Monday, June 25, 2012

Awoke early once again and started a long portage day. We had a short paddle across Pickerel to the portage across to Bisk. Pickerel is dammed at this location. There are some nice rapids at this location and the portage trail isn’t really too bad except for a couple of areas where you wade through thigh deep water and mud. The smaller lakes today were like glass. The shorter portage to Beg was not too bad at all with really pretty rapids at the exit. There is a really short portage of about 50 feet into Bud that we just canoe carried everything over. There was obvious signs of a burn on the southeast end of Bud from a few years ago, which is beginning to recover. There is another short portage of a few hundred yards into Fern with yet another nice rapid at the exit. We had lunch on a small island in Fern before continuing on.

 I had heard about the portage between Fern and Olifaunt, and it didn’t disappoint. This was probably the hardest of the trip. No mud, but nearly a mile of up and down rock climbing. It’s also a tease of a portage…several times it opens up to the water only to veer back into the woods. There are several nice views of the rapids though. The girls positively amazed me, portaging this in one trip with 80# packs and no real breaks! After this, although the portage into Sturgeon (north) is longish, it didn’t seem that hard at all. After a long day of portaging, we finally camped on an island at the north end of Sturgeon, a site designated Z8. This campsite has a fair amount of room, but seems crowded because it is spread out over several rock shelves an is heavily wooded.