Wednesday, September 16, 2020 Once again, R made breakfast – powdered eggs, the last of the bacon, and hot chocolate. Once again, we broke camp and were on the water by 8:30am. Once again, we wouldn’t see anyone until our final portage. We had located the portage into Henson the night before, so we knew exactly where to go today. The landing on the Omega side is pretty rocky, if I remember correctly. However, the Henson side was a different story. That side was full of small sunken tree trunks and mud. With the low water, I had to stay out of the canoe and push float it a short ways out past all of the hang ups. 

We were going to troll Henson, but the wind was pretty gusty, so we decided to just paddle across and get our butts to Pillsbery. Since we were only going to be a couple lakes from the entry points, I was getting nervous about site availability. The portage into Pillsbery is nothing really to remember.  Once on Pillsbery, we are greeted by a bald eagle (first of the trip) and increasing winds. 

We checked out both sites on Pillsbery. While they could be perfectly nice for hammock campers, we couldn’t find any acceptable tent pads, so we had a decision to make. Do we try for Meeds with 2 ~100 rod portages in and 3 sites, or take the 1 95 rod portage into Allen, with only 1 site. The Allen site would force us to exit through Lizz. With the Meeds site, we could take the mile lone one out or the several through Lizz, depending on the wind. However, nearly all of the permits for Meeds and Lizz were booked for this week. If we couldn’t get a site on Meeds, Caribou would probably be full too. With all this in mind, R decided that she wanted to try Meeds, and if it was full, we would just exit.  Just then, it started to rain, so we donned the rain jackets for the first time this trip. Before we could make it to the portage out, the skies cleared. The portage towards Swallow/Meeds is mismarked on this site and my McKenzie maps. It is in the NW corner of the bay east of where it is marked on the maps. This portage is also more up and down than the maps lead me to believe. At the Swallow end of the portage, there is a giant tree that had started snapping. You could hear the popping and cracking with each gust of wind. Luckily it was leaning away from the portage trail.  We cross the 100 yards that make up the width of Swallow Lake and have a quick lunch of tuna packets with mayo on tortillas on the north shore. We run into a couple single portaging south towards Pillsbery or Henson. The next portage wipes us out again. The wind is still whipping pretty good on Meeds. We decide we will take the first site available. 

This was the western most site. It’s a huge site with lots of trails. The best tent pad was westward down a trail to a clearing. Lots of moose poop. This site is definitely more used than any of the other sites we stayed, but there was a pile of branches collected for the campfire. It’ll do for the night.  After setting up camp, we hand in the hammock some more and explore the trails. R catches some more frogs. We enjoy the Fall colors, which appear to be increasing every day, and I fish from shore for a little while – 1 small pike. We try to eat as much remaining food as we can. Other than running out for water, we don’t leave camp. 

 

Tonight’s forecast was 25F! It was going to be cold. 

~Omega Lake, Henson Lake, Pillsbery Lake, Swallow Lake, Meeds Lake

Lakes Traveled:   Omega Lake, Henson Lake, Pillsbery Lake, Swallow Lake, Meeds Lake,