Thursday, September 27, 2018
Travelled 7.5 miles from Baldrock Rapids to unnamed rapids at P12 I woke up and made pancakes and coffee in the snow today. My morning routine has included lighting a fire to take the edge off of putting on my wet and/or frozen river clothes, and today would be no different. On the one hand, I was having the time of my life this trip, but on the other hand I was getting tired of being constantly wet when I wasn’t in my hammock. I mean, you expect to get wet with river travel, but it would have been nice to have a couple of dry nights by the campfire. I was close enough to my final destination that I could easily reach it today, but since my pickup wasn’t scheduled until Saturday morning, I would have to spend a lot of time at one campsite. Layover days on a lake are one thing, but on a river you are somewhat stuck at camp. Paddling through to the end would save me from having to setup and tear down camp one more time, which can be a cold and cumbersome ordeal. I figured I would hit the water and just see how it went today. I departed at 11am and once I was on the water I was really getting into the scenery, and there were a few rapids that I was able to run, which I rather enjoyed. I wasn’t fishing anymore, so I wouldn’t be on the water long today. At about 1:30 I ran a couple of rapids and then had to hit the brakes just above a fairly large one. I got onto shore and pulled up the gps, and realized that I had missed the portage for P12. I adhoced a portage around the rapid and the falls below it, and found another beautiful campsite near the end of P12. The portage trail for P13 was visible from the campsite at P12, but I decided that I may as well camp here, and finish the last couple miles of travel on Friday.
It was snowing again and a bit chilly, so I got a fire started and kept it stoked while I setup camp. There was a fair amount of driftwood washed up near the waterfall, so I got a roaring fire going, and cooked some curry and coffee over it. My sleeping clothes were getting a bit damp at this point (as was everything else) so I dried them out by the fire, along with a couple of pairs of socks, which were all wet. Once again I was driven to bed by precipitation, which would continue on through the night.