Alice to Wine.

Plans are meant to be changed and limits are meant to be pushed. We could have taken it easy and enjoyed any of the amazing lakes and campsites between Alice and Wine, but like I mentioned earlier, this group likes to put in work and stay for multiple nights. So at 5:30 a.m. we were up and at 'em.

We slammed some food, broke camp and were on the water by 6:45 a.m. to take on our challenge - Alice, River, Malberg, Pond, Boze, Trail, Bug, Louse, Poe, Bug, Wine and all the sloughs in between. Compared to the second half, the first section of this route (Alice to Trail) was a breeze.

All in all it took us around 13 hours to make it to Wine. Although we did stop to "filter" water, break open the food pack and swim, what slowed us down the most was part two of this route.

The portages get a little questionable East of Trail. The 125, 50 and 125 rod portages really set the stage for the home stretch. It didn't help when we found ourselves on a false portage between the 125 & 50 - be careful in here, if you don't go far enough north after the curve, you will see what appears to be a portage, it will take you very near the start of the real 50 rod portage but not before some full on bushwhacking - speaking from experience.

The remaining hikes, especially the 80 between Louse and Poe are very overgrown and rocky underneath. In shorts and sandles of various sorts, our legs and feet took a beating. Nothing five liters of wine won't fix though! We checked all three sites on Wine - the one by the portage to Frederick is the nicest, by far. The island site wouldn't be bad, but after the day we had, we held out hope for a nicer view. Site 860 was terribly overgrown. We walked past the fire grate twice before realizing it was there.