Day 2 - Tuesday July 30 2024 – Middle Kilburn Lake back to Upper Kilburn Lake to Paull Lake (26.5 kms, 8 portages)
If you are sharp-eyed and a regular WCPP traveler, you’ll notice from the distance and portage count in the title that it seems a little odd. It’s not 26.5kms and 8 portages to travel from Middle Kilburn to Paull Lake. Also – why Paull Lake and not something towards the Edge Route? Read on...
Remember Bill’s forgotten fishing rod from day 1? After a decent sleep, Bill and I had to paddle over 4kms back to the west end of the 1000 meter portage for his fishing rod. Of course we also had to paddle all the way back to camp. It was a gorgeous morning as we paddled the empty canoe furiously across a glass-smooth lake, but it was already getting hot. It took longer than expected before we were back at our campsite on Middle Kilburn with Bill’s fishing rod retrieved. (Ironically this was the one canoe trip in WCPP where we shouldn’t have bothered with fishing gear.) Everyone seemed ready to tackle a challenging day as we finalized preparations and paddled on glass to the west end of Middle Kilburn and a 95 meter portage towards Dragon Lake. At this point I was still psyched to be traveling the Edge Route. The short portage seemed a little manky, Levi cut a large fallen tree off the trail before we could do the carry. It was already bloody hot and humid at this point and the previous days efforts were already starting to show as we paddled away to the next challenge. Already this early in the trip, I noticed how slow the fishing was compared to usual in WCPP. Obviously the unrelenting heat was driving the fish deeper and making them harder to find and catch. We quickly crossed “Little Pot Hole” Lake before our troubles started in earnest at the east entrance to the 550 meter portage into Dragon Lake. It started rotten already before getting to the dang portage, with no water at the eastern end coming from Little Pot Hole Lake. We followed sparse blue ribbons across the marsh, pulling and pushing the boats in 2 inches of water and sweating buckets while doing so. But this was just the start of our troubles. I should preface the following discussion with a comment. I managed to stumble and bumble my way along the first 2/3’s of the route without much issue. Sure! I had to add a few fresh ribbons along the way, bash through some fallen, burned trees, and search hard for an overgrown trail but I’ve done worse. The last 1/3 was hellish. When I finally got to the swamp I searched for another way but didn’t spot anything obvious, simply bashing my way across it instead. It wasn’t pretty, and I was sweating and swearing (getting bit by a giant hornet didn’t help), but I made it. I even walked along the north shore off the swamp and still didn’t find any kind of usable trail. It took much longer than it should have to portage the 550+ meters, and it killed our group’s mojo. Fearing that other portages along the Edge Route would be in similar disastrous shape, we made a group decision to bail on the original plan. It’s alway easy to second guess these things on hindsight but I still think this was the right decision for our situation. Some of our group were not coping well with the heat, humidity and rough terrain. We didn’t think we could continue at this level for another 3-4 days in these conditions. Maybe all the rest of the carries along the Edge Route were perfectly maintained, but the evidence didn’t point in that direction based on the two portages we’d just done from Little Pot Hole Lake to Dragon. I’m not gonna lie. I was disappointed for the rest of the trip that we had to bail on my original plans. It really sucked. I was already feeling somewhat dejected about turning away from big plans earlier in the year on the 14-day trip with my daughter, and now the exact same thing was happening again! Dang it. (There’s likely a lesson in here somewhere but I’m probably going to ignore it. :)) We took a break in the boats – escaping the bugs and heat as best as we could before continuing slowly and somewhat dejectedly up Dragon Lake. Lunch was a bit quieter than usual. We stopped at a rustic campsite (“P3”) and everyone dove into whatever limited shade there was available. I’ve been on hot canoe trips before (2006), but this was next level. The humidity probably escalated things to around 40 degrees. I think we all realized that we had to be careful or risk a much more serious situation with heat stroke or worse. It’s not fun anymore when the risk of injury is elevated above reasonable levels.

After lunch we proceeded somewhat nervously towards the 785m portage into South Paull Lake. Despite our worries, this portage was very well cleared and easy to follow, especially compared with what we’d just done to get into this darn lake! It was worryingly hot though. The long carry went up and over a height of land and it was so hot that it almost took our breath away. These were dangerous conditions to push ourselves too hard or fast and we took a nice long break in South Paull to recover.

Our options for the rest of the trip were unfortunately, quite limited. Because of a tight timeline of 5.5 days, we only had 3.5 more days left at this point. Considering we were at least 1.5 days from the parking lot, we could either head back (that wasn’t happening) or try to rescue some sort of circle route back to Leano Lake. This meant repeating over half of our 2022 trip. First world problems, but certainly not ideal. Harold, Bill and I have all done the route around Mexican Hat, Jake, Lunch and Bunny Lake more times than we can count at this point. I can’t speak 100% for the other guys but a lack of motivation took over as we paddled towards the so-called “3 teeth portage” between South Paull and Paull Lake. Memories from 2022 didn’t help with my emotions – these 3 portages were pretty terrible for us back then already.
The first tooth wasn’t horrible but everything went very quickly into the proverbial crapper after that. After emptying the canoe and prepping to carry the 170 meter middle “tooth”, Bill and I were in for a nasty little surprise. It turns out that a beaver dammed the south access and within 25 meters we were in thigh-deep bog! We had to bring the canoe over, reload it and go another few meters before getting to ground we could walk on. The south end of the trail was still knee deep muck. If the brutal conditions didn’t kill us on the middle tooth, the northern one almost finished the job. Half way through the 240 meters into Paull Lake there is a boggy section that also has many fallen, burned trees scattered around to make things more “fun”. Biting black flies were also out in full force. At this point, Bill and I already had a long day (ironically longer than the day I had originally planned on the Edge Route) and were done with it. Rather than wait for the other boat, we decided to paddle to the only viable site nearby. “MT” is an elevated site that partially escaped the various wildfires in 2016 and 2021 that we also used in 2022. We slowly set up camp and recovered from an exhausting day as the sun slowly sank to the west. The air temperature remained very high well into the evening and even overnight. Harold and Levi left the fly off their tent and I wished we had that option with ours. We made a cheery little fire that we technically didn’t need and stayed up long into the night, reminiscing about many previous trips and trying to recover our “mojo” for the remainder of the trip.
Day 3 - Wednesday July 31 2024 – Paull Lake to Mexican Hat Lake (22.5 kms, 7 portages)
After a couple of brutally hot and humid days in WCPP, we awoke at our partially torched site on Paull Lake with more of the same looming ahead of us. Despite being disappointed in how the trip was no longer along the Edge Route, I was slowly coming around to the realization that these were simply not the conditions to do that route and have any fun while doing it. From the terrible fishing to the heat-induced exhaustion and lack of energy, we made the right call on this one. After a leisurely breakfast we packed up camp and set off for the distant 150 meter portage out of the NE end of Paull Lake. Bill and I tried our best to catch fish as we paddled our way up the long NE arm of Paull Lake. Normally in WCPP, catching fish isn’t even a challenge but on this trip we were having a tough time connecting with even small pike, nevermind walleye or trout. At least the water was calm as we slowly made our way through morning heat to the first portage. We hit up the 150 meter portage towards Burnt Rock Lake and proceeded easily through it to a small pot lake and then started a 375 meter carry. This portage was also fairly straightforward, although it had plenty of deadfall (burned) to step over. The elevation gains and losses over a cooking Canadian Shield started to wear on us already at this point. The wind was picking up out of the west as we portaged a short 150 and then a manky “OB” that was more like a 30 meter. We were feeling the heat by the time we finished dealing with muck and swamp into Burnt Rock Lake and started paddling for the penultimate portage mid way up. Burnt Rock Lake isn’t a tiny stretch of water but thankfully we managed to avoid the worst of the wind before finding the portage that isn’t even given a distance on the map. Due to the burn it’s now located quite a bit further east than the old trail and is marked with cairns and ribbons through open, blackened forest. A short paddle later and we were facing the last carry of the day – a long 750 meter portage into Mexican Hat Lake. Considering our experience in 2022, the lengthy portage was as reasonable as it could be. The first half from the Burnt Rock Lake side was still a little manky through burned forest while the second half finally put us back under a lovely canopy of green. As Bill and I completed the carry into a blustery Mexican Hat Lake we had a decision to make. Should we book it for the “walleye factory” site (“GV”) immediately, or wait for Harold and Levi to finish the portage? We made the decision to book it. We didn’t want to miss an opportunity to stay on that site and it’s one of the more popular sites in WCPP. (That being said, I’ve almost never had to change camping plans due to others occupying a site in WCPP – that’s how sparsely used it is.) Despite the water looking calm from the end of the 750m portage, once we paddled onto the lake proper, the waves were 2 foot rollers with a strong wind from the west. We rode the wind, very grateful that we were headed east. This trip was proving the opposite of my earlier one where we were constantly pushing against the gale. For some reason, every time I end up going for site “GV” I think that we’re going to come around the corner and see another party camped there. Normally this wouldn’t be the end of the world – there’s other great sites in the lake, but today it would suck. We simply didn’t have the energy to turn around in the 2-foot swells and paddle back against the wind to find another site. As we finally came around the last corner to view the walleye factory I was delighted to see no signs of anyone else on the site. And then Bill exclaimed, “whose stuff is that at the bottom of the falls”? Our hearts sank as we realized that either someone was just leaving the site, or much more likely considering the time of day, approaching it. Dang it! We quickly landed our boat and started setting up camp, but it was pretty clear that we’d just scooped another party by about 8 seconds. If it wasn’t clear before, it was very clear when we heard a loud exclamation from the 2-person party returning to the bottom of the falls with the rest of their gear! I felt pretty bad, but what to do? WCPP is a first come, first serve sort of place and we’d beat them fair and square.
Within a few minutes I spotted the two sorry looking gentlemen pacing back and forth, muttering under their breath across the short stretch of water between the site and the end of the portage. Harold and Levi hadn’t arrived yet, and I mentioned to Bill that we should invite the two strangers into “our” camp. It was the right thing to do, forcing them to paddle against the wind in the brutal heat wasn’t fair. Bill agreed and I yelled over to the two that they should stay with us. It didn’t take much convincing and before long Rex and Jeffrey were shaking our hands and thanking us profusely for the offer! In a very odd twist, Rex looked at me strangely as we greeted each other before asking if I was “Vern Dewit”! Talk about a small world. Apparently he’d seen a YouTube video I’d made and commented on it and recognized me. We joked that it was a good thing I wasn't a jerk or he'd have unsubscribed my channel! Harold and Levi were a little surprised to see 4 people waiting at the site when they arrived. The rest of the afternoon and evening were spent hanging around camp, catching fresh walleye from the “factory” for supper and hearing stories of big wall climbing from Jeffrey who had us laughing for hours on end with his anecdotes. Despite being well north of 60 years old, this was Jeffrey’s first canoe trip and the heat and conditions of WCPP was quickly taking its toll on him. They were following our playbook and adjusting their trip accordingly. We talked around a small fire well into the night before turning in.