Lakes Visited: Jesse, Elizabeth, Walter, Lonely

Miles Paddled: 8.1 miles

Miles Portaged: 2.4 miles

Total Miles: 10.4 miles

Total Trip Miles: 37.7 miles

This morning the wind was down. I got up fairly early and I watched a loon encourage it's young how to fly. After packing up I began my paddle toward the Elizabeth Lake portage. I watched another loon encourage two of it's young to fly as well. I bumped into another solo paddler from Madison, WI who was out fishing. He was standing on a rock in blue jeans wet up to his calves and sneakers, I learned he was 70 years old. The fishing was also slow for him.

Jesse to Elizabeth was fairly flat and a good chunk of it was spent boulder-hopping and using careful foot placement. Nothing difficult, just a 150 rod walk through the woods. On this portage I met another seasoned solo paddler from Vermont paddling a carbon fiber Northstar Magic.

Elizabeth was a very nice looking lake. I continued on to the portage into Walter and was impressed by the size of this lake. It doesn't look that "big" on the maps. No sites looked taken.

I continued on to the portages into Lonely - looking west and wondering how the portage into Draper was and whether anyone was on that lake.

During the next few portages that were more goat path than portage, with small beaver ponds between I ran into a group with aluminum canoes at the Lonely side. A few more beaver dam pull throughs on the inlet, and I was on Lonely. The lake itself was empty of people.

I did some fishing along the west shoreline, stopping at the middle site on the west shoreline with a massive slab of granite jutting out into the lake. Cool site, but it was hit hard by a windstorm and hanging a hammock would have taken some effort. Both of the 3-stars north and south of this site didn't look inviting.

I continued on down Lonely and found the site NK to be open. Technically within the burn area of the 2021 fires, I found no sign of fire damage. I could see devastation a half-mile to the west, but the site itself was a wonderful site. I believe it to be under-rated at 3-stars, though finding an ideal hammock hang required a double tie-off to another tree on one side.

Later in the afternoon father-son tandem was paddling from the west and had just completed the long portage into Little Jean and I chatted with them a little. They had come from Bentpine a few days ago. They continued on, bound for one of the island sites.

Sunrise on Jesse Lake:

Northstar Magic:

Lonely Lake Sunset:

Lonely Island: