Up early, packed our rented food pack and otherwise sorted through everything and got set. It's a long-ish drive from Fenske to EP 14, I think we got there around 7:30/8am or so.

EP 14 features a portage from the lot to the river. Nothing terribly difficult, but maybe this is where I should mention we had the heaviest food pack known to man. Food for 3 nights, 7 guys...but more than that - DRINK for 3 nights, 7 guys. As mentioned above, we don't like to miss an opportunity for fun...and the intent with our trips is pretty much basecamping, and we have no illusions of single portaging...so we bring booze. Boxes of wine, handles of vodka - it really adds to the weight. That food pack had to be every bit of 150 pounds. It was brutal to carry.

We get on the river - it's an overcast morning, but peaceful and the paddling is nice. 60-rod portage around some rapids on the river goes fine (except for the guy on food pack duty...nothing went fine when you were hauling that...we took turns.)

Paddle up to Pauness and opt for the northern (longer) portage into Lower Pauness - the outfitter told us to avoid the short southern one. This portage was fine as well, although put in's and take out's all through this area are no picnic...lots of rocks and little space.

We get through Lower Pauness and hit the portage for Shell. This is essentially 2 portages with a 4- rod paddle in the middle. It's a beaver damn that you have to load back up for and paddle through. Not such a big deal, but for us, half the battle is loading and unloading the canoes with all our gear, and having to do it an extra time is fairly annoying.

We shared this portage with another group who told us they just left the northern site on Con Island on Shell. I knew that one was supposed to be a beaut, but I had my heart set on Lynx. So we get on Shell and b-line straight across to the short portage into Little Shell. Stopped and considered the lone campsite on Little Shell, but again - Lynx was right around the corner and reviews on this website had me longing for the beauty and luxurious campsites on Lynx.

We paddled through the "portage" from Little Shell into Lynx and could almost immediately see our A1 option campsite was taken. Continued paddling north on Lynx and saw our second choice on this lake (second site on east side of lake) was also taken. At this point I think we were all thinking maybe we should have taken the Con Island site or the Little Shell site.

But we kept heading north and eventually got to the site on the west side of Lynx by the bay. Scoped it out and while it seemed a bit small for our 7-man group, we loved the view from atop the rocks there, loved the firegrate/kitchen setup, and were pretty damn ready to be done travelling for the day, so we claimed it and set up camp.

Almost immediately after we arrived and got settled, the sun came out for a bit - felt great and reminded me to be glad it wasn't out when we were portaging...it was hot. We went for a swim and threw some lines in the waters near camp - from shore and on the canoes. Caught nothing. During the swim a mother and baby moose emerged from the far west part of our bay. Got to watch them for almost an hour.

We had dinner (and of course got into the wine and vodka), and shortly thereafter, not long before sunset the skies opened up and we sat through a couple of hours of rain. I was happy we took the time when we got there to get a tarp setup...we sat under it and traded stories and waited out the rain.