Wednesday, August 30, 2023 Ottertrack, Knife, Crawford, Carp. Another early rising and packing as I got out of my hammock. That way it goes much quicker. I am mostly packed before I finish my first cup of coffee. Same cereal breakfast and we’re off. The portage into Knife is very short and easy. Then the long paddle down the lake. Hardly any wind and plenty of cloud cover. We see many sites occupied on the shore and can tell we are out of Quetico and into a busy area. We want to be close to exit/tow tomorrow so we head to Carp. On the way down, we stop at Thunder Point. One, because we camped right around the corner and never went there on our first trip. And two, because we wanted to try and call the outfitter to see if we can move the tow up to an earlier time. Yes there is the rumored cell signal and I give them a call. When I explain who I was and where I’m calling from, I get an “Oh really?” response. We wanted to move it from 2 to noon because we had to drive to Duluth that afternoon. Mart had a 6:30 AM flight to catch the next day. He called back to say that they could do 1. We’ll take it! And I’m glad we did. Unpacking the portage bags and repacking our luggage took some time.

Meanwhile Rob is still feeling like crap and just lays down on the shore to rest. He says he’ll look at the pictures. No reason to hike all the way up there. We do the hike and it is totally worth it. A little steep but not long. And it’s seems easy without a pack or canoe on your shoulders. The view was awesome. It was a clear blue sky with no wind. You could easily see all the way down the lake. We make our way back down to have some lunch and refill the water bottles. We set off again and get to the bay with the portage to Carp on the Quetico side. From what we read, this was the best way to get back to Carp. About the same distance but one less portage so less unloading/loading. Seems to make sense but I’m not sure. The portage is a Quetico portage and it is a much tighter trail than the border ones. Rob was still feeling the same, so he grabbed a pack and went to collapse at the other end. We wanted to see it before we brought the canoes through so we grabbed some packs. I grabbed two with one on the front and one on the back. I figured I would carry two as far as I felt comfortable and drop one. Being stubborn I carried it quite a ways until I gave up. Mart gave a name to the portage, The Hillary portage. As in Sir Edmund Hillary. It was a hilly one! There was one rock face that you could zig-zag your way up with a pack. It didn’t work with the canoes though. We had to work together on it. One at the top while the canoe carrier tilted the front up to set on top of the rock. Then hauling it up the face together. We got the canoes over and I noticed the pack I had dropped was gone. Rob felt better (or guilty) and decided to do one more portage trip. When he had gone a third of the way, he found the pack and grabbed it. He felt much better getting that pack to the end and went back with us on the third trip. It was a LOT of work and we were beat after the long paddle down the lake. A paddle across Crawford and the day’s final portage to Carp. Nice short easy one with a stupid fallen tree at the Crawford landing. Mart took off to find a campsite other than the island one. It looked available but there were many others closer to the next morning’s portage. Then he had trouble finding one. He thought it was a one spot and paddled there. Nothing. Then paddled where he thought there would be the next one. Nothing! I think he was a little tired and missed some of the spots. I saw an empty site but they were already well past it and paddling away. I thought he had a place in mind so I followed. Then he stopped at one point and said “well the map shows a site here!”. We were almost at the end of the lake. Looked over the maps and I saw that there was one more shown on the East shore. I paddled over there and saw some rocks on the shore that looked out of place. Like they had been placed there by someone. And there was the campsite. Not great but we were so tired that it would work. We settled in for our last night. I went for a swim that helped me feel much better. It got rid of the grime from those last couple of portages. We had a simple dinner that was the easiest to prepare. I think it was trail mix and snacks. We had plenty of food left, we just didn’t feel it was worth the effort to prepare. The moon was becoming full and it was quite bright out. 14.5 mile day. To match mileage for the longest day we had with the day from That Man to Bell People seen. LOTS. More than we had seen in the total of the 8 previous days.