Saturday, May 30, 2020

I finally convinced myself to get out of the hammock and back into the cold. I started making coffee, but the wind was just making it so chilly! So I headed over to the south side of the island where the sun was shining and I was shielded from the wind. Wow, what a difference! It was borderline warm!

I’m wondering if the west wind is common and that’s why the other fire pit location exists here. After some coffee, oatmeal, and donuts, we’re off on to our final two PMA portages.

We approach the portage to Bibon and prepare for another double portage. I quickly check my InReach and see a text message from my wife saying that the National Guard is in Minneapolis and that Lake Street is burning down. I read aloud the message to see if anyone else in the group can find the meaning in that message, but almost at once we are transported from the beauty of Sterling Lake to the unknown reality of whatever must be happening back home. We assumed it was related to the death of George Floyd a few days earlier (which we had spent a great deal of the car ride up discussing), but we had underestimated the impact it would have. And of course, when you get vague details in a text message, your mind is left to wander and typically imagines things as even worse than they are. Kyle is particularly concerned as he lives in Minneapolis.

But, nothing we can do now, so we make the second trip over to Bibon. This was a definitely a rugged portage, though still easy to follow for much of it. In the last third toward Bibon, the trail traversed a rock face that made the trail hard to find. Our first time across we didn’t go quite the right way, but it was easy to re-find the trail. Also, right near the Bibon landing it looked as though the trail had to be re-routed at some point as there was a false trail that dead-ended. The landing at Bibon itself was perfect. A couple nice, flat rock faces a couple feet off the water and even a crack between the two that you could set your canoe in and load up, also like the rock faces were docks. Bibon was a quaint little lake.

A quick paddle later and we were at the ‘portage’ to Nibin which was really just a beaver dam pullover.

In my trip planning I had wanted to see if I could find the old portage from Nibin to the Stuart River that evidently followed a stream/beaver bond in the southwest end of the lake. However, after two nights at PMA campsites, the rest of the group wanted to stay at a designated campsite on Stuart Lake that had a real firegrate and latrine in favor of using the PMA permit for White Feather Lake we had reserved. I am still curious as to whether or not that portage trail is usable.

So we searched for the portage into Stuart Lake, which was easily identified by a rock cairn on the shore. In fact, the first 50 rods or so of this portage is marked by numerous cairns as it traverses a swampy, then rocky area. The swampy part at the beginning was very wet, even considering the little rain that had occurred in the spring. After that, the scramble up the fairly steep rock face may have been difficult without all of the handy cairns--thank you, whoever you are! The second half of the portage was quite lovely, easily traceable and felt quite magical at times with downed logs and trees outlining the path through the woods. At the Stuart Lake end, the trail ends at a massive outcropping that would make this portage quite easy to find if coming from Stuart Lake.

And just as we expected, the solitude of the past several days was shattered by the sight of several canoes paddling from the river to the northeast end of the lake. In fact, we saw three separate groups paddle by just in the time we spent at the landing.

Feeling bittersweet that the most adventurous part of our journey had ended, we piled back in the canoes and headed to the cluster of sites in the northeast. Two were taken and two were open. We scouted the two and settled on the westernmost site, on a peninsula overlooking the entire lake. It lacked protection from the wind, but boy did it have a view!

The day was windy and partly cloudy, with giant puffy clouds covering up the sun on-and-off. We decided to go for a quick swim in one of the 5-minute periods where the sun was out. Brrr! Stuart was much colder than any of the other smaller lakes we had been in on the trip! Our swim only lasted the 5 minutes until the sun disappeared behind another fluffy cloud.

We spent most of the day relaxing and discovered the joy of whiskey lemonades while just hanging out. Wild rice soup and more biscuits in the JMO for dinner. We lasted as long as we could outside, but it was a chilly, windy night so we ended up hitting the hay pretty early. Side note: this site has the perfect bear tree.

Today's route:

~Sterling Lake, Bibon Lake, Nibin Lake, Stuart Lake