Crew 8787 - Northern Tier
4 boys and 4 adults flew to the Canadian border to canoe 100 miles in Canada in 8 days.
Northern Tier 2018
June 13, 2018
10:30am saw a brown bear cross the road on the way to ClearWater West Lake.
Set out about 11:10am.
Mile 1: Eric, Chance, and Bob took on water in their canoe and got to shore.
Hissam's and Knox went to shore to help them. Carl, Dax, and Travis treaded water 100' from shore, paddling backwards to fight the wind and white caps for about 40 minutes. Eric and Phillip swapped boats. Travis's boat took Knox's pack to try to even the weight distribution. Eric and Chance shore walked while the rest went ahead about .5 miles for a 1pm lunch. Knox and Phillip went back in an otherwise unpacked canoe to pick up Chance and Eric. Travis made lunch.
After lunch, we fought through white caps for about 3 miles before we reached a cove. We had two short portage's. We stopped short of fish island on a little triangle island south of Big Island about 5pm. The campsite was nice with room for tents and hammocks. There was an outdoor privy.
Bob and Carl cooked up some good pasta with meat. We ate it all and had instant chocolate pudding for desert. We had a campfire and talked about 401ks to the boys. Fully find your 401k as soon as you get a job. Dax and Bob went out fishing on the canoe after Bob got his lure stuck on his 2nd cast from shore. They caught a few fish and released them.
We travelled about 3 miles to the North side of Fish island by 8:35 where we took a about a 30 minute break. Many people had a nature call and we only have one trowel. Next, we did another 4ish miles to get to a 3 story cabin (White Otter Castle) built by a single man (Jimmy McOuat) in the 1910s. A year after he finished the cabin, he drowned at age 63 in 1918. We spent about 30 minutes there. They had some outhouses stocked with TP. More people took advantage of the last known outhouse for our trek. There were some maps of the turtle river with more detail on the portage spots. We made notes on that and took pictures of the info before leaving at 11am.
We had a short 20 minute paddle to the POW camp where we had lunch. Lunch was a terrible concoction of hummus, pita, nibs, and a salted nut roll. I had everyone drink a Powerade as well. We filtered water the whole time we were there. There were many rusted artifacts like barrels, mattress springs, gears, and old tin cans with the old pull tabs. There were no signs detailing what POWs were ever here. We left about noon where I got back to the drivers position. When we got around the first corner and headed North, we tried and succeeded at hoisting a sail (dining fly) across all 3 canoes. Eric, Dax, and Chance used their paddles as masts in the front of the 3 side by side canoes, while the duffers held each of the other canoes. The two outside drivers would do some paddling to steer the floating armada. I was I. The back center and filmed on my GoPro. I also held the other two boats from the back. We traveled about a mile or so at about 2-2.5 mph. Eric bored with this task and we resumed paddling separately. I enjoyed the close quarters and wind powered boating.
We got to a hard portage about 1:35pm. I carried our canoe about .4 miles upriver and down some fairly rugged terrain. The interpreter took a wrong rung ahead of us some where because he wasn't at the exit point when Phillip and I arrived at 1:58pm. He missed a big white sign with an arrow on it. I had to take a 15 second break as my shoulders were giving out with about a block to finish. Knox did show up without his canoe a while later to see if he could paddle from where he left his canoe. He could not because there were more rapids. He went back and got his canoe, but looked beat when he arrived. It was apparently an overgrown old trail. We had a short jaunt and had another portage by a trappers cabin. It took us a while to locate this portage because we didn't mark our maps for this one. I used my cached copy of google maps to find it after about 10 minutes of looking. This was a much shorter and easier portage.
We only had about a mile left when we saw a bald eagle ahead. It flew away as we approached, but my finger blocked my photo of it. Carl saw it way early and thought it was a person from that distance. The winds picked up before we could cross dibble lake to the west, but the campsite we found at the 2oclock position of the lake was great so we set up there. We ended up doing a little over 15 miles today by 3:40 pm. We had a nice sandy beach with fresh moose tracks. Later we found fresh bear tracks.
Dax and I cooked pasta with onion, green pepper, meat, and tomato powder for supper. Chance got a helping before the tomato powder went in. We also cooked brownies for about an hour for dessert. We had a quick bible verse discussion followed by thorns and roses. Dax tried shore fishing for a bit.
I helped Carl with his hammock some. He had a tree that bent when he got in causing his tarp to sag. We moved him and I fixed the draft in his underquilt.
It took about 45 minutes to type this up. Finished about 10pm as it is finally dark.
Breakfast was powdered milk with granola. Chance put all the powdered milk into the big bowl and added a liter of water. He should have added about 2 gallons of water. The milk needed to be watered down in our cereal bowls. Tim didn't show up to breakfast until everything was put away. He had 3 cold oatmeal's of his own. We put our wet stuff away and hit the river about 7:25am. We had about 9 miles to the NorthWest by 10:30 and about 9 miles to the Southwest with 4 portage's. One of the portage's was .4 miles long. I took the canoe on all of them. Chance swapped canoes with Dax. We met another Northern Tier crew on their day 1 at a fairly steep portage. Bob took a fall on the steep slippery rock and dropped his canoe. There may be an extra dent in it now. Dax apparently also carried a canoe for a bit today.
All in all, the crew moved quickly with the Northerly wind. We fought harder to earn miles when going south fighting the wind. Bob apparently lost his camera in Smirch Lake :(
We saw a pictograph of a moose and a turtle today. We also saw about 5 bald eagles. I got a picture of one sitting on the top of a burnt tree. We got to camp at 3:58pm. I thought this was incredible time for 18 miles today. We camped near some raging rapids. I put my hammock in a epoch spot facing the rapids. I took a cowboy bath in the lake and so did Bob. Dax did the same later. I helped Carl adjust his hammock under quilt again. Chance and Eric made supper of scalloped potatoes with meat and corn. I ate most of Chance's potatoes after he picked through the good stuff.
Dax tried fishing from shore and got the lure stuck on a stump on his 4th cast. He waded our to unstick it and ended up taking his own cowboy bath. Chance led another bible verse and thorns and roses. I had a hammock discussion with our interpreter, Knox. He wants to hike the AT sometime.
We plan to take a 0day tomorrow.
Rain chances are only 10% tomorrow.
The Incredibles 2 premiered today. We all want to see that.
I woke about 8:15 today. It was nice to sleep in next to the rapids. It rained on and off overnight. There was no lightning or thunder. Breakfast consisted of a single oatmeal packet, and some hand snacks. Eric got up about 9:30. I told him it was 11:30 when he got his breakfast. About 10am, two retired guys paddled up. We chatted with them. They were out clearing portage trails with their chain saws. We saw them yesterday on an island. This route is part of the trans Canada trail apparently.
Dax and Bob went out fishing on a canoe about 11am. Chance and Carl went out about 11:30am. Tim showed Phillip how to cast with a fishing pole. We saw another set of 3 canoes come to the portage about 11:50. They had a motor on their canoes. Two of the canoes were mounted to each other like a catamaran with tons of stuff on the platform between them.
We had dispersed lunch starting about noon. Lunch was a tortilla with a packet of tuna, some ritz peanut butter crackers and some honey stinger gel cubes. Phillip and Bob went out fishing in a canoe while Chance and Carl were still out.
We looked at the maps as a crew and decided that the planned 23 miles with 8 portages was going to be too much. Instead, we will shoot for 17miles with 6 portages. That means we are getting up at 5am (30 minutes earlier than yesterday).
Bob and Carl took a canoe fishing. Chance and I did the same. Chance caught 2 fish with me (small mouth Bass). I caught a Northern Pike. Dax caught a few fish today as well. Carl and Phillip got skunked. In the end, we had 8 fish. We decided to clean the fish by my hammock. I slipped and fell on a slippery rock while carrying the fish over to my hammock area. :( Bob showed us how to clean the fish. The boys each cleaned one or two. I went to change into my dry shoes at my hammock and fell asleep for about 20 minutes mid shoe change. The fish fry was done over the open campfire and tasted amazing. Chance said he would like to go fishing in Texas. We also had the planned meal of a rice medley with a pita. We cleaned up camp, did vespers and roses and thorns. Everybody liked sleeping in today. We are all worried about the 6 portages and mileage tomorrow.
The weather says there is a 40% chance of rain at 5am and then 20-10% the rest of the day tomorrow. This is a huge improvement over the forecast I had before the trip began (90% for Sunday).
We were in bed by 9pm. 5am will be early.
It was warm all night. I woke about 4:50 before my 5am alarm. I was packed and ready at 5:25. We broke camp and had breakfast and were on the water by 6:30am.
The water was like glass this morning. We crossed a road .5 miles from our camp. We saw a lot of bald eagles, giant white stork like birds, beaver, several mama ducks with little ducklings. They were funny in how they tried to get away from us. The ducklings would try to keep up with mom, but couldn't. She kept coming back for them. She would eventually hide them in some weeds and keep leading us away from them before flying and circling back to them. The beaver were cool. They would slap the water hard and go under water as we approached. It sounded like a big boulder was thrown into the river. We didn't see what was making that noise until the 3rd time.
All of the 8 portages were hard today. None of the trails had been cleared. Only one was marked as hard, but that one was no harder than the rest. One of them didn't have a trail at all. We ended up sending the duffer on foot to walk around, while two others shot the rapid up the middle. There was no way to take a canoe around this one. Knox and I scouted the area for nearly an hour before making the decision to run the canoes. We had a birds eye view from above while we were scouting. Bob and Tim went first. Travis and Carl went next. Knox, Phillip, and Chance went last. Dax and Eric walked around it through lots of downed trees.
Chance and Knox goofed around and had both turned around and paddled with Phillip riding backwards. They also tried several times to get ahead of Carl, Dax, and I. We were able to thwart them several times and sent them backwards as we pushed back away from them. We had some good laughs on the river.
There was one portage that avoided about a 20' waterfall. We had a good view of that from the bottom of the portage.
We pushed further than the plan from yesterday, but about 4 miles short of the original plan. We were all whooped by the portages today. We got to the final portage and camp about 5pm. That made a 10.5 hour day of paddling and portages for just under 20 miles. Camp was right by a raging rapid. The mosquitos were bad when we first got there. Several of us took cowboy baths while Carl and Bob started dinner of a pasta mix with broccoli and carrots with croutons. There was blueberry cake for desert.
During roses and thorns, Chance gave Bob a camera strap that Knox found on the trail so he won't lose his next camera. Eric lost his sunglasses today. The rubbing can begin on that tomorrow. We decided to try to do the full 18 miles with 3 portages tomorrow to get a layover day again. We are getting up at 5am again. We didn't get to bed until nearly 10pm.
Carl got a text from Suzi saying happy Father's Day. None of us had realized it was Father's Day today. So, that was the final thing at thorns and roses that I got to say. I got to enjoy Father's Day with my two sons doing something Epic.
It got a bit chilly overnight. I broke out my fleece hat. I again woke about 10 minutes before my 5am alarm. I hollered over to Dax's tent to wake them and they in turn hollered over to chances tent. Carl woke Tim up at 4:30. Carl had breakfast laid out. Eric is slow to get out of his tent. There was misty fog on the water. It looked cool. Tim is slow. He is usually arriving to the breakfast area when we are all packed and ready to go. Our boat was ready and we headed out about 6:30. The portage trail to get to water was bad with fallen trees. It was easy to lose the trail, but this sucks for the guy with the canoe. I was already spent when i got to the water. The water was at the base of another water fall and there wasn't much room. Carl, Dax, and I loaded up our canoe and went into the water. The rest of the crew were finally ready about 6:55am. The people in the canoes got switched around again. Chance was with Eric and Knox. I was with my regular crew of Dax and Carl. Bob was with the Hissams.
The water was glassy smooth. Neither Carl nor I were as powerful today as we were yesterday. We were pretty much going through the motions. We saw it bald eagles, beaver, turtles, and fish.
We stopped to take a break after 90 minutes. Our butts get tired of being in the same position. I have Carl my last two Advil on my person. I went and dig into my dry bag to get my other stash. I felt better on the 2nd leg when I moved to the duffer position. We didn't have Knox's backpack in our canoe today so I could sit in more than one position. I put my legs up on our gear bag for a while.
We looked for several of the spots marked S camps (red dots) but couldn't find them on turtle island. We instead pulled up to a beach on the east for lunch at 11am. It was a pretty weak lunch of corn nuts, slim Jims, orange cheese-poof like substance that was terrible, berry carrot applesauce substance, with 5 twizzlers@ for desert.
After lunch we put up the sail again. This worked a little bit and got us up to about 3.5mph shortly. After that Dax and I paddled the rest of the way on a lake. We had one portage and thought we'd stay at the camp on the far end since this was a 15.2 mile day already. Eric offered to take my canoe if I would buy him Uber eats dinner from a Chinese place in international falls on Thursday. I agreed. Of course the first thing we did is get lost on the portage trail. I trail-blazed with our personal gear whale bag and found trail. I dropped off the whale bag and went back on the portage trail and cleared many of the branches that would catch a canoe. I was hollering Marco-on-the-trail, expecting to hear a Polo back. Eventually, Knox came out sans canoe. I found where the trail split and tried to mark it with a big branch and a big rock. I found bob with a canoe and sent him back to where the trail really was. I then found Eric and blazed a trail to the portage trail while 2man carrying the canoe. When he got to the portage trail, he took it the rest of the way. We loaded up and headed across the current to get to an awesome camping site looking at horse falls. We decided to camp there instead of risking not finding the next few camps. We were at camp about 2pm.
We set up camp. I set up on the north end of camp facing the falls. The natural white noise is awesome. We only saw 2 people today.
The boys rested on the rocks by the falls. They rested under the gear shelter. I took a cowboy bath and washed my shirts and shoes and socks. Bob set up his fishing gear and caught a fish. Carl and I joined him. I caught a small mouth bass also. Carl had one and lost him. I got the boys to come down to shore to fish for a while. I stared supper with Carl's help. It was chiliMac with cornbread. The cornbread was perfect.
We then had a 2nd supper of fish that Bob cleaned.
We cleaned up, did vespers, roses and thorns and went to bed.
Super tired at 10:20pm.
It got cool overnight again. I had to put my fleece cap on at some point. Somehow, I was the last person to wake up at 8:30am. Even Eric was already up. We had grits with dehydrated meat and cheese bits with some a granola bar and blueberry craisins. Eric didn't want his grits, so I had his also. After breakfast, Bob & Knox, and Bob & Dax went fishing in the canoe. Bob and Knox saw a moose in the water.
Carl caught a fish, unhooked it, but Bob made him throw it back. I caught a big small mouth bass from shore. I also caught a couple of Northern pike, but threw those back. Chance caught a couple as well.
I took a nap in the morning trying to avoid the sun and the bugs.
We had hummus and crackers for lunch with a honey stinger, fruit sauce, and twizzlers. The hummus was terrible again and only contains 65 calories. I should have skipped that part.
Knox blew up a floatie tube and swam around a bit in the current off the waterfall.
Eric wanted to trade in his free Chinese meal for a charge from my battery pack on his cell phone. I charged his phone and Knox's GoPro.
Dax took a cowboy bath. Bob and Eric went out fishing from a canoe. In the end, we had about 8 fish (1 northern pike, 2 small mouth bass, and 5 small walleye).
We had chicken Alfredo for first supper, fish for 2nd supper. We had pudding for first dessert, and brownies for 2nd dessert. The brownies burned a bit when the steamer pot ran out of water.
We did the usual vespers service and thorns and roses.
We saw exactly 0 people today. Nobody went through the portage trail. We plan to do 15 miles tomorrow with 5 portages.
I hit the hammock about 9:40 and finished typing by 10:15.
We woke at 5:30 and were on the water by 6:50. Carl, Dax, and I shared a canoe again. Carl has a bad right shoulder and I have a bad left shoulder, so we pair very well together in a canoe. We spend about 75% of the time on our good side and the rest on the bad side. I keep in synch with Carls speed and we keep the canoe on a very straight trajectory. We did a great job of cutting the tangents on the turns and curves of the river to minimize our distance. We calculated that we will end up with 98.2 miles of travel plus several miles of fishing in the canoes to put us over the 100 mile mark for the week.
We saw a bunch of bald eagles again. We saw a pair of trumpeter swans that took off on the water ahead of us. It is amazing how long it takes them to get airborne.
We took a rest break in the swampy area to stretch our legs about 9:50am.
Our interpreter, Knox made the call to base camp to arrange our exit time. His boss said to call back about 4 pm.
We did about 11 miles by 11am. We were having issues with Carls water pump and saw a water inlet about 10:30 so we ducked in there to clean the filter and hopefully get some cleaner water. Nobody wanted to pump water and I got frustrated with the crew. Tim was out of water and didn't answer questions about his water while he was off wandering around the falls with his camera. We pumped a liter for Bob and left the area.
We had already done two easy portages today on ATV trails. I was able to video those on the GoPro to give a feel of what that is like. About 11:30, we got to the 3rd rapid for the day, but could not find the portage trail. We walked up and down the shore and moved the boats closer to the rapids. We then had lunch in a swampy area. The crackers were terrible. The tuna was blah. In short, lunch was nothing more than a yucky bunch of calories. We then decided to walk the canoes down the edge of the rapids with our stuff in them. Chance, Eric, and Knox went to the deeper side and also walked thier canoes, but they had to carry their stuff on their backs so they could lift their canoe over the bigger rocks on the left side of the river. I put the GoPro on for most of this canoe walk portage replacement. Dax paddled for the last 2 segments. I drove all day. The last 2 portages were fairly easy for a change. Eric did slip and fall on the last one on the downhill section near the end.
We had to cross the river to get to our desired camping spot for the night. As we got there, we saw 4 people in a motor boat pulling canoes. These are the first people we have seen in days. They were going fishing up stream from where we came.
The camp was very narrow, and barely had enough room for 4 tents. We were also able to make the hammocks work. I have an interesting and challenging hang on the side of a hill between other trees. It took several attempts to level the hammock.
Bob and I took a swim and cowboy baths. Carl taught a bunch of knots to Knox and the boys.
Knox called back to base camp and was able to arrange a 10am pick up for us from mine camp. This is great news because we will easily be able to make our 4pm taxi tomorrow if all goes as planned.
The fishermen came back about 4:15pm and decided to paddle the rapids. They told us that they destroyed a canoe here last year. I took video of them. They made it ok this year.
We had red beans and rice with cornbread and cake with chocolate chips. Tim and Phillip were the cooks, but I helped them. The cornbread was perfect again. Chance didn't eat the red beans and rice. The cake took about 50 minutes to steam cook, and the water base ran out near the end. We burned a bit of the cake :(. The on cleaned up ok.
We did our final vespers and thorns and roses. I'm looking forward to riding with Chance and Dax tomorrow. Chance wants Dax to steer.
We have about 4.8 miles left for the morning.
We got to our tents about 10pm. We are camping by the rapids, so I have one last night of natural white noise.
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