Our exit day started off awesome. It was super foggy and we had some deep reds in the sunrise. I ended up taking some portrait head/body shots for the crew with the sunrise backdrop and I was thankful for one of my buddies to snap a few of me as well using my camera.

We got up earlier than any other travel day, to make sure we could meet the outfitter at our new 2pm pickup time (as opposed to planned 3pm for Sunday). At an estimated 5 hours of travel, with an hour of fudge factor, our goal was to be on the water by 8am, 8:30am at the latest. We weren’t sure how much of a slog the Shell-Pauness portage was going to be, so we were eager to get it behind us.

Our paddle on Shell was fantastic. Glassy. Foggy. The crew was mostly silent paddling through the quiet wilderness, feeling like we had this lake all to ourselves like every other lake before it. Man, how we wished we could have had more mornings like this.

Thankfully we hit the long portage to Pauness before it started raining. The portage itself actually isn’t too bad, but the beaver pond closer to Shell requires fully loading the canoe, paddling 5 strokes, avoiding some shallow rocks and logs, and then unloading and finishing the portage. It adds about 10 minutes to each group, and one has to wait for the other, so in total it added an extra 20-25 minutes to the portage as compared to what you’d expect for a ~200 rod portage (~20 minutes each way).

Not until just after shoving off onto Upper Pauness (again opting for the 40rd portage) did the sky open up. It proceeded to dump probably a quarter inch over the next 20 minutes, with some high winds that legitimately chilled my hands to the bone. We didn’t have our rain pants on, and I told my canoe partner that if it continues like this, I’m going to put them on just to keep some heat in, because with cold rain and wind like this, you legitimately need to think about hypothermia and heat management.

Thankfully the rain mostly stopped shortly after entering the river, and returned on and off. We paddled uneventfully to the Elm portage, where it rained on us again. The rest of the paddle out was pretty calm, and we made it to the entry point with only about 15 minutes to spare, which is closer than we usually like to cut it when getting picked up. Still, we made it!

We couldn’t help but be just a little annoyed that we managed to mostly avoid the rain and keep our stuff dry in the second half of the trip, only to have everything soaked in the final hours. Mother Nature just wouldn’t let us go without a spiteful kiss goodbye. I think this served to make everyone even more glad we were exiting today, giving everyone a free Sunday at home to relax and dry things out and catch up before heading back to work, which made the VNO showers and Boathouse beers and burgers that much more rewarding.

~Lower Pauness Lake, Upper Pauness Lake