Monday & Tuesday September 11 & 12, 2006

That morning I used our satellite phone to call our office to inform them of the change & to have them switch the pick up point and schedule a flight out of Beaverhouse instead of a tow at La Croix.

We backtracked our way out to Pickeral Narrows and met Matt Shelton & his dad paddling towards us. We gave them the bad news about the Deux River and suggested they go around through Bisk, Beg, Bud, Fern and Olifaunt to get to Sturgeon, which was their next goal.

At the end of Pickeral there is a narrow spot which shows 2 portages on the map. We were able to paddle through the first area but had to do the next short portage. At that portage we met a Canadian couple who were traveling with their two gorgeous and well behaved malamute/husky dogs. We were now on Batchewaung Lake where we settled in at an island campsite with a great view of the evening’s sunset.

We had two short portages, in and out of a small pond to get into McAlpine Lake. The map shows just one portage but there is a large beaver dam which must be portaged around. McAlpine is a long lake, five miles long, and narrow. There is a small rock cliff which has an Indian pictograph as well as some kind of spiral abstraction. The west side of the lake is very shallow and littered with large tree stumps. The portage out of McAlpine is a series of portages around beaver dams. We saw a muskrat on the shoreline and a large flock of Canadian geese.

Once on Kasakokwog, we followed the north shore down to the middle of the lake where there is a bunch of camp sites. My buddy, Jeff Hway, told me about a nice sandy beach site.

We found it and set up camp, planning to stay here for two nights. It was very nice, sand beach, facing west, set in a big stand of red pines, with a small island in front of it. After dinner we enjoyed a great sunset. When it got dark I lit up the lantern (Quetico had a fire ban). We had a cocktail and talked about how the trip had gone so far. Except for the low water, we had great weather and the wind at our backs.

The next morning we slept in late & then got up to do some fishing. Since I knew nothing about this lake, I decided to do a lot of trolling. We took our rod holders & heavy rods set with 17# test and a #8 deep diving Shad Rap. After a few passes we picked up some pike and a few smallmouth bass off a point near our campsite. We switched over to crawlers & jigs and caught some more bass. After fishing we went for a swim, did some reading and then got our stuff ready for traveling the next day. We had a great dinner which included some of Cache Lake’s fry bread, yum!