The next morning I crawled out of my hammock and tried to make it up to the latrine. I had to stop half way to cry because the pain in my ankle was unbearable. When the boys got up we sat down for a serious discussion on how we would execute an extraction. One possibility we thought of was for Drew to jog the nine miles down the Sioux-Hustler trail to the entry point and have someone call the Beaver. Again the idea was shot down. I couldn’t bear the thought of these guys carrying me out and I also was worried about the medical coverage aspect. It would hurt my pride too much to have to be one of those people medically evacuated that everyone picks apart on "what they did wrong". Our plan was for the boys to double portage and I would hang tight at the landing at Heritage lake. Drew fashioned me some bushcraft crutches and I hobbled ahead of the boys moving any debris that might hit the canoes. We made better time than I expected and we were back in the water by noon.   The paddle through Heritage only took us a half hour, even with the wind being uncooperative. We decided we would press on to Shell for lunch and reevaluate from there. Our original itinerary had us staying on either Lynx or Shell before proceeding to Upper Pauness for our final night. When we reached Shell we got together again and it was determined we would push to Upper Pauness to get out early the next morning and try to find some medical attention for my ankle. At this point I was hobbling quite well with the crutches and I felt confident that we could keep moving. The minute we got onto Shell a torrential downpour started. It was the first time we faced rain like this all trip.   We reached the extremely long portage to from Shell to Lower Pauness and the rain did not let up. At one point Drew had to carrying me through a few feet of water on the portage where the beaver dam is broken through. When we reached the other side Donnie stated that someone else was about to come into the portage and hurried back for the rest of our equipment. I waited for the boys to come back with our gear and never saw the other group Donnie was talking about. I'm assuming they went to the campsite behind the peninsula on Lower Pauness to avoid the wind. We decided we would stay at the campsite directly across from the portage and hope that wasn’t the site they decided to take. The wind was really starting to whip and trying to cross either of the Pauness' wouldn’t be possible. We were lucky to get to the site and find it empty.   This campsite was one of the nicer sites we stayed at the entire trip despite the trash we found and the fish carcasses right by the water. That evening was extremely rainy and windy. It was a team effort just to get all the rainflies situated in the wind. Drew set up his ENO Super Fly, which was great to block any wind. This was the only site we didn’t have a fire. Instead we got all our remaining food out and pigged out all night, using the jet boil heavily. Hot buffalo pretzel bits, live savers gummies soaked in vodka, trading granola bars and mountain house meals. We spent the evening documenting all our inside jokes from the trip and talking about what meal we would get once we got out. I was most looking forward to a Boat House burger and beer. My mouth was salivating at the thought of the BBQ macaroni salad (an item I would later learn was taken off the menu). The wind and rain was still just as crazy all through the night, but at least I slept heavily with all the background noise to drown out the ground squirrels.