Saturday, August 10, 2019

On Saturday, we had breakfast at Trail Center...yummy! When we put into the water at the Round Lake landing, we maybe started to wonder if we had made the right decision. Jose was feeling wobbly in the canoe and I could barely lift our 80 pound pack. But onward ho! We singled portaged the 142 rod portage into Missing Link with me carrying the daypack and the 45 lb canoe, Stew carrying his pack basket and the 55 lb. canoe, Joey carrying the 80 lb. pack known as the "Beast", and Jose carrying the 50 lb. Sealline pack. Pretty flat reasonable portage with a little mud and some rocky areas. So far so good.

Next portage was 180 rods into Snipe Lake. My son suddenly announces he wants to take my canoe and I should carry "Beast". Say what?! I thought we had a deal. We decided to not single portage this one. So everyone took off with me taking up the rear. Big mistake. Took me 8 minutes just to figure out a way to get that pack onto my shoulders. My son made that pack look easy...nope, not easy at all. I neglected to train for this scenario. Once up, I must have looked ridiculous. I could only take baby steps and I kind of swore a few times...fortunately no children around to hear me. Once Joey reached the end of the portage, he came back to check on me. His words were, "Mom, the canoe was terrible to carry. My shoulders were killing me! The pack was so much better!" Whew! We were now back to our original deal...me canoe, him pack.

We camped on Snipe since it was the closest we could get to our entry point into the PMA for the next day. Very pretty lake with narrow gorges and lots of cliffs. The campsite had previously been visited by idiots who had stripped birch bark off living trees, whacked a lot with an axe, and left us a really long bear rope they had apparently been unable to get unstuck from a tree.

Total travel time: 2 hours

~Round Lake, Missing Link Lake, Snipe Lake