Oatmeal with dried blueberries and sausage for breakfast. On the water before 9:00. Easterly breeze provided a light chop across Jean. Cleared a couple small trees from the Jean/Burntside portage but overall easy portage.

There was only one small beaver dam lift over in the creek between Burntside and Claire. I've not traveled here before, but I would imagine the creek is pretty gnarly when the water level is normal or low.

We missed the portage to Claire and paddled right up to the falls. Falls were high, but not much water given the wet weather lately. Went back to the portage. Glad for high water that allowed us to paddle through the grass and reeds to solid ground. I pushed off with my paddle and it went halfway into the muck before I stopped pushing.

I’ve been surprised at how generally dry most of the portages have been.

Had a hard time finding the portage from Claire to Bentpine. Paddled back and forth and put Walter up on land to walk back and forth looking for the path. Finally found it near where we started looking, left of the boulders at the mouth of the creek.

The first 25% of the portage was pretty good. The last 75% was brutally hard. Lots of up and down steep moss-covered slopes. At the first boggy area, I couldn’t tell where the trail was on the other side. I took about five steps forward and saw the trail off to my left. I was committed for another 10 steps because the trees were too close together to turn the canoe and I didn’t want to walk backwards in the bad footing. At the next wet area, the beavers were cutting down trees 2-3’ diameter - crazy animals! And then the billy goat portion of the trail started. I dropped the canoe there and came back for it. In addition to the slopes, there were many deadfalls to step over or duck under. We cleared many so you could at least carry a canoe on the trail. Walter called the portage an ass kicker.

We had lunch at the end of the portage and waited out a thundershower. We fished rápalas down Bentpine. Walter caught a walleye (aka dinner) while I was trying to remove my rápala that a northern had inhaled. Walter also continued to catch many nice smallies. We caught our first small Northerns of the trip. Fishing was good.

Got camp set up and made apple cider with fireball. Decided to go out fishing with our drinks. Didn’t get very far before it started to rain. Walter caught another large smallie on the way back to camp

We just got secured under the tarp before it started to pour; lighting strike directly across the lake from us. This thunderstorm was a harbinger of things to come 24 hours later.

While under the tarp having our happy hour, Walter laid out the wood we would need and I got the food prepped so we could make dinner if we got a break. We got that break around 7:30. The fire was tough to keep going because the wood was damp. I walked parallel to the shore and found a 4-5’ white pine stump that I was able to break apart. That was the key to our cooking fire. Dinner at 8:30, cleanup, and bed.