Day 7 July 4, 2023 Lost Bay to Polaris

Paddle: 2.7 miles P1: 40R North Bay to Pond Paddle 0.3 miles P2: 16 R Pond to Burke Lake , Paddle 2.1 miles P3: 84 R Burke to Bayley Bay, Paddle 3.3 miles to Inlet Bay P4: 20 R Prairie Portage, Inlet Bay to Sucker, Paddle 3.2 miles P5: 15 R Birch Lake to Polaris Total: 14.2 miles

Meals: BF: Pancakes, Bacon L: Peanut Butter & Jelly sandwiches D: Grilled cheese sandwiches and Chicken vegetable soup

We had arranged for a pickup from Birch Lake Portage so we wanted to be close on the last day. While some of the campsites on Burke looked promising we decided we didn’t want to have to cross big water or any portages to get to the pick up site. We made our way back across all the portages we used on the way in. The Burke to Bayley bay portage was flat and smooth. I don’t think I appreciated it enough on the way out.

We ate PB & J sandwiches on a very marginal site near Inlet Bay. In retrospect it probably would have been a good place to stop. We got across Prairie Portage and started looking for a campsite. The site on the island marked as a 4 closest to Sucker was not a 4. We probably could have made it work, but there are no seating logs or large rocks and not much level area. The deal breaker was a large tree had fallen across the site and the root well it left had a large volume of very green scummy water that it was holding. Nope.

All the sites that I had identified as possible sites either didn’t exist or just looked like a firepit in a small clearing with no elevation. The official island site was taken. It looks pretty nice, if a little vertical. We decided to go over to the campsite on Polaris. I’ve always wanted to check out Polaris, so this was our chance.

The landing is really tight and we had to get the packs and canoe up about a 6 foot drop off to start. Dan handed up the bags and I stacked them up the trail, then we got the canoe up and worked to get it turned to go up the trail. There’s a slick rock to get over and then down to the small shallow lagoon landing. We could see rock face north east from the trail, about where the campsite should be so we headed for that. It started sprinkling as we started out, then it poured down when we were half way across. We fought the wind and made it across. The rain let up some as we got to the campsite. It’s small with a long, slippery when wet black rock extending out from the site and creating a small inlet behind it. It has decent sitting logs and fireplace, but the only tent pad we could find had a 4 inch tree leaning over the top part of it and while mostly level, it has a lot of surface roots and had dozens of pine cones covering it. We threw off most of the pine cones and set up the tent with the rain fly over it since it was still raining a little.

Dan worked on putting up the tarp, and I tried to set up the gravity filter. The outlet tube is old and we had been having trouble getting it on the filter, but this time I had it on and it kept coming off. I had the water in the bag, and tried several times to get it on, while cold lake water was pouring out on my lap. Apparently the top doesn’t seal completely. I was hardly dry, but pouring cold lake water in your lap is a whole other level of miserable. It’s the closest I came to crying the whole trip. I should have poured the water back in the bucket, but wasn’t thinking clearly. I shoved the whole thing at Dan and told him I was changing to dry clothes.

Dan was still fighting with the tarp when I returned in dry clothes and a whole rain suit. The trees were too close together and not in the right position to put it up. We decided to forget getting it up over the firepit and to just use 2 trees in the clearing and make a lean to with stakes and the spare paddle in the middle. When we added the utility tarp as a ground cover and the Thermacell for the mosquitoes it was really cozy. We got all the portage bags and gear stowed at the low end and I started dinner and made Dan go change to dry clothes. The rain had mostly stopped by this time, of course. We started noticing that there were a lot of slugs around and they kept climbing on everything we set down. We put foil down on the seating logs to have clean places to set stuff. I made soup out of a couple of Chicken noodle cup o soups with extra water, chicken base, Freeze Dried Chicken, corn and green beans, the Rice noodles I didn’t use in the Pad Thai, and spices. It went really well with the grilled cheese sandwiches. Dan said I should sell the recipe, so I guess he liked it.

We couldn’t find any good bear rope trees, so we put as much of the food as we could in the Igloo cooler canisters and put the cook kits and them in a couple of portage bags, tied them together and then tied them to a tree with some of the pots on top. It was only about 10 feet from the tent and we had bear spray with us so we hoped we would hear them and be able to run them off if needed.

I continued to find slugs everywhere, but we got in the tent and zipped them out as they crawled up the outside. Other than the slug I found on my rain pants, of course, which got ejected.