Day 8: 08-17-08 Sunday

Lakes / Rivers: Palisade River (upstream), Burntrock Lake and back to Palisade River

Distance: 15 km (9.4 miles)

Portages: 4

Swifts paddled: 2

Swifts tracked: 1

Time: 4:30

I’m writing here at the same campsite as yesterday at 0303 pm.

This is day 8 of our trip. My alarm went off at 0525 am. Pete seemed to be more excited about getting up right away this morning, because he told me there wasn’t anything to do, but light a fire and put the coffee on. I got up right up after Pete.

When I got up at 0130 am and went out of the tent the moon was very bright. I could only see one or two stars. After I got out of the tent this morning the moon was still up and very bright. It looked like it was still close to a full moon.

The only sounds this morning were the sound of the rushing water of the rapids to our west. There wasn’t any wind this morning to cause any ripples on the water. The water surface was flat as glass.

Pete and I were still the only ones up at 0550 am. Pete was brushing his teeth. He told me he forgot to brush them yesterday. Dick was the next one to get up. He came to the camp fire, then Dave.

Dave cooked up some bacon with his “hippie pancakes”. I put some maple syrup on mine, while Dave used up the last of the grape jelly.

Today is the day trip over into Burntrock Lake which is the next lake to our west. It looks like two portages and a swift away.

We needed to take one of our portage packs to put our raingear, food for lunch , first aid kit, sat phone, GPS and water bottles; so I took my gear out of my pack and placed the other gear inside. I took my Pelican case with my camera, too.

We buttoned up our campsite and headed for Burntrock Lake at 0810 am.

The first portage was only about a minutes paddle away. It was on river left and was 115 meters long. There was a campsite about 1 km on river right. It was a 2x2 site.

Just north of this campsite was a swift. Pete and I were able to paddle up it. The water was moving pretty good. Pete’s still is improving in his paddling and it showed today.

We found the second portage that goes into a bay on Burntrock Lake. This portage was before another swift. We didn’t take this portage going into Burntrock Lake, but we should have if we only knew what we were about to get ourselves into by going a different way. This portage was 319 meters long. There were some blow downs across this trail. I documented this information on the portage trail when we came back across it from Burntrock Lake

Instead of the taking this portage I looked up the swift that was very shallow and saw some cedar trees further up with their tops cut off. Well, they have to be cut off for some reason. It sure looked like the way to go.

Pete and I tracked the canoe over the shallow area, then it was Dave and Dick’s turn. We all got back into our canoes at the top of this swift and continued paddling upstream.

We came up to some rapids that have a few sweepers over the river. I got out of the canoe and walked across the rocks on river left to see if we would be able to continue. I found that this was a long stretch of rapids with more trees over the river and it would simply to be much work to get through, if at all.

On the opposite side of the river, river right, there was an aluminum boat with a Mercury motor cached on shore. We found this very strange because it’s obvious this boat couldn’t go upstream any further thus the reason it’s sitting where it’s sitting, but it could only go downstream a couple of kilometers when there was more water than there was now.

Dave and Dick paddled over to the boat then noticed an old blaze on one of the trees. Dave and Dick pulled their canoe between the trees on the cramped shore as there was a steep incline that went up right from shore. Dave walked the trail for a bit and came back and said it was a trail, but probably not for canoes.

Dave and Pete took the canoes and I took the pack across this “goat portage”. It was probably about 200 meters, although I didn’t walk it off.

We reached Burntrock Lake at 0934 am. This lake appears it’s appropriately named because of the large area around this large lake that has been burned in the past.

We paddled slightly south of west to where we knew there was a campsite. Pete and I rounded the closest point to this campsite where we saw our first canoes on this trip. The canoes were pulled up on shore. When we got closer we noticed that they were two Souris River canoes and there were two guys picking blueberries.

They hadn’t noticed us yet when I yelled, “Hey, those are our blueberries!” One of the guys had a Nalgene bottle about ¾ full of the berries.

Three of the guys were from Canada and the other from Maryland near where Dick lives. Two of them were brothers.

They let us take a look around their campsite since that was one of the reasons we came to Burntrock Lake. Dave, along with my help, have been documenting portages (length and what condition they are in), campsite locations and size and any other significant things to give to Phil Cotton.

Dave continued talking with the other paddlers about the Wabakimi Project while Pete and I checked out the campsite. These guys had come across Phil’s group minus Phil while on their paddle. Dave was surprised that the volunteer’s had already come across these portages without doing any work on some of the portages.

This group came into the park on Friday via Allanwater then over to the Flindt. They were partially outfitted by Wildwaters B & B. Again, it looks like Wildwater’s sends a lot of groups through Allanwater.

The owner of Wildwater’s came up in the talks with this group.

Once we were done talking and checking out the campsite we continued on our way. We headed off to the NW to the west side of the big island. The wind had come up from the SW since we left this morning and it was blowing up some waves. When Pete and I rounded the north part of the island we pretty much surfed to the NE to the next campsite. This campsite is on the island north of the big island. The first thing we did when we got out on the campsite was graze on the blueberries then we check the site out. It was a 2 x2.

We were going to check out the outpost camp at the end of the bay, but decided against it when we saw a plane coming from that direction had just lifted off the water. So instead we paddled south along the east shore back to where we had come from. This time we took the correct portage back across instead of the “goat portage”.

The swift we came up to next, Pete used the cross bow draw and a post without too much hesitation. We checked the campsite that was past the swift on river right before heading back to the next portage just before our campsite.

Once we arrived back at the campsite at about 1240 pm we had our lunch of peanut butter and pita sandwiches with strawberry jelly. We had two granola bars and some coffee to go with the sandwiches.

Pete went and cleaned up while Dick rested. Dave and I talked about Florida, Florida fishing, hunting, Virginia and some other topics as well.

The strong wind has been blowing directly into our campsite. The waves on Burntrock have to be substantial now. The guys we saw on Burntrock were supposed to be flying out at 0500 pm today, but it probably won’t happen. They need to strap two canoes to the outside of the float plane. They are only about 3 km as the crow flies to the west so we should see any planes that come and go.

I’ve been sitting under the tarp while writing. Pete just made another pot of coffee.

Earlier, Pete asked what was for dinner. It’s been a joke this whole trip, because every day some one will ask what’s for dinner. Someone else will say I don’t know. Check the list. Where’s the list. It’s in with Dave’s maps.

The time is 0423 pm and I’m going to stop writing for awhile. Oh, we are having pizza tonight.

While Dave and Pete were fishing I notice some real dark clouds building to the west. Dick and I started buttoning up camp and making sure everything was under the tarp in case it began to rain..

Dave and Pete came back from fishing with four walleyes. The wind has been getting stronger with some really strong gust of wind.

Approximately, 0630 pm the rain really began to fall. It lasted about an hour and got all our wood wet. We all put on our rain gear and sat under the tarp until the rain stopped Pete and I got the fire started again once the rain stopped.

Dave cooked up the walleye then made the pizza. It was later than normal when we finished dinner and the dishes. We went to our tents at 1030 pm.