We woke up to grey sky, rains were gone – if only temporarily, but they were gone. The chill I had acquired the night before had disappeared which felt good. Brewed up some hot tea with our cold breakfast and looked forward to McIntosh Marsh.
Another late start, 11:30 (For those wondering how I know the times, I had my GPS on which logs time of movement time, etc.).
White Trout Lake was calm, though it proved to be one of the more interesting experiences… As we rounded the bend , the marsh came into view. My friends and I could see a yellow plane off in the distance taking off up over the trees at the other end. We all joked, hey maybe they wanna give us a lift back to the ranger station we just passed (it was assumed to be loaded with warm delicious food, and excellent female company). Just as we said that, the plane turned around, and came back down McIntosh Marsh towards us. I pulled out my camera, my buddies start imitating some TV characters, nervously suggesting we might want to move forward a bit… Just in case…
Here this kind explains it pretty well (language warning)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifO2nhsLWDs
A little shocked – we continued along our way into McIntosh Marsh. All while repeating… Whoa! Holy @#$%!. Did you see that?!
Picking our way through the marshy maze, it was a little tough seeing… And you never really knew which way you were going to come out from, or If you were going to have to turn around and come back. We got through pretty efficiently, but it was slow going, not to mention a little eerie. The dark overcast gave the water a brown / black tary look, you really couldn’t see much. The contrast of the vegetation above water – the tree, the lack of people it was amazing. The fact that it was no longer raining didn’t hurt either.
About ¾ through the marsh, we stopped at a beaver damn that looked to be a little bit troublesome. It wasn’t a built up damn, just a little one. Comments we directed at the lazy work by the usually industrious little buggers. Since it was 1:30 we pulled over and scouted possible routes. Our spot wasn’t picnic ideal… It was a little make shift on the side of a steep hill where it looked that one or two others had run into the same damn and thought “oh crude is there not a better way to get around this?”.
The view from here turned out to be pretty nice, here is where we had just come from…
This is where something spectacular happened. As we were eating our summer sausage, naan bread, and mustard, we all started to feel this warmth on the back of our necks. Looking up the horizon in front of me, what you see above getting slightly brighter. As I turn around, the clouds part and for the first time in what feels like a life time (was only like 2 days) the sun hits my face. It was amazing. That warmth and simplicity of it is something that I’ll never forget.
We forged our way forward until we ran into the small stream at the end of the creek…
The clouds continued to part, and the colors just got more vivid with every passing minute. It’s one of those you had to be there moments. We continued on with the portages, the small creeks, getting the occasional soaker, taking a break here and there enjoying the sun, letting our damp clothes dry in the process. It was wonderful, smiles and laughs all around.
I don’t know if it was the weather, the small islands scattered about, our campsite but I found McIntosh Lake to be one of the most beautiful lakes I’ve ever paddled on.
We made it to our campsite pretty quickly (took about 15 minutes), one of the last ones on the left before getting into Ink Creek. We figured we had a big day the next day, wanted as best of a jump as possible. We had our own little bay which we shared with a few critters. We unloaded our gear, pulled the canoe up and setup as many clothes lines as we had rope. The sun was out, it was going to stay that way for a few hours and we were going to take advantage of it. We had tents, sleeping bags, absolutely everything hanging up to get the dampness of the last few days out.
Things dried out pretty quickly. We got the tents setup, had to hike to bit to get some fire wood, dragged all that back. The collapsible saw I got from MEC is absolutely great. It wasn’t too long after we got the fire going, and everything setup when the animals came out. The squirrels were glued to our bags the second we stepped away to do anything. We had 3-4 beavers patrolling the shores, and an otter that was trying to land on our beach head. He clearly wasn’t impressed as he swam in circles just off the shore and chirped / barked at us.
Thursday Sept 30 – Day 5
We were up early today, on the water by 8 AM. There was a big portage I had on my map which I had, this portage was circled, one which I wasn’t sure how long was going to take us. I had done a couple long ones earlier this season in Quebec (La Mauricie), they were that length but going up 150m hills. The map didn’t say this one was going to be bad, but you know how it is…
Ink Creek was peaceful, no movement what so ever.
It wasn’t long before we were at the portage. We packed up, we were doing this in one stretch as we had all the others. Up with the canoe, and off we went… All in all, it was pretty flat, pretty easy (very much unlike the portages I’m used to in Quebec – La Mauricie).The staircase was a pretty impressive piece of work by the park workers. There were a few slippery moments on some wet rocks, the logs over the marshes were pretty dicey. Water levels were low, so with each step it would bounce. 6 or so inches… We swapped places every 10 minutes carrying the canoe to keep everyone sane.
I’d say we were probably ¾ of the way through when we thought we heard were hoofs on the trail up ahead… The last thing we wanted was to meet a bull moose on the portage trail with a 40 pound pack on you back, an 18’ canoe on your head, we gave off a few shouts made some noise and they disappeared. We finished up without incident. In hindsight, I believe we mistook the hoofs on rock for someone chopping wood in the distance, but who knows.
As we were getting the canoe into Tom Thomson Lake and loaded, Luke was about to get a little wet. As he loaded the canoe, one foot in, the other on land, the canoe decided it was going to part ways with the shore. Luke promptly fell backwards with his shoulders on the ground, and his butt in the water, his legs in the canoe as he tries to keep the boat from floating away. As he’s falling, and shouting for someone to grab him and the canoe, being his good friend I decide at that its time that photographing this moment is way more important. My other friend Jon can’t contain himself and is buckling over in laughter. Luke at the time sort of have things under control, but he’s still struggling.
We got back onto the water, Luke dried off, and we paddled hard for the rest of the morning. The sun was out, the air was cool, it was a perfect day in every sense of the word for paddling. We stopped at a campsite along the Little Oxtongue River around 1:00 for another lunch of summer sausage and naan bread.
We crossed a large beaver damn a little further up river, made a little easier by the large rock along the shore line. It was a smooth cruise to the portage bringing us to Canoe Lake. The colors seemed to get brighter as the week went on…
Home sweet home…
We arrived at the portage store around 3, turned in our canoe, and headed for the car. We all attacked our after trip bags, hit the store for a cold soft drink, packed the gear, and headed to our lodging for the night, Spectacle Lake Lodge.
As we drove towards the east gate, the colors we noted had without a doubt gotten brighter over the last few days. We slowed by a couple ponds and swamps visible from the road to see if we could spot any moose. We were a little disappointed having not seen any moose or bear. It wasn’t shortly after when we saw something standing on the left hand side of the road. I slowed down, as we looked Luke’s words were “That’s the biggest coyote I’ve ever seen in my life”. I wasn’t sure if it was a coyote or wolf but it was a good size. Jon was reading the Algonquin Newletter at the time, flipping the page there was an article on the Eastern Algonquin Wolf. Looked very much like what we saw.
We arrived at our cabin checked in, showered up, put some clean clothes and deodorant on and hit up the restaurant. I don’t want to over exaggerate, but that may have been the best meal of my life. We went back to the cabin, drank some beer, snacked on chips, watched a movie and hit the sack.
We slept in, had more showers, hit up the restaurant one last time for breakfast and hit the road.
In Conclusion
Epic. I’ve only started getting out over the last 2 years or so, this was the longest trip I had done and was happy things went well. By the end of the trip I had wished I planned a longer trip… Perhaps a little laundry and food resupply, but I was ready for more. So were the guys. I’ll be back for bigger and longer, no doubt about it.
