Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

The best laid plans....
by Bearpath9

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date:
Entry & Exit Point: Wood Lake (EP 26)
Number of Days: 6
Group Size: 1
Part 3 of 6
It rained overnight, pretty hard at times since it woke me up. Made some breakfast, and after that I had a cup of tea and did some thinking. I could push on, hoping that the rain would hold off until I got to Good and found a site. The crowded parking lot was on my mind, since most of the vehicles were there the night before I went in, and Wood didn't look all that populated. Or I could stay here, which I really did not want to do, but I don't like paddling and portaging in the rain. I should say that the entire trip there was little to no wind, so the lake was very calm, easy paddling. In the end, the weather decided for me. It started to sprinkle a bit, so I stashed my food vault and my garbage vault in their places, gathered up my stove, and headed for the tent. As soon as it let up a bit, I grabbed my tarp and my paracord and went to set that up. I figured that if I was going to stay, I would need a place to cook out of the elements. There was a good spot a little ways back that had a stump with a flat rock on it to sit. So I got to work. I have never set a tarp up before, and since I never even mastered a square knot in scouts, I had practiced on learning two knots--the bowline and the taut line hitch. Surprisingly, it went very well. Got the line up, put the tarp up by running a loop of the rope through the grommets, and securing it with small pieces of wood. Just a simple lean-to set up. It wasn't quite high enough to keep the tarp off of my head, so I rigged up another line, raised the first one up higher, and attached the tarp to the second line. Staked the bottom so I had a nice angle for the rain to run off of. I had to fine tune it when it rained again, since it was catching water between the two lines, but after that I had no problems. By the time I finished that, the sky didn't look too bad, so I went fishing/touring. I caught a nice 2 or 3 pound northern right off my site, continued into the west bay where there some people at that site. I just continued on, following the shore, sometimes fishing, sometimes not. I got up into the narrows, and caught two eater-size walleyes. I had to decide if I was going to eat them or return them. I knew that there was very little wood that wasn't wet or rotted at the site, and given the unpredictability of the weather, my odds of cooking were rather slim. So I tossed them back. On cue, it started to sprinkle again. Put on my rain jacket, and went on back. I figured it was going to a rainy trip, so I had brought a book with, and spent most of the day reading, and when I could going out fishing.