July 25 at camp 21, 5:15 a.m. no smoke visible across the lake. Hopefully the fire is out, after raining heavily all night long. Up at 3 a.m., breakfast in tent. Very cloudy, looking like rain, but regardless "... I'm bound for movin' on ..." (in "Four Strong Winds" by Ian Tyson). Rainfall starts on my last load of the 650 metre portage, continuing steadily all the time I am canoeing, sometimes raining hard, driven into my face by a strong headwind, oh joy! I run two 100 metre rapids (from 'unnamed lake 4' into 'unnamed lake 3' and then into 'unnamed lake 2'), with some grating of the canoe bottom on boulders, getting momentarily stuck in the second one midstream until pushing off with the paddle. It would be nice to get all the way to the next big lake, but by the time I reach old camp 4 on 'unnamed lake 2' the wind is too strong to continue and it is still raining so it is an easy decision to stop at 9:30 a.m. I have travelled seven km including the 650 metre portage. This campsite is ready for me to set up the canvas Tent and wood stove, even with some split kindling, birchbark and stovewood. By noon the rain stops. The Tent is on an exposed hilltop and the very strong wind blows out the leeward side of the Tent when the door is open so I have to place a big rock and a stump on the sod cloth to weigh it down. (The Tent cannot be switched around to face the other way because the gravel for the stove is already in place, plus my bed would not be level.)
With the very strong wind, it feels much colder than the temperature of 13℃. It sure feels good to put on dry clothes and hang the damp ones to dry in the warm Tent.
With the very strong wind, it feels much colder than the temperature of 13℃. It sure feels good to put on dry clothes and hang the damp ones to dry in the warm Tent.
July 26, cloudy but no rain. After breakfast, I canoe up the lake about one km and catch three 26" (66 cm) pike. Using a diving lure, I troll in the centre of the lake hoping for trout or walleye with no luck, so try near shore finally finding a sweet spot for pike. Shoreline is steep and bush covered so I clean the fish on the point of my campsite at a small grassy area with a little sand beach backed by thick sweet gale brush on which I hang the rinsed fish fillets. Using the moss from the canoe where the fish lay I create a level cleaning station on the ground to place the cutting board. Stair-step moss is ideal to rest the fish in the canoe, protecting the canoe from getting contaminated and fish from the sun. The moss is also useful after cleaning fish to scrub my hands, the filleting board and any fish remnants in the canoe.
At 20℃ it is too warm for the stove to be used, so I fry the fish for supper at the firepit in the hillside behind the Tent. The original firepit, dug on the trip in, is not insulated well enough from the surrounding moss so I enlarge it, placing sand around to keep the fire from spreading. At 6 p.m. after supper, the sun shines brightly for the first time today as I pre-pack in preparation to move on tomorrow.