Day 7: Haven Lake and Out

We woke up and broke camp with that feeling you always get on the last day of a trip. This year it was a bit different since we were being picked up on Haven and didn’t even have to paddle out to anywhere. The flight was to come at 1pm, and we headed back to a couple of our old spots (and some new ones) before gathering at a midlake island for our pickup. We rehashed the trip and ate a lazy lunch, and when 3pm came and there was no sign of a plane, we were starting to get a bit steamed. We called in to our air service, and were told that the planes were on their way, but it was 3:45pm before we heard the whine of the Cessna. Brett loaded up as we in the other two boats waited for the DeHaviland Beavers to show up. At 4pm, we saw first one and then two planes at a distance, and our trip was nearing its end.

It was a windless bluebird day, perfect for flying, and I forgot to grab my camera out of the pack, which was too bad since the views were great. As we flew over the park towards Red Lake, I just couldn’t get over how there was just noone there. We saw no canoes as we flew over at all. We landed, got our stuff into the truck and headed for Dryden, where we were staying the night. Our hope was to get some of the drive under our belt so that the following day wouldn’t be as bad. We spent a short night there, and made it home without incident to our waiting wives and kids.

Epilogue:

This was a unique trip for us in a lot of ways, and like most things, there were pro’s and con’s. The drive up there for us was 15 hours, which meant we got one less night in the park than usual, since our travel time is pretty tight. WCPP is (and feels) very remote, and if solitude is what you want, it is there to be had in spades. This can work against you when looking for a portage or improving a campsite, but it is what it is. We found the fishing to be good to excellent at times, but missed catching smallmouth a bit. The boreal forest that is there contains mostly jackpine and black spruce with some birches, but we didn’t see any of the big red or white pines. There is really only limited soil up there, so the bigger trees get, the more they are at the mercy of the wind. So many times you’d just go by a shoreline and see a massive pine that had just been blown over so you were looking at the underside of the root mass. When camping, you had to look out for any standing dead tree, since they could be often pushed over by hand it seemed. All of the deadfalls make the area very susceptible to the cycle of fire and new growth, as I guess all forests are.

The areas we visited had only fairly short portages and with the flights both ways, this was easily the least work that we’d done while visiting canoe country. We felt like we were “on vacation” more since we didn’t have a days worth of headwinds or had to have a long travel day, which was nice. If we would have driven to Lund or Leano, we would have added two more hours of driving down a bumpy gravel road and had our route and schedule more dictated by travel. Wrist and Mexican Hat are both gems, and Haven would be a place that I would take a kid (or anyone for that matter) walleye fishing.

Travelling with two tandem canoes and a solo boat was just fine, and Brett performed admirably on his own. Harlan at Red Lake Outfitters gave us good service and boats to use, and it seems like his new business is off to a good start. The only thing that we would change was our flight times, but that is really out of his control. If any BWCAW/Quetico paddlers want a change of pace and scratch their itch for adventure, I would recommend taking a look at WCPP and see if it would work for your tripping style and priorities.

We were hoping to see a woodland caribou, but did not get a chance to. Maybe that will happen next time we head up there…