Epilogue, final takeaways, stats, and gear notes:
-I love to travel. The toughest day mentally for me was the “zero day” in camp on Fisher Lake. Especially since it was so cool and windy. Ideally, I would have spent more time leisurely exploring Fisher and neighboring lakes that day, but it just wasn’t in the cards.
-I enjoyed the river sections of my trip far more than I expected, due to the seclusion, wildlife, and smaller water.
-The portages on the Louse River were physically demanding, but never too tough to find or follow. The beaver swamp portages are the most disorienting and I highly recommend doing your homework on those!
-I also felt the homework I spent learning some basic bird songs over the winter paid dividends. This greatly enhanced the experience as the songbirds were always singing!
-The sunrise departures from camp were challenging, but allowed for the absolute best travel and wildlife viewing conditions. On my next trip I will plan for slightly shorter travel days to allow more time for camp chores and relaxation, and therefore more time for SLEEP!
-The time I spent in the backyard in March perfecting my hammock set paid major dividends in terms of excellent sleep while on the trip. Without a mentor, this took me a good bit of fiddling to figure out, but now I’ll never sleep any other way in the woods!
-I plan to bring a standard size portage pack next year that will be narrow enough to lay flat in the canoe in order to help improve the trim.
-Dehydrating food at home was an incredible amount of work. But the convenience of having a ready to eat, nutritious, hot meal in the thermos at all times was unbeatable. The food was great, but next time I will pack a bit more, especially considering how poor of a fisherman I am. Last minute additions of cheez-its, cheese, and summer sausage to the food pack really saved the day and gave me a hearty snack to look forward to each evening while boiling water for supper. Due to the heavy travel days and not quite enough food, I lost 14 pounds off my already thin frame while on the trip.
-I need to find a better footwear solution. It is all too easy to end up with a boot full of water (and thereafter a wet boot for the remainder of the trip), so I plan to purchase some sort of sturdy footwear for wet foot landings for my next trip. Even though the water was cold and my feet were nearly always wet, I had no trouble keeping them warm in my wool socks.
-Fishing on a solo trip is supremely difficult, especially for a novice like me on a trip with as much travel as this one had. At the end of the day, getting back into the canoe, rigging up my anchor bag, and paddling out into windy conditions for uncertain fishing just didn’t appeal to me as much as the joy I took in processing firewood and sitting by the fire. In spite of keeping my fishing pole strapped inside the boat with a lure wrap, I was surprised at how often the line became entangled around any imaginable object.
-Paddle sizing is tricky. I am very thankful I had the shorter 52” spare paddle, because that ended up being the only paddle I used for the trip. I will be shortening my carbon paddle and re-attaching the grip before my next trip.
Grand total stats:
Paddle distance- 48.3 miles|Travel time: 52 hours
Portages: 43 + 8 beaver dams + 6 beaver swamps|Portage distance: 3307 rods, 10.3 miles (about 30 total miles walked on portage trails when accounting for double portaging)
Lakes/rivers visited: 36 + several unnamed ponds