With the weather on our side, the paddle through Crab Lake was easy. Only one campsite appeared to be taken from our vantage point as we cruised along. After the exhaustion of the portage from Burntside to Crab Lake, we discussed breaking up the trip by spending one night on Crab Lake before continuing on to Cummings but decided to keep moving and to break the trip up on the way back to Burntside instead, especially with a forecast of SE winds from 15-25 mph for Sunday.

We paddled through Crab Lake and on to the portage to Little Crab which is undemanding. The paddle through Little Crab Lake was quick and culminated in a lift over between Little Crab and the Korb River, with two more lift overs before reaching Korb Lake. Paddling through Korb Lake and the following section of the Korb River was easy but felt interminable in anticipation of getting to Cummings, yet there was much to observe along the Korb River, including several beaver lodges and hundreds of gorgeous maroon blossoms from the purple pitcher plant.

The portage at the end of the Korb River is rocky and it took some doing to land and unload, but the portage is short, and we were happy to have made it to our destination lake. Now to find a campsite!

Our top two campsite picks were taken, but we finally settled on an island site (#287) on the eastern section of the lake and totally lucked out. We were spoiled by great campfire seating, decent tent pads, dappled sun exposure the entire day under red pines, minimal bugs, an airy latrine, and lovely breezes. Fishing was high on the activities list and many small mouth bass were caught out on the water, while a few sunnies were landed when shore fishing. Another favorite activity was collecting empty dragonfly nymphs along the rocky shore. We even got to watch two dragonflies emerge.