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There was some lightning and thunder last night, but the storm passed and only a few drops of rain fell.  I'm up at six-thirty and it's sunny with a little bit of haze.  The wind is up too, taking the mosquitoes away. I'm comfortable and feeling good as I cook some pancakes and finish a second cup of coffee. 

The campsite I'm at was used recently, maybe for a shore lunch or supper.  About a dozen pickerel skins lie in the shallow water just off shore.  When I reach the channel out of Sylvia I see two brand new aluminum motorboats cached on the shore. There's a green canoe here too, and the couple that passed my campsite last evening.  I say hello and share another cup of coffee with Steve and Anita from Blaine, Minnesota.  They met in 1994 on a hiking trail.  Both were taking solo trips, but they've been together ever since.  Steve and Anita have been through the Voyager's Highway, from Voyager's Park to Lake Superior, including Grand Portage.  They've also hiked in Colorado, and probably other places we didn't get a chance to talk about.   The motorboats explain the dozen walleyes I found at my campsite.  It would take quite a few canoeists to eat that many fish. 

The portage out of Sylvia is picture perfect.  There are no roots or rocks and it's dry from shore to shore.  I see another cached motorboat on the far shore of Bilko Lake.

Canoeists familiar with the battles over motorboats in the boundary waters might wonder why cached boats and fly-in camps are allowed in a provincial park. Woodland Caribou is a new park, and the camps and outposts were there when the park was formed. Some of the camp owners were involved in creating Woodland Caribou, recognizing that without protection the land would eventually be logged, with a negative affect on their fly-in fishing business. I think that Red Lake would like to become the gateway to the park, and would like to provide canoeists with lodging, supplies, outfitting, air transport - all of the services that exist for the boundary waters in Ely, Grand Marais and Atikokan.

Even with a few cached boats and cabins, the odds of running into any people at all are far less in Woodland Caribou than in Quetico Park, for example. Compared to southern Ontario, there's hardly anyone up here. I didn't see any motorboats running on this trip, and the ones that were cached were all low powered. I only ran into two other canoe travelers in twelve days of paddling. Some of the cabins on leased land will be burned in 2010, part of a plan to restore the park to it's natural state. Sometime in the future, if more canoeists come here, Woodland Caribou might have a chance to become more like Quetico. Right now, the park needs more canoe travelers.  It's sad to see the boundary waters being consumed by visitors when only seven hours to the north there's a better land for canoeing. 

The next portage is a pull-through and I trade my dry feet for the labor of unloading and walking the shore.  I have another mishap on the next portage and end up on the winter trail again.  There's a new fork that goes off to the right and a nice landing, but the old path is so clear that it's easy to miss the turn-off.  There's an arrow carved in a tree at the fork, but I was so obsessed with watching the ground ahead that it's no wonder I missed it.  The landing isn't that bad, however, by now I'm quite used to muskeg and bog.  I meet Steve and Anita again, we'll be close to each other most of this day.  It's pretty hot now and I  wonder if I have enough drinking water to get me to Eagle Lake.

There's a beautiful pond just north of Beaver Lake.  On the left shore, above a high rock face, tall pines weave and sway in the wind. The stream comes in here, a gush of water that pours through a narrow gap in the rocks.  The landing is wide and weedy and the water in the pond is still.  There's a boulder field to cross off to my right and a small gap that leads to the forest beyond.

The boulder field turns out to be quite an obstacle for me.  The water level is not very high, and there's only a small channel on the right side where I might paddle through.  I land the canoe upstream and scout out the path.  The water isn't fast, but there's little room to get out if I get stuck.  I decide to portage my pack across the rocks, then take the canoe through empty.  It's very windy now, and since I'll be hopping from rock to rock, I decide to make several trips, rather than one with a heavy pack.  While I'm busy hopping back and forth, Steve and Anita come through. Youth and strength win over rocks.  Steve ends up waist deep in the water as he man handles his loaded canoe through the narrow channel.  I would like to portage my canoe, but the wind is too strong and the footing too treacherous.  I go through empty, and have to hop out to a nearby rock three times to shift the boat. 

By four-thirty I'm at the fork in the creek.  The channel is much wider west of the fork.  I'm getting tired and I've used up all of my water.  It's a relief when I finally reach Eagle Lake.  With the high winds, I can only hug the eastern shore, and I quickly find a place to camp.  These shores are low, flat and solid rock.  I find that I can walk 100 meters without having to cut through the brush.  At nine o'clock I hear thunder from the south.  Maybe rain is coming.

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Copyright 2000 by James A. Hegyi http://www.canoestories.com/wcp20.htm