Saturday, August 04, 2018

We arose early and roused the rest of the group to get an early start. The goal was to camp on Sawbill tonight, if the weather allowed. It was cloudy when we woke up, but no rain yet. We portaged into Sitka and were surprised to see a group of nine at the other end of the portage so early in the morning. Then we remembered that when we were at the outfitters, they talked about a group of 54 they were outfitting that were entering the day after us. This was evidently one of the groups. The group informed us the Sitka-Cherokee portage was quite difficult. After some slight difficultly finding the portage, we were on our way. It was definitely up and down (this one goes over the Laurentian Divide), but going north as we were, you are definitely going downhill for more of it. There was one particular spot I remember where I had to jump down from a rock and veer my canoe at the last second to avoid hitting a tree directly in front of the rock.

The landing at the Cherokee side is definitely cramped, much to the chagrin of another group of nine who had just approached the portage from Cherokee. I suggested waiting for the rest of our group as were single portaging and would just be a couple minutes, but the group leader (the lone adult among some middle/high schoolers) seemed very impatient and was intent on starting the portage immediately. He started to portage a canoe up the very steep landing while our second canoe was coming down, and he had to retreat back to the water. He decided to just wait at this point, but let everyone know how frustrated he was. I’ll give him a pass since he was the lone adult in the group and probably had other things to be frustrated about as well.

Cherokee is beautiful. I feel that we missed out by not camping on Cherokee. We wondered if we could pass to the south of an island on the way to the Cherokee Creek, noting a small amount of blue on the map. It turns out that it is navigable, though does get fairly narrow! The Cherokee Creek is also beautiful.

I love the elevated walls during parts of it and the intimate nature of the more narrow part of the creek. I was nervous that the landing would be difficult to spot for the portage to Skoop, but it was extremely obvious. Still no rain!

The next 4/5 portages were full of boulders and muck, as I recall. It looked like one part (Ada Creek) must be navigable at times, but we had to take the longer portage around the entire thing. The landing at the north end of Ada also proved difficult. It was a huge mud pit and I believe unavoidable in order to get access to the water. But, we made it through just fine at the end of the day.

The last portage to Sawbill was very easy and we all celebrated upon completing our final portage. We decided we would take a campsite on the northern end of the lake so we could enjoy one final paddle Sunday morning. The first few campsites we passed were unoccupied, but we were hoping for a little more elevation.

We were all just paddling along when all of a sudden, one of the canoes tipped and all of its contents spilled into the water. We immediately made sure the two guys were okay, and they frantically grabbed for their packs and threw them back in the canoe. We ended up pulling their canoe to shore while they swam over so they could easily get back in. I guess one of the newbies shifted his weight very suddenly, then they both overreacted to the initial weight shift and in they went! Unbelievable! Because of that, we chose the next site we came to so they could dry off. And lucky us, it had elevation and a great view of the lake!

No sooner had we set up camp then did it start raining again. And it rained the entire rest of the day.

So people read in their tents, or sat in the rain soaking up the outdoors. One highlight of the day was when we all emerged from our tents (getting some tent fever) and we decided to have a pancake party! We passed the stove around as one by one we each made our own pancakes.

That was the highlight of the day for me and by far the best pancake I’ve ever had! Dinner was chili which was also delicious.

~North Temperance Lake, Sitka Lake, Cherokee Lake, Skoop Lake, Ada Lake, Sawbill Lake