Sunday, July 22, 2012 Although I rate our overall trip as intermediate in difficulty, I would put in "hard" for these next few days. Travel in PMA's with little or no trail can be slow. At the same time, these areas offer up a reward of solitude for the effort.
We break camp and paddle west across this little bay on sw end of Gabi to the creek that flows in from Pouch. It is a pretty creek with a steep drop where it comes down to Gabi. We scout up the creek and portage up on a bit of game trail. Then we two-man the canoe for a while along the creekbed. Then we scout and carry along a more open area where the creek runs more west-east. Some of this stretch is paddling and some is carrying along marshy ground, where the creek shallows out too much to paddle. Others have noted that this kind of travel can be easier with high water conditions more common in early summer; our schedule just hasn't allowed this...
Galli dog is great, staying right with us along these carries; we usually leash her after one carry, and she gets to take a nap as we backtrack for gear (double portaging, with the first carry serving as a scouting carry, is common on these stretches).
We break for water and lunch at Pouch Lake, walking up the marsh grass at the south end to a rock point on the east side. My hat blows off while I am getting ready to filter water, and I go for a swim to get it. Tom finds this pretty amusing, but actually I enjoyed the swim.
The creek is too low for paddling, here, and it is mostly a matter of trying to find the best footing to carry further west. Hummocky marsh ground can be tough going.
We are certainly glad to reach some open water at the bottom of Marble Lake in the late afternoon. We paddle all around the lake and check out possible camping spots... not so many, here, and we finally settle for a somewhat open blowdown area on the south side of the island. As always with PMA camping, we do not "improve" the site, but settle in, no trace style. Likewise, we generally don't have a fire in PMA sites, but use the stove. Galli takes a nap and we relax back with some lakewater and rum. This is the first time we've used a (MSR) gravity filter, and it sure is fine (although we have also a pumpfilter along). Beautiful dusk sky, and we had a thunderstorm later in the night.
A look at the map shows Marble Lake as less than two miles (as the crow flies)from last night's camp... certainly travel in the PMA's is another kind of animal, and one can expect to take several hours to cover a mile, sometimes...