade trail mix.

Soon, we were on our way. The wind had picked up a little and was blowing from a southeasterly direction. The paddle wasn’t difficult but it was blowing enough that we had to stay focused and keep a brisk rhythm as we crossed this fairly large lake. After an hour or so we came to a spot that I was told we would be able to line the canoe. We hadn’t bothered to set up painters on our yacht, so this would be the second walking of the canoe through swift water today. (note to self: Walking the canoe when it should be lined is a bad and potentially dangerous plan). This walking went much smoother than the last one but still the risk far exceeds the value.

A look back at the Murdoch narrows

We were now in a large unnamed bay of Lake Kawnipi. The wind was still blowing and we had another 3 miles to our target 5 Star campsite in McKenzie Bay. About an hour later we were in site of our prize. I had seen many photos from trip reports of this campsite. (PCD-1RA) and was really looking forward to spending a couple of nights here.

The Campsite did not disappoint. It sits high on a hill overlooking the McKenzie Bay entrance towards the main body of Kawnipi. There are enough good tent pads on the upper and lower level to set up an Infantry Platoon. There at least 4 fireplaces with the best being one built up against a large boulder

Tonight’s dinner was a 1 ½ pound smoked beef brisket, corn bread muffins baked on the Old Scout reflector oven and instant sour cream and chive mashed potatoes that we augmented with cheddar cheese and bacon. Did I mention our food pack weighed 80lbs?

We enjoyed our meal as we watched the sunset and observed our first humans who had moved into the “Point Site” across the bay from us. It had only been two days since we had seen people and I was getting spoiled. We could see them like little ants, but we could not hear them.

As I sat there I took a little inventory of the trip thus far. We had traveled 30+ miles into the heart of Quetico in 3 days, 11 portages or canoe walks. I had a skinned knee, my right ankle and shin bone bruised and sore from the swift water incident earlier in the day. I was not 17 years old anymore and my 15-20 mile, single portaging days were over. This layover that we had decided on for tomorrow was no longer a luxury - it was mandatory. After cocktails and conversation by the fire it was time to retire for the evening. Tomorrow would be a special and emotional day.

Start Time:8:30 AM

End Time:3:00 PM

Portages Taken:5

Total Portage Distance:1088 meters

Total Distance Traveled:10 Miles

Lakes Traveled: 4 - Agnes, Agnes River, Murdoch, and Kawnipi

Day 4 - August 24, 2010 (Tuesday)

Today is a Layover Day - No Travel

As I crawled out of the tent this day, the sky was spitting occasional rain drops and the wind was a blowing. Had we not planned a layover I think we may have stayed put anyway. I attempted to set up the Guide Gear Tarp in case the rains picked up but the wind made this a futile attempt. Soon Matt and Steve woke and food was the topic.

We started off the day by whipping up some Biscuits and Gravy. I mixed up the batter for the biscuits and loaded them in the Old Scout oven. I then rehydrated a pound of Jimmy Dean Hot Sausage to add to the packet of gravy mix. Matt was on eggs this day and added some smoked sausage and cheddar cheese to the mix. A great way to start the day!

We ended up spending much of the morning on the down slope on the leeward side of the island; the wind up top was still blowing hard. Before long each of us was doing their own thing. Steve and Matt did a little fishing from shore and performed the catch and release flawlessly. I spent some time organizing gear and chose to catch a short one hour nap in hopes of recharging my out of shape body a little more.

After my nap we were all milling around the fire pit and Steve simply stated. “Are you ready?” I knew what he was thinking. We had planned to honor our mentor and friend, Dick Davidson. Dick had passed away earlier in the year. Dick was a very special man and avid wilderness canoeist. He had been there and done it for over 50 years. In our preparation we had prepared a Pelican Box that included a copy of the Bio and instructions if the box were ever to be found. Many photographs of Dick and his tribe of children that he had mentored were included. We added copies of articles of his wilderness adventures that he had published in Che-Mun Magazine that had been donated to us by the editor Michael Peake and last but not least a BSA Canoe Merit Badge, he had definitely earned it.

We grabbed our trowel and headed off in the woods to find a spot to bring Dick back to the Quetico, we knew Dick had passed by this spot with Matt in 1980 on his way to McKenzie Lake.

Nothing was said as we walked and Steve finding the appropriate spot fell to his knees and started to dig. Matt took a GPS reading as I took photos.

No special words were said out loud. I think we all reflected in our own way. Still silent we walked back to camp. Our friend was home.

* Note: Please do not look for this box. This is NOT a message cache. This is a sacred place in nature, intended to never be found.

Later that day with the wind still howling we decided to move our party to the alternate fire pit and out of the wind.

Pizza was on the menu for this night and everyone built their own, choosing ingredients from mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms, black olives and fresh garlic. The results were a thing of beauty that really hit the spot.

Did I mention our food pack weighed in at 80lbs?

While cooking dinner we firmed up plans for return route. We would take the Agnes River – East Channel back into the center of Agnes Lake and take one more layover day before beginning our final two day trek back to civilization.

After cleaning up from dinner we went back up to main fire pit since the wind had finally died down after blowing for 36 hours and enjoyed a few cocktails while fighting off our first mosquitoes of the trip.

As the moon rose in the sky another beautiful but emotional day in the Quetico was in the books.

Day 5 - August 25, 2010 (Wednesday)

We got on the water about 8:30 AM and headed out of McKenzie Bay into the main channel of Lake Kawnipi with a short paddle to McVicar Bay. It was in McVicar Bay that we started to see the first signs of the 1995 Bird Lake Fire.

The Bird Lake Fire started in August 10, 1995 and was the 2nd largest fire in the history of Quetico. The fire was presumed to be started by a lightening strike.

As we paddled down McVicar the eastern shore was showing signs of a maturing growing forest, while the western shore which was totally untouched by the fire showed its natural beauty.

We pulled into the small inlet of McVicar for two short and easy portages that would take us into Anubis Lake. Anubis was a typical small Quetico Lake which also showed the western shore unscathed and a remerging forest on the eastern.

At the beginning of our trip I had informed the team that I had done a lot of reading about the lakes and the portages and would only present the information upon request. On this particular morning as we approached the next portage Matt asked what I knew about it and I proceeded to dribble 2-3 minutes of information. It was at this point that Matt dubbed me “Mr. Data” from Star Trek fame. I kind of like it!

We made our way into the little inlet bay that would lead us to the portage into Bird Lake. This portage starts out on a granite slab that continues about a quarter of the way across the portage. Even though it was only 11:00 we took a short break on this slab to enjoy some of Matt’s Hudson Bay bars and our usual lunch fare of Homemade Jerky and Trail Mix.

Arriving at the Bird Lake side of this average Q portage I saw the first sign of fall colors and sung the first line of “Oh Canada”

We paddled along the northern shore of Bird Lake observing much of the same fire results as we had seen on McVicar and Anubis.

I was sitting in the middle of the MN III navigating and advised Steve who was in the stern that we wanted to go around the islands south shore and that I had read that the northern channel was more difficult with reeds and shallow water.

Ha! Steve who has paddled the Yukon and Porcupine Rivers above the Arctic Circle, I think sometimes gets bored in the Q and said. “Really?, let’s go check it out” Oh my I thought, here we go again. We soon came to a little obstacle that would require us to lift over into the channel and I assumed that would deter us and we would soon be on our way to the south channel. Wrong again, we lifted over and were soon paddling in the reeds.

The water was very shallow as we floated slowly a few inches over the muck. We tested the bottom and sunk the paddle completely to its handle. If we got stuck it was not going to be pretty. We continued the slow roll through the shallows and reeds and soon the opening to main part of the southern channel came into view and we were through. That was fun, Steve was right we did need a little more adventure!

We had one more portage to get into the Agnes River; this was a medium length 448 meter portage that had several ups and downs. I wouldn’t rate it as difficult but it wasn’t easy. We arrived at the end and loaded up the MN III and headed into the little inlet that would eventually open up to the main channel of the Agnes River – East Channel

It was only around 12:30 as we paddled the river toward the main part of Lake Agnes. Our plan today was to only get to the main part of Agnes and look for a site and make it an early day. The wind picked up a little and it wasn’t a difficult paddle but we had to keep a consistent stroke to keep moving. We passed by a really nice site (1KU) opting to continue on to one that had good comments from PCD.

The wind was starting to blow a little harder as we approached our target island and its two sites. (1JH & 1JM), as we landed at the first site I got out to take a look and I was less than impressed. The fire pit was overgrown with grass and the site didn’t look like it had been camped in many years. The wind protection was nil and we opted to paddle over to the other side of the island and take a look at the other site. Agnes Lake was kicking up a fuss on that side and a few white caps were starting on the main channel as we rounded the corner. The island on this side had several blow downs and didn’t look real appealing with the high winds slamming this side of the island. I never actually got out and looked at the site, but it wasn’t for us.

We decided to paddle further south to the island campsite we had passed on Day 2, which was just past the narrows to the pictographs. About 30 minutes later we arrived at our campsite which was not listed on any map or the PCD. Who needs data anyway! We were greeted by this little guy enjoying his pine cone lunch.

This was a great site for tonight and our planned layover day.

Tonight Dinner was a feast of Spaghetti (Bertolli Jar) with 1 pound of rehydrated beef and mushrooms.

Did I mention our Food Pack weighed 80 LBS?

We enjoyed our dinner and spent some time enjoying our cocktails before heading off to bed.

Start Time:8:30 AM

End Time:2:30 PM

Portages Taken: 4

Total Portage Distance: 1726 meters

Total Distance Traveled: 12 Miles

Lakes Traveled: 5 - Kawnipi, Anubis, Bird, Agnes River and Agnes.