Sawbill to Lake One, Across the Center of the BWCA
by TominMpls
Trip Type:
Paddling Canoe
Entry Date:
07/02/2018
Entry Point:
Sawbill Lake (EP 38)
Exit Point:
Lake One (EP 30)
Number of Days:
7
Group Size:
2
Discuss Trip:
View Discussion Thread (13 messages)
Part 5 of 9
Wednesday, July 4 - Day Three
We woke up early on Wednesday and made pancakes and bacon to go with our coffee. It was partly cloudy and comfortable, but very humid. I put on my sunglasses as we headed out from the site at 9:30, looking forward to a relatively short five mile paddle, with a few reasonable portages, to get us to Malberg.
The three portages leading from Polly to Koma get progressively longer but are each quite reasonable, and we hadn't been going quite a full hour as we came through the final portage to the south end of Koma. As we loaded back in to the canoe, M pointed out some really wild-looking clouds due west - a series of tight, dark, narrow bands. The wind was blowing from the west, but not very strongly. The sky ahead was partly cloudy; I figured those clouds were heading our way, but I commented to M that they'd probably pass over us in about twenty minutes, so at the other side of Koma we should probably put on our rain jackets just in case.
Five minutes out on the lake, the sky suddenly went dark and the winds picked up dramatically; one minute after that, rains and strong gusts started in on us. Koma being a shallow lake and us being closer to the windward side, we were fortunate that the winds weren't producing big waves, but the rain and wind just kept growing as we paddled hard to get tightly against the land that juts out into the center of the western side of the lake. In this semi-protected spot we regrouped and decided that it was better to push through the storm to the north portage, rather than to try and scramble to shore there. My sunglasses were so fogged over that I hadn't even been able to see much when the storm hit so I took them off, but then the rain in my eyes left me no better off. Fortunately M could see well enough to navigate, and except for one minor bump on a rock, we got to the north portage with no issues other than being soaking wet.
The rain was coming so hard that the portage was seriously flooded, and so we got our two bags up onto some rocks that kept them out of the torrent, and I carefully hauled our canoe up to a place where I could pour out the substantial amount of rain that had collected in it. We were so drenched that we decided not to bother putting on rain jackets, though now that we weren't paddling super hard we did start to get a little cold. I got out some snacks, and we ate some snacks while we waited to decide what to do next. After about ten minutes M suggested that I pull the Bugout shelter out of the bag and set it up to give us some additional protection, and maybe we should eat some lunch; we had Trailtopia ramen packs for lunch, and if we had brought along a smaller tarp, such as her Eno tarp, I probably would have done so. But it wasn't even quite 11, the portage was very tight for our shelter, and it did seem to be getting lighter, so we decided to wait a few more minutes to see. Sure enough, in another ten minutes the storm had mostly moved past us, and although the portage was still flooded, the light rain and lightening sky seemed reasonable enough to at least get to the other end of the portage, so we started to the other side.
The storm must have been moving very fast indeed, because by the time we reached the other end of the portage the rain had nearly stopped. As we started on to Malberg the sun even kind of came out periodically, and the day returned to being pretty nice almost as quickly as it had turned stormy. We paddled to the final site before the portage off Malberg on the western end, and stopped at site 1042, the site we'd originally intended to stop at. We pulled out my tiny backpacking stove and got the water boiling before we'd unpacked anything else, and had hot ramen in us within minutes. By this point the sun was breaking through in earnest, and it was turning into a beautiful, warm day. After days of high humidity, the storm had broken the humidity and it was now quite pleasant.
The sun came out a little later, and we were able to hang or lay everything out to dry. We learned that a perk to a black canoe is that things dry more quickly on it, and we used the Bugout shelter's guylines as clotheslines.
Later in the afternoon I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see some kind of rabbit, peaking over the top of our canoe. It first scurried off when it saw me, but was back in minutes. It had the kind of disproportionately-large rear legs that snowshoe hares have, and I wonder if perhaps we have snowshoe hares up there, but if not, that's what it looked like. As the day went on it got so curious that I wondered if we might have accidentally covered up its den with something of ours, but I checked under the tent and around our various things and couldn't find any evidence of anything. At one point it hopped right up to my feet, and even when I spoke it didn't move until I raised my voice a bit. It spent the whole rest of the day popping up around the edges of our site, never anything but curious, as far as I could tell.
Having reached camp so early in the day, we passed the afternoon playing a variety of card games, exploring the area, drying out, eating, and reading. We had Good2Go meals for dinner - thai curry and gumbo - both of which were great. It being the "middle" night (if we count the night in the Sawbill Campground) and also Independence Day, we also had a Trailtopia triple berry crisp dessert after dinner. When we finally went to the tent, late in the evening, we noticed the rabbit coming over near the tent to see what we were up to, and periodically checking on us in the tent. I secretly thought of the Killer Bunny from the Holy Grail as I turned off the lantern and we went to sleep.
~Polly, Lake, Koma Lake, Malberg Lake
We woke up early on Wednesday and made pancakes and bacon to go with our coffee. It was partly cloudy and comfortable, but very humid. I put on my sunglasses as we headed out from the site at 9:30, looking forward to a relatively short five mile paddle, with a few reasonable portages, to get us to Malberg.
The three portages leading from Polly to Koma get progressively longer but are each quite reasonable, and we hadn't been going quite a full hour as we came through the final portage to the south end of Koma. As we loaded back in to the canoe, M pointed out some really wild-looking clouds due west - a series of tight, dark, narrow bands. The wind was blowing from the west, but not very strongly. The sky ahead was partly cloudy; I figured those clouds were heading our way, but I commented to M that they'd probably pass over us in about twenty minutes, so at the other side of Koma we should probably put on our rain jackets just in case.
Five minutes out on the lake, the sky suddenly went dark and the winds picked up dramatically; one minute after that, rains and strong gusts started in on us. Koma being a shallow lake and us being closer to the windward side, we were fortunate that the winds weren't producing big waves, but the rain and wind just kept growing as we paddled hard to get tightly against the land that juts out into the center of the western side of the lake. In this semi-protected spot we regrouped and decided that it was better to push through the storm to the north portage, rather than to try and scramble to shore there. My sunglasses were so fogged over that I hadn't even been able to see much when the storm hit so I took them off, but then the rain in my eyes left me no better off. Fortunately M could see well enough to navigate, and except for one minor bump on a rock, we got to the north portage with no issues other than being soaking wet.
The rain was coming so hard that the portage was seriously flooded, and so we got our two bags up onto some rocks that kept them out of the torrent, and I carefully hauled our canoe up to a place where I could pour out the substantial amount of rain that had collected in it. We were so drenched that we decided not to bother putting on rain jackets, though now that we weren't paddling super hard we did start to get a little cold. I got out some snacks, and we ate some snacks while we waited to decide what to do next. After about ten minutes M suggested that I pull the Bugout shelter out of the bag and set it up to give us some additional protection, and maybe we should eat some lunch; we had Trailtopia ramen packs for lunch, and if we had brought along a smaller tarp, such as her Eno tarp, I probably would have done so. But it wasn't even quite 11, the portage was very tight for our shelter, and it did seem to be getting lighter, so we decided to wait a few more minutes to see. Sure enough, in another ten minutes the storm had mostly moved past us, and although the portage was still flooded, the light rain and lightening sky seemed reasonable enough to at least get to the other end of the portage, so we started to the other side.
The storm must have been moving very fast indeed, because by the time we reached the other end of the portage the rain had nearly stopped. As we started on to Malberg the sun even kind of came out periodically, and the day returned to being pretty nice almost as quickly as it had turned stormy. We paddled to the final site before the portage off Malberg on the western end, and stopped at site 1042, the site we'd originally intended to stop at. We pulled out my tiny backpacking stove and got the water boiling before we'd unpacked anything else, and had hot ramen in us within minutes. By this point the sun was breaking through in earnest, and it was turning into a beautiful, warm day. After days of high humidity, the storm had broken the humidity and it was now quite pleasant.
The sun came out a little later, and we were able to hang or lay everything out to dry. We learned that a perk to a black canoe is that things dry more quickly on it, and we used the Bugout shelter's guylines as clotheslines.
Later in the afternoon I thought I saw something out of the corner of my eye and turned to see some kind of rabbit, peaking over the top of our canoe. It first scurried off when it saw me, but was back in minutes. It had the kind of disproportionately-large rear legs that snowshoe hares have, and I wonder if perhaps we have snowshoe hares up there, but if not, that's what it looked like. As the day went on it got so curious that I wondered if we might have accidentally covered up its den with something of ours, but I checked under the tent and around our various things and couldn't find any evidence of anything. At one point it hopped right up to my feet, and even when I spoke it didn't move until I raised my voice a bit. It spent the whole rest of the day popping up around the edges of our site, never anything but curious, as far as I could tell.
Having reached camp so early in the day, we passed the afternoon playing a variety of card games, exploring the area, drying out, eating, and reading. We had Good2Go meals for dinner - thai curry and gumbo - both of which were great. It being the "middle" night (if we count the night in the Sawbill Campground) and also Independence Day, we also had a Trailtopia triple berry crisp dessert after dinner. When we finally went to the tent, late in the evening, we noticed the rabbit coming over near the tent to see what we were up to, and periodically checking on us in the tent. I secretly thought of the Killer Bunny from the Holy Grail as I turned off the lantern and we went to sleep.
~Polly, Lake, Koma Lake, Malberg Lake
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