June 2, Camp 1 is a 200 metre portage from the trail which is one km from the main road. Thanks to Rod and Joanne who have driven me and my gear the last stretch on gravel roads. They even helped carry some of the gear to my campsite. A special thanks to Dave who arranged my ride. Temperature is 5℃ and it has rained intermittently all afternoon. Canada geese honk overhead all day as they migrate north. While setting up camp I cover my gear with a tarp. As two loons call from the nearby lake, I put up the canvas Tent and stove. Because I am going to burn some damp wood instead of finding drier stuff, I dig a firepit for a fire to use to start the stove . By 8:30 pm I am in bed after fetching and sawing enough stovewood for the night.
June 3, I am up by 4 a.m., my usual time at home. The stove has been on all night and its warmth is welcome making it easy to prepare my first cinnamon bannock of the season. Out of practice, I add too much water to the bannock mix, so use extra cornmeal to firm it up. Even though I have been camping for many years, it still takes a few days to get into a routine again after the winter hiatus. I wash my eyes with water boiled the night before. My doctor says that as I "progress" I cannot necessarily get away with past practices, such as ingesting raw water or getting it in eyes, nose, ears. He suspects that my vertigo at the last camp in 2018 was due to some such insult to my ears. I no longer drink untreated water since getting giardiasis a few years ago. He suggests using earplugs so I dutifully use them for my first very cold bath in the lake. They float away the first time I use them so it appears my ears do not suit the plugs. I should have brought my shower bag but I am conscious of closing my eyes and clearing my ears and nose of water as soon as I have rinsed under the lake surface. Temperature rises to 14℃ by midday and a few mosquitoes make an appearance so burn a five cm length of mosquito coil in the canvas tent before bedtime while I vacate for 30 minutes. It is good that I kept the stove going as it starts to rain early evening. I am thankful for the Beemster® hard Dutch cheese that Harry and Petra gifted me before my trip. It stretches my protein food so that I do not have to catch any fish for the first month. The plan is to leave tomorrow so I "prepack" before bedtime to speed up breaking camp in the morning. This involves dumping all but my "travel" pot of water, packing the kitchenware in the Kitchen Barrel, putting away the tools, my chair, the Writing Bag. I even pack the stove after emptying it into the firepit. I am only about 50% confident that I will be able to leave as it sure looks like rain. "Wilson", my alarm clock, is set for 3 a.m. so to bed by 8 p.m. to get my usual seven hours of sleep.
June 4, I awake to Wilson at 3 a.m. Heavy, heavy rain started at bedtime and continued all night into the morning. Pulling my boots on I go outside to check weather even though I can hear the rain on the tent roof. After emptying the pee bottle, I go back to bed to heavy rain again and get up at 5:30 a.m. Setting the stove up again, I start it using some split kindling, birch bark and three Vaseline® impregnated cotton balls. After unpacking all my gear again, I boil three pots of water and bake a cinnamon bannock for breakfast. The day stays cool at about 10℃ so I leave the stove going with damper only open slightly. Fetching and sawing more stovewood is a priority. The weather improves by evening with the sun shining nicely, and even though I vowed not to pack the stove again, I do, and prepack, planning to leave tomorrow. I even remove all the stovewood and kindling and store under some nearby trees.
June 5, awake before 3 a.m. It has rained heavy on and off all night. Checking the weather, it is quite cloudy but perhaps the rain has stopped. So I finish packing and eat a cold breakfast in the tent. From my journal: "Now it's raining again and very hard too. Aie! Go outside to look ... as if that's going to help. Aie! Unpack stove. Finally a lull in rainfall. Fetch all the stovewood back into tent, some birch bark and kindling. Start fire using two Vaseline® cotton balls. Get raw water on to boil and start to unpack gear. Aie! Fire dying! Didn't use enough kindling to get the damp wood to burn well. Remove the wood and start over. Aie! Do a proper job and get the stove going properly. Oh well ... good practise." A cold bath in the lake feels great, water temperature 8℃, air temperature 11℃, but the stove soon warms me. Crows are cawing, gray jay murmuring in her usual quiet voice, robin chirping a bit, loons calling. I vow not to take stove down, but the weather clears and I do pack the stove. It is like there are two of me, one saying to leave stove up and one to take it down. Both are anxious to move on to get away from connection to the road. It is too warm at 13℃ to leave stove on all night anyway.
This season I have a timer which is very helpful for timing the bake of cinnamon bannock. This AccuTemp® timer is a manual model, much preferred to the digital ones requiring batteries.
Last year I used a 65 L barrel, that I call my "kitchen barrel", holding the kitchenware and at least two weeks worth of food. Because I was so happy with the barrel concept, this year I purchased two more to store a total of almost four months worth of grub. Unlike the pack-bag system, the barrel is completely waterproof, better protects fragile items, does not need to be stored under cover and should be quite bear resistant. The harness is only attached for portaging, and the handles have been removed, so that a bear cannot easily grasp the barrel. A two week supply is stored in my old system of waterproof bag-pack combination which I use up at the start of the trip but I hope to minimize this even more next year. With practice, switching the barrel harness works well. The two extra barrels are packed full, each weighing about 36 kg (80 lb). Lifting such a heavy load from the ground is too difficult and would strain the harness, and me, so I load them from the top of the lighter kitchen barrel, but this takes some practice as I have to spread my legs wide, lean ahead and fasten the chest strap immediately. It helps also to situate the barrel a bit upgrade from where I stand. When I first start loading and carrying the heavy barrels, I have a few incidents where I topple over while loading or the barrel comes out of the straps during portaging. My actions would have made embarrassing videos. As with any heavily loaded pack on uneven footing, which is all portages, I do not use the hip-belt because it traps me to the load if I stumble or fall.
The initial barrel is a "65 Litre Harmony Waterproof Barrel", harness is "North Water Quick Haul Harness". The two new barrels are "60 Litre Recreational Barrel Works Barrels".
The initial barrel is a "65 Litre Harmony Waterproof Barrel", harness is "North Water Quick Haul Harness". The two new barrels are "60 Litre Recreational Barrel Works Barrels".
Firewood poles standing to keep dry.
The initial Kevlar® "skid plates" at the bow and stern of my canoe worked so well, and with the wear on my 12 year old canoe getting worse, I epoxied another set.
Weather quite cloudy and rainy with strong winds, but some sun shines through on June 5, hopefully a precursor to a good travel day.
Birch catkin salad. There are no alder catkins yet as weather has been cool and cloudy. I manage to find a daily salad of greens or berries to eat with supper all season.
A new reinforced silicone stovepipe port for the canvas tent is a big improvement. Now I just have to find a fireproof system to seal around the pipe for night time use to keep mosquitoes out when the stove damper is closed down for a low burn. Thanks to Airdrie Canvas for performing their usual great work. (Airdrie Canvas Tent and Awning, http://airdriecanvas.ca/)
Splitting kindling for starting a fire in the stove. The stone provides a solid surface, but I have to be careful to minimize the axe hitting it. The first priority daily is sawing more stovewood.