Sunday, August 21, 2022 Wake up to a fresh start and are ready to tackle the PMA! A little fog around sunrise but otherwise looking good. Couple of cups of coffee as we eat rehydrated breakfast and pack up. We hit the water about 8. Then clear blue sky across the lake To the long portage in the bay North of the outflow. There is another portage at the outflow but more on that later. We so got this! We decide to each grab a bag and walk the portage to see what we have gotten ourselves into. We'll do the canoes later. Portage trail is not too bad. Only about a foot wide in most places but pretty easy to follow. Three downed trees that took some effort to get over. And a bunch more that made it like a football training camp

As we go along we see more animal prints than shoe prints. Including this rather large moose track. Luckily it was going the other way so it must have been from yesterday. The paddle at the bottom gives some idea of the size of it.

When we get to the other end, we realize that we didn't time ourselves. So we time it on the way back. 25 minutes to traverse one way. We decide to bring all the packs over and take the empty canoes on the outfall portages. The thought was it would be easier to bring the canoes down the river than over that tight trail. Sometimes we think too much. When we get back after packing all the bags over the trail, it's 11:30 and we head to the outfall portage. We wasted a few minutes looking on the North side until we found the portage trail on the south side of the river (creek). Easy to find but just as tight as the long portage. We do the first one and hop into the boats. Headed downstream through the lily pads or as we started calling them, brake pads. Then started on the MANY beaver dams for the day. Most we small and had a small channel that you could get through. Assume Ramming Speed! It wasn't too bad in the Prism because of the shallow draw. The tandem hung up more and they had to get out a couple of times. Then we hit a larger one with about 2 feet high. I aimed at a low spot and hit it with some speed to get over. Got stopped about halfway and started to butt scoot over it. Steve came up behind to give ma a little push. Next lesson learned! When the front tip of your boat is in the water and the back is on top of a beaver dam, you don't have the wide part to keep stable. It was like trying to balance sitting on a pencil. I don't know how but I didn't dump into the water. Probably because I had no gear in the boat

Got the rest of the way to the end of the long portage and picked up our gear. It was really handy having the Inreach as it showed the waypoint where we left it. Probably would have found it using the map but it was way easy with the GPS. Total time to do the river route. An hour and twenty minutes! Next time, if there is one, we'll do the long portage with the canoe too. We headed downstream where it opened up some more. We hit a bunch more beaver dams and lost count.

Then the last portage before Sunday lake. Where I got major wildlife sighting. The portage was extremely easy to find which I found curious. Walking along, there were many trails crisscrossing. It looked like the local riverfront park between the parking lot and the water. On my last portage trip I saw why, a brown furry animal was ahead of me on the trail. Oh crap, a Bear I thought. No too small so maybe a baby bear.... which would be worse if mama bear was around. No, there's a big flat tail, It's a beaver! I yelled loudly out of fright and to scare it away. The little sucker was just as scared and scurried off through the bush. All those trails were from the beaver harvesting the forest on the side.

When I was coming back with the last pack, I got this picture of him in the water. Then on to Sunday Lake over more beaver dams and through the oxbows. Which made it about three times longer than a straight line. if you get a few turns ahead, you can lose sight of the rest of the group

Finally, SUNDAY LAKE! it took us most of the day to get there.

Looking across there were some large white objects on the far side that I thought to be other campers. It turned out to be two large Trumpeter Swans hanging out. We scooted across the lake to the campsite getting there around 4, I think. There we settled in and set up camp. We were too tired to fish so we started cocktail hour. Then Mart started making some "whoa,, aaa. lookatthat" noises as a Great Blue Heron attempted to land in the dead tree right at the edge of the campsite. It kinda scared him away but it was another close encounter for the day. We sat back down to finish cocktails and were treated to a fly-by from the Trumpeter Swans doing a lap of the lake. We had our rehydrated meal and settled in for the night. We decided we needed to start earlier to make better time. So we planned a early wake up in the morning.

~Beartrap Lake, Sunday Lake Total people/groups seen. We saw three young guys, in a tandem and a solo. at the beginning of the Beartrap lake PMA entry heading to Iron. ( sorry guys, we kind of hogged the portage landing. Didn't expect someone coming up behind us!) Apparently we beat them to the Beartrap campsite last night. And that was it.