I wanted to complete the trip in eight hours, so my youngest son, Sam, and I were traveling real light. I was feeling extra tough/foolish that day. I guess I was thinking back to my years in the chute with half-crazed 300 to 800 pound steers, heifers and bulls getting branded, ear tagged, castrated, vaccinated and de-horned and I kind of missed not wrestling with big animals so I decided my Damascus Steel custom made knife with a 7 & ½" blade and Bison horn handle would be just the ticket ..... good enough to open up the side of the neck of a bear or cougar that was working me over.
The purpose of this quick trip was to find a new remote wilderness location for our annual family wilderness camping expedition. This year, my wife's sister and her family are coming along with us. Between her family and those in ours who can make it, there will be ten people. The lake has to be far enough in so that we are unlikely to see another living soul, yet not so far in that we can't get in and set up in a day. Also, there has to be fish in the lake. Also, we prefer to camp on an island to make it a touch more challenging for the bears and cougars to. Finally, I needed to find a spot where we could pitch four to five tents ...... not an easy job at all in the Canadian Shield where fairly flat spots can be hard to find.
We launched our canoe on the Pickerel River system and after about half an hour, having paddled up a very narrow bay that converged to the outlet of a small creek, we reached our first portage. Here's a photo of Sam, my youngest son, at the beginning of our portage up the creek bed ....
The creek was filled with boulders and rocks of various sizes ...... a great opportunity to exercise the muscles and ligaments in your ankles when carrying a canoe and not always able to see where you are putting your foot down. Here's another photo about half way up the first portage at a nice spot in the stream where it was flatter .....
After about 20 minutes we crossed a small beaver dam and stepped into the first lake, a beautiful clear wilderness lake with lots of small, young Smallmouth Bass swimming around our feet. Here's a shot of the lake ....
We figured this lake was too easy to get to, so we just paddled to the far end. Between this lake and the next was about a quarter mile of what I call 'bottomless muskeg' ...... swamp with mud the consistency of thin porridge that can be so deep a fellow can simply drop out of sight and never be seen again. We have a family rule that anyone who steps out of the canoe in a bottomless muskeg has to wear a personal floatation device because we don't want to be fishing around in the muck with our hands trying to find the top of someone's head so we can haul him or her out. This muskeg had a very small channel, sort of, that wove around in the floating hummocks of brush and grass. Here we are working our way along .....
After about 20 minutes, we came to a small beaver dam across the swamp and, since we had to lift our canoe over the dam, paused for a stretching of the legs since it was the only solid ground to do so ....
Here's a shot taken from the dam, looking back the way we have come. A fellow can't be in a rush when he's working his way through stuff like that. Often, you have to put the end of your paddle against a floating hummock and push the canoe ahead. Sometimes, both Sam and I would be shoving against our paddles, rocking back and forth, trying to get the canoe over a spot where there was mostly muck and weeds and not much water. If you look carefully way back, you can see a tiny spot of blue, which is the first lake we left ...
The beaver dam above was at about the half way mark between the first and second lakes. We piled back in the canoe and resumed our paddle/shoving/poling through the beaver swamp, looking for channels through the hummocks. Finally, we came to a second beaver dam at the entrance to the second lake. Here's a shot of the Old Geezer getting ready to get in the canoe at the second lake ....
This second lake was the one I had in mind for our wilderness campsite in August. I figured it was hard enough to get into to weed out most people, but still not that hard. We pushed off from the beaver dam and I unlimbered my fishing rod to sample the fishing. After about a minute or two, I tied into a decent Largemouth Bass. After a good fight, I hauled him up for a quick photo and then let it go ....
That was all I needed to assure myself that this lake had fish and that the fishing was pretty good. If I could land a decent bass with only a few minutes of fishing in the middle of the day, then this lake has lots of fish, so I put my fishing rod away. You might think that is a bit of a hasty decision, but to be honest, in 20 years of wilderness canoeing and camping in the Canadian wilderness, I cannot recall a lake that did not have decent fishing. Some lakes were downright fantastic.
The next thing was to find a campsite. I had also downloaded a Google Earth photo of the location and could see a point of land in the photo that was mostly bare rock, so we headed for this. Sam and I paddled over to the point and, as we ate our lunch, I sized up the location and figured it would do the job. Here is a shot looking toward the cooking area. In the foreground, we can fit two tents on the sort of flat area of rock ....
Finding something perfectly flat without any roots, bumps or hollows is not possible, so each person finds a comfy spot in their tent that takes into account all those things. You might not sleep so well the first night, but when you get tired enough, you'll sleep on anything and think it was great. Looking the other way, I could see the possibility of fitting two or three more tents in the 'flat' area, as you can see in this photo ....
Finally, our family wilderness campsites must have a good swimming area. Just beside the cooking area, the rock dropped straight down into the lake, making for a good diving area. Here's a shot of our future swimming area ....
We finished our leisurely lunch, got back into the canoe and headed down one of the arms of the lake to the portage into the next lake. The last lake wasn't a consideration for me but it was an alternative way out. We portaged out about a quarter mile around a swamp to another long, narrow bay on the main river and paddled back to our start point. Total elapsed time, six hours. It was a great father-son day with Sam. With ten people and a lot of gear and food, it will take longer. I'm still worried that this lake is still a bit too easy to get to, but there is another lake about a mile further in that we might go into for a day trip in August. Usually, a mile portage busting your way through brush and mucking your way through swamps, filters out most people, so that more remote lake might be where we camp next year if we all decide this lake was too easy to get to.
