Captain's Log - Day 5 of my trip, Amisk Lake to Sturgeon Weir River:
This morning I woke up at Alistair’s cabin. I stayed the night because I had to do some repairs to my boat. The yoke is not fitting right in a boat and I had to go through all my gear and purge everything I can do without. I shouldn't say without because I can always use some of the things I'm purging. For instance, I brought up rubber boots for walking on the shorelines in case the camp was around a wet or muddy spot, but I had to weigh a pair of boots or bring my compact fire stove that is much more necessary than boots. Also, I got rid of extra socks and an extra Fleece Jacket. I got rid of some extra bags of certain kinds of candies and foods that I didn't need. The one major item I discarded, which I feel after 35 years of canoeing. I've only brought a gun on a canoe trip. Actually, personally, I've never ever brought a gun. I've been on trips in polar bear country where people have brought guns and where you should have a gun. But, during my first two and a half months on this trip I will not be in polar bear country (maybe the last couple of weeks, but we can always get a gun shipped up then). So I purged the gun and the shells - it weighed about 15 pounds with the ammo. I’ve got bear bangers and I’ve got Taiga. The dog barks anything that moves in a bush! Getting bears around camp happens when you’re by yourself and quiet. He’ll smell something and be curious. If he’s startled then he feels like he's got to protect his ground and I think that's where a lot of people get into trouble. That's why having a dog is so important because a dog will bark. The dog will smell them before he hears him and he'll go crazy. And that bear basically says well I don't think I want to go near that guy! A bear in a bush is just curious. If they smell something, but they see a human or a couple of humans then they generally don't want to come near. So that's my theory and I’ve paddled many, many trips and I've had bears in the vicinity. I know my father in law will put himself in the hospital with worry when he finds out I didn't bring a gun! That was his one main thing I had to have. At the beginning I thought I might want to supplement my food with some chicken or duck or whatever, but through all my years of canoeing, I've only maybe had about two or three chickens. So anyhow, a guy is always busy trying to get from point A to point B and doesn't have a lot of time to hunt chickens. I’m just not going to have time for that.
So where was I? Okay, getting rid of the gun was a big thing. I got all the big bags packed down into smaller bags so I reduced the bag size so that I could fit them in. My canoe looks more like a kayak so the areas of volume are a little bit narrower and slimmer so you have to pack smaller items to stuff them into little crevices. So I managed to figure that all out.
Taiga found a way to take a beautiful wide open spot in front of my feet. He has about two feet, two feet square of space with a mat down there. And also he'll be out of the sun because the way the canoe cockpit is formed is that he’ll have a choice of whether he wants to look out or if he wants to duck underneath the cover and get out of the sun. I also got a new cover so if it starts to rain, I can put the new cover over and he can go into his little cubby hole and be safe and dry. Anyhow it works like a charm. So, I got the canoe all packed up and Alister Callegari and Bill Jeffrey were there helping me. They were very impressed on how nicely everything fit into my canoe and everything has its place and and as the trip goes on a person gets way more efficient on how to pack things in ways that slim’s things down even more. It just naturally happens over the course of, well, a normal canoe trip is like two to three weeks, so usually by week number two, you’ve got everything pretty much sorted. So I figure I have three months to go so I should have this thing so slim and trim and dialed up that it’ll be just like paddling a toothpick! So where was I?
Okay, so Alistair was going to join me today to paddle across big Amisk Lake. Amisk is a huge lake. It's like 20 miles across, or 30 miles and they were calling for severe thunderstorms. So in the beginning of the day, it was cooking hot. When I got on the water leaving Alistair’s it was about 20 degrees and no wind whatsoever. I was already drinking piles of water and wearing my hat and wetting my little tube around my neck. I guess you call it a buff. So I’m paddling away and Taiga was a little bit antsy to begin. The canoe was kind of rocking back and forth and he sat down and eventually lay down and realized this is almost the same as riding in a truck; he loves riding in a truck. So I knew there was huge open water where I could have, you know, cut a corner to get across to get to the Sturgeon Weir, but there was no way with a first time with the dog in the canoe. I was not sure how he was going to react and I didn't want to do anything silly so I made sure I stood close to the shore. So, I sort of circle navigated the south part of the lake and then I wanted to go by T & D Cabins.
I wanted to go visit Nick and Cindy Ouellet, and Les Oystryk. They’re real history buffs and they've been really enamoured with my trip and sending me lots of kind messages and encouragement, so I really wanted to stop buying and just say thank you. So from Alistair’s to T & D Cabins is about an eight kilometer paddle, so it took me a couple hours to get there. Just before we got there, a major cloud system was moving and like a big, big thunder head. I could feel the wind starting to pick up, but even before I could feel the wind, Taiga’s hair went up on his back and he started howling like a wolf in the air. Just a long steady howl. I was like, whoa. What does this mean? Well, sure enough, not two minutes after he was howling, a major sheet of rain started crossing the water towards us. I thought, “here we go.” I had T & D Cabins in sight, and we were be-lining, but it was pouring. And of course, I didn't want to begin this journey with Taiga this way, but he did okay. He was beside himself trying to figure out what to do and as soon as we were closer to shore, he realized that he's got to have an escape plan. He did jump out and into the shallow water, but he didn't run off in the bush from the thunder, so that's always a good sign. So anyways, Cindy and Les weren't at T & D, but Nick came and greeted me. He had me come in and gave me some fish cakes and we had a good visit while it was pouring rain. While we were there I managed to reorganize my clothes and whatnot. It poured for about an hour, and we were happy to be out of it, but my biggest thing was that I wanted to get on the water to get across the lake. We still had a 20 km crossing and we didn’t have much daylight left. We got back in the canoe and started paddling. It looked like the storm clouds had blown over, but apparently it was a major storm, and the same storm cloud that passed over blasted down a pile of hail and rain and caused flooding. So, I'm sure glad we didn't get hammered with the hail. We stayed close to the shoreline and thought if anything did blow in we'd duck out into shore and hide out. We were about five kilometers down the shoreline and we got around a point where there's a big open bay area that we have to cross. It would be like a three kilometer crossing to get to the other point but there's a huge daunting cloud coming in and the wind is starting to pick up. When we were only a couple 100 feet away from the shoreline, Taiga jumped out of the canoe! I guess he thought he could swim faster to shore than what I could do paddling which wasn't the case. I had to paddle up to Taiga and grab him by the collar and bring him back into the canoe. I didn't have a life jacket on him because it was calm and muggy before this storm came up and I didn’t want to suffocate him. Anyhow, we got around the point and pulled the canoe up onto the shore, quickly got my bag out that had the rain tarp in it and and we scampered up onto high ground where there were some good flat areas between some trees behind some cover. I got the tarp up just before the rain and the wind started howling. So we were very fortunate to get off in time. I decided to make some tea and fed Taiga some food and he was happy. He cozied up underneath the big tree and I was underneath my tarp. We sat there for another two hours waiting for this system to blow through.
By this time it was getting close to six o'clock and I hadn’t even made a good paddle. When it
finally did blow through and I packed up the canoe it was dead calm and I knew I could put some miles on. We just started trucking along and I went about five kilometers to the end of the lake. It was still calm, but it was getting close to dark. It was about 10:30, and the sun was starting to go down fast. I knew there was no good campsite on the shorelines, but I knew there was a cabin at the start of the Sturgeon Weir river. I just had to find it. Anyhow, it was just before 11 o'clock when I pulled into the Ranger cabin. The first thing I always do is feed Taiga and then I got my tent up. I managed to make myself some pad thai noodles. That's what I had for my freeze dried supper. We had a good sleep and in the morning it was just like a couple of kids in a tent. The sun was shining and I was still worn out from the day before. I was awake but I had that feeling that I worked really hard that day, which we did. The sun was already heating up at six o'clock in the morning as I was starting to get things organized. So that was day five. Another eventful day with the storms and lots of new things for the dog.
Over and Out.
Hey Dave, love your blog. Can really feel those weather systems on the big lake that you describe. Keep it up!