Ontario's Woodland Caribou Provincial Park - A Different World for Canoe Travelers

The Story of a Solo Canoe Trip Through Ontario's Woodland Caribou Provincial Park
By James Hegyi

CHAPTER 6
The Long Portages

It's still raining a thin, wind blown drizzle as my eyes slowly open. After the long paddle yesterday, it's hard to get going this morning. Maybe some food will help. Still blowing from the southeast, the wind steps right into my campsite, and I have to walk well into the woods to get out of it. The food pack goes to windward of the gas burner and helps to keep my pan hot as I fry some pancakes. It's a miserable morning.

During a lull in the drizzle the tent goes down, and I'm on the water just before a brief shower hits. I really don't know exactly where on Artery Lake I landed last night, but if I follow the east shore, I can't go wrong. Within an hour I pass two good campsites. Had I kept on course I would have found them, but I was too intent on finding a campsite to keep on course...

It's a long paddle to the southern tip of the lake. The rain changes back to drizzle, but the wind keeps blowing and I have to pull for every meter. Near the channel that goes west to the portage, there's a campsite with a red fly and nice looking red packs. I yell out "good morning" to the closed tent. I'm hoping to get some information about the portage ahead, but no one is home. It looks like a party of two canoes, but they must be out fishing.

A slow, shallow channel leads my canoe and my thoughts to the portage ahead. The channel turns to the left and a long, steep rock face looms up in front of me. There's a very lonely feeling to this part of the lake. The hard, towering rock and the marshy channel below seem to say "move on, you can't stop here."

I'm not sure if I've landed in the right place. My map warns not to take the snowmobile trail. I suppose that the winter trail follows low ground, and probably is impassable in the summer. The small opening in the muskeg where I'm standing doesn't have much of a path leading up to it. I could be wasting my time, trying to portage on a moose trail. I push out into the water again and search the shore for a better landing or a ribbon marker. There's nothing.

Landing again, and leaving my gear with the canoe, I walk down the tenuous path for a few minutes. It leads to higher ground, in fact a steep climb up a wet, moss covered hill. There are trees down here, but this definitely is the portage.

My pack is too heavy to swing up onto my back. I need to prop it up and sit in front of it to get it on. The canoe goes over and I load up from the bottom, my feet in several inches of water. Drizzling rain is still falling. I feel very much alone, an unwelcome visitor in an indifferent land.

The wet moss that covers the first steep hill is slippery, and I crawl up on all fours, ducking under the first fallen trees. At the top of the hill there's a forest unlike any I've seen before. Pine trees, many pine trees grow from a thick carpet of intensely green moss. The moss is so perfect, it's surface so unblemished, that I feel like I've stepped into the page of a children's story book. This isn't a happy place, however. The rain, the gray skies, and the difficult start bring dark, uneasy thoughts. Is the whole portage this bad? How many downed trees must be cut away or pushed aside? A few minutes later the mossy path changes to rock with a thin covering of slippery fungus, and I lose the path. A downed tree shifted me to the side and I have to backtrack to find the right way. After ten minutes walking I find a flat, clear place on a bare rock hilltop. I sink down on all fours, then roll to the right as I unbuckle my pack.

It's impossible to carry the canoe up the steep, mossy hill, so I drag it, trying to use branches and moss to protect the bottom. With the slippery rocks and downed trees, I have to put down the canoe five times to get around obstacles before I come upon my pack.

I'm feeling uneasy as I walk further and further into the forest. The drizzle, the slippery footing and the isolation get my imagination going. I think about the fall that could come any second, the wrenching pain, dragging my pack through the muskeg to someplace where I could set up the tent. I imagine having to call for help, getting hauled out because I couldn't make it on my own.

I force myself to concentrate on what I'm doing, to walk slowly and deliberately, to think about each step, the best place for each foot. Up on the high ground, there is no portage path. Rock piles and old blaze marks show me the way to go. Ten minutes go by and I stop and drop my pack again. I don't want to be too far from any of my gear.

I bring up the canoe, drop it, and sit down to strap on my pack for the next part of the portage. I didn't realize that there were high, open places in the interior forest. The portaging isn't too bad on top of the solid rock, but getting up there is a real struggle. Four times I must crawl up a steep slope, four times I must put down the canoe and drag it to the top. On a dry day it might be possible to make it up on my feet, but it's just too dangerous when it's slippery. On one of the hills, the trip down is too steep for me to try with my pack on. I have to take my two bags off of the frame and drag them down one at a time. I go down this hill three times and up two times. It's just not safe to do it any other way.

Between each hill is a wet and buggy path through muskeg. Enough travelers have passed to make the middle of the path impassable. I have to walk on the edge of the path, or straddle it to keep from sinking up to my knees. The small saw I brought goes back with me, and I clear any trees that would be hard to pass with the canoe. My glasses are in my pack by now, they just get too foggy in the mist and the sweat under the mosquito head net. The long pants that were dry under my rain pants, are sweat soaked now.

There's a flat open spot ahead, a good place to sit down and rest. Ten minutes, fourteen, twelve... I'm adding up my forward progress, trying to estimate the distance I've traveled. It's hard to be sure, but I must be close to the end.

There's an odd formation on the rock hill just before it descends into muskeg. If the muskeg were lake, this would be a long point of land. It matches the contour shown on my map so I'm pretty sure I'm close to the end. Walking slowly, I reach the lake shore within a few minutes. Very slow now, I come back for the canoe. It looks like the snowmobile path and the portage path are together at the Ford lake end. Within a hundred meters, the snowmobile path branches off to the east, probably to follow the low ground back to Artery Lake. Soon I'm back with the canoe. I'm on the water four and a half hours after starting the portage.

In an exhausted daze, sans glasses, I paddle south on Ford Lake. It's not until I'm almost past it that I notice a campsite on the east shore. It's a big campsite, with several tents and many people milling around. At the shore a young woman steps forward to speak for the group. I know that I don't look so good, so I don't try to land the canoe. Without my glasses, I can't see her very well, but it looks like she's leading young people. It seems as though there are at least four canoes, judging from the stack of paddles that I see. I learn that they're from Saint Cloud, Minnesota, on their sixth day out. The group came north through the portage from Ford to Craven in the rain yesterday, and stopped to dry out their gear. We trade notes about the portages, and I wish them luck as I back away from the shore. I've had this happen to me often when traveling in canoe country. Just when you might start to think that only a strong, macho guy could make it to where you are, along comes a group of young girls, often laughing, singing and joking as they paddle by.

There's a point of land ahead and I make camp. By now the rain is gone and so it's possible to make a small fire to drive the bugs away. I'm exhausted and over tired, and don't get to sleep until ten o'clock. Overhead, gray clouds still cover the sky. It seems to be clear to the south at times, but the clear sky never gets any closer.

Again I wake up to drizzle. I know what's in store for me today, and that doesn't make getting up any easier. Pancakes again this morning, and I force myself to eat all of them. The portage into Craven Lake is east of where I expected it to be, but easy enough to find.

The rain is gone as I paddle up to the portage landing. It starts with a nice sandy beach, then opens to another type of forest that I've rarely seen before. The trees are old and tall, and the forest floor is open. Apparently this part of the forest hasn't seen fire for many years. The open, firm pathway is encouraging, but only for a few minutes; it soon drops down to muskeg. Although the entire portage is only a thirty minute walk when loaded, I again make short advances so that I'm not far from any of my gear.

It's eerie to be in the middle of a muskeg forest, far from firm ground. The soft green moss reflects a strange light, and muffles all sounds. It's a world drawn inward, as though I'm walking alone through a heavy snowfall. I turn and look in all directions - only endless stunted trees, endless soft, uneven ground, and the trace of man's uneven pathway. I can almost imagine that this muskeg forest goes on and on and on... as it probably does in many parts of Ontario.

Every twenty meters requires some thought. Do I take the main path or one of the less traveled parallel paths? Drag the canoe or try to walk it through the knee deep muck? I come upon a snowmobile shroud, next to the path. It doesn't look damaged. I wonder what story lies behind this misplaced scrap of machinery. Did it just drop off of a sled, or was there engine trouble? Did the rider need to reach the engine to hold something together? Soon this portage also ends. My three trips stretch the portage out to two hours.

It's raining on Craven Lake. Two men are standing on the pier next to a new cabin, fishing for walleye. A bedraggled canoeist comes around a point of land and slowly approaches. He doesn't look too good. In fact he's unshaven, dirty and tired. The canoe traveler says hello, asks about the fishing, and asks if the men have heard a weather report recently.

"We're supposed to have four days of rain" says the older man. "That's what we heard when we flew in two days ago, so maybe by tomorrow it'll clear."

They go to their cabin, I search for a place to put my tent. It's hard to find a campsite, but I finally find a shore that has a flat space. The trees are scratched here, possibly the sign of a bear nearby. I carefully search for bear scat, and closely examine the scratch marks on the trees. The marks are not fresh, there's no fur stuck in the bark and no other bear sign in the area.

The rain continues, and I'm getting cold. I'm worn out - exhausted from the last two days of portaging. When the rain stops for a few minutes, I dig out a shirt, my winter underwear top and a jacket. Warm now, I feel better, so I assemble my fishing rod and cast my shallow diver from the shore. Within fifteen minutes I have two nice size walleye. This time I walk a hundred meters along the shore before I clean the fish. It's too windy to cook without shelter; I have to bring the canoe up on shore and prop it up on it's side for a windbreak. The fried fish sure taste good, the meal is a high point in this miserable day. By eight o'clock my tent is closed and I'm drifting off to sleep. I need to see the sun...