This year I took my three sons to Quetico deciding to avoid some of the throngs that Jimmy and I encountered last year on our trip out of Baker Lake. So meet below Dan, Steve, and Jimmy. Besides the fewer people, another big difference was the cost. I paid somewhere around $25/person/day just to be in the park PLUS another $25/person for something called RABC. Whew. But definitely it was worth the expense. Definitely, a lot fewer people except around Louisa Falls on Agnes Lake. This year we started at Moose Lake and entered at Prairie Portage. -- Already, thinking ahead, I think I would like to enter from Atikokan which I believe will be more remote and allow us to get way the heck out even faster.
This is Moose like on the way Prairie Portage.
O Canada. On the other side of the portage there is a small ranger station where the Canadians are glad to take your money. I was greeted by a couple of perky middle aged ranger ladies who needed some basic information about our planned trip. I told them we would be headed for Agnes Lake. They wanted to know how we would be getting there. I answered, via canoe. Wrong answer. Of course, we were going by canoe. What they really wanted to know was what route we would take. They laughed and laughed and wanted to enter my response into their book of dumb responses from Americans. Oh well.
Canadian camping terms are a little different than American. One of the rangers gave us a short talk on the subject. One difference between Quetico and BWCA is that the campsites have no commode. So the ritual of digging a 6" hole, etc., etc. was explained to us. But there was an interesting twist. There would be two options for the disposal for toilet paper. It must be burned, or carried out. Trying to be fair, at that point, we assigned the burning of the TP each evening to Jimmy, the youngest member of our crew.
Frankly, we didn't see a lot of wildlife. But there were loads and loads of mushrooms popping up through the forests everywhere we went. I am not much for identifying mushrooms but am nonetheless intrigued. Thus about half the pictures below are various forms of fungus. If any of my readers can identify some of these mushrooms, please post a comment and I will add a caption.
I think the next mushroom (two photos of the same mushroom) are amanitas.
After entering Canada at Prairie Portage, our route was Inlet Bay, Bayley Bay, Burke Lake, and North Bay. Then we followed the S-chain (named after lakes beginning with the letter 'S') through to Silence Lake. Below, I think, is Shade Lake where we spent night one. Steve and I -- keep in mind we shared a canoe -- thought perhaps we could rename the S-chain lakes after each of Mitt's five sons. Actually, I can't blame Steve, that was my personal obsession during a long paddle.
Several years ago, when I was on Cap Lake by myself in the BWCA, my canoe blew away over night across the lake to the far portage. Ever since then I have been very careful to make sure that the canoes are secured safely on dry land for the night as below at Shade Lake.
Day 2 was windy and ominous. We got off to a late start and only paddled 2 or 3 hours to make it to Silence Lake, which is the last lake in the S-chain. We pitched on a tiny island and mostly slept and read for the rest of the day; and, of course, I photographed mushrooms...
Here's Jimmy and Steve in sepia. They were very well behaved. Almost no fights amongst all three boys, which was amazing, given that they had more than two decades to build up brotherly animosities!
I took this final picture (below) from our campsite on an island in Silence Lake shortly in the morning before heading off to Agnes Lake.
Agnes was the largest lake of our paddle. Somewhere around 15 miles long. We came onto Agnes at the middle on the west side and headed to the north end. At that point we were seeing just a few parties each day. Below are pictographs on a cliff at Agnes
After reaching the north point of the Agnes, we did not encounter any other paddlers for 48 hours, until we re-entered Agnes, again from Silence and paddled south. Our route was to follow from the north point of Agnes to Keewatin Lake. Then we followed a series of 'rustic' portages in a general southeastern direction into some smaller lakes and rivers into the north end of Payne Lake. Payne Lake is really a long series of narrow lakes that extends for quite a few miles interspersed with short portages. Below we see Jimmy and Dan navigating our route. I had a great deal of trust in them until I found out that they were relying on their 'sense' of direction and not so much their compasses.
We arrived at our day 3 campsite fairly late, around 6:30. It was not marked on our maps and the tent sites were moss covered indicating to me that it was rarely used. We made good use of the fire pit to scare off any wolves, bears, and sasquatch that may have been in the area.
Day 4 started off overcast on calm waters. At the north end Payne Lake we encountered the most magnificent cliffs of the trip.
These cliffs also a couple of small, simple pictograhs.
We packed very lightly, with two Kevlar/epoxy canoes, three portaging packs and some on-board odds and ends. This allowed us to cross portages in just one trip. All of our dinners were commercial freeze-dried. These generally were not too bad. But next year I will look harder for some choices that aren't loaded so heavily with sodium.
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| "Double Portaging" |
Below we paddled through a "portgage" on day 4 in a wet area that emerged as a result of beaver activity post publication of our navigational map.
We spent our fourth night on an island on Agnes Lake. The next day we got off of Agnes and portaged into and out of East Lake. This wasn't necessary I really just wanted to break the monotony of Agnes. The portage back onto Agnes made this diversion most worthwhile. Right on the trail, we encountered a large colony of creamy-yellow mushrooms. These were really amazing!
The best known site on Agnes Lake is Louisa Falls. It is also, unfortunately, the area that you are likely to see huge throngs off people. We ran into around 5 separate parties at this site, including a group of 20 or 30- something guys who were camping at the most scenic point.
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| Steve at Louisa Falls |
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| South end of Agnes Lake |
On the portage out of Agnes, Jimmy spotted some huge shelf mushrooms, including the one below. He was carrying my camera at the time, opened the case, and handed it to me. This allowed me to take the below picture with a canoe on my shoulders. A true son...
The above mentioned portage and another one, in fact two 150 rod portages, took us to Sunday Lake on Day 4. Sunday Lake is a good sized lake whose length we paddled to another shorter portage which took us to Sunday Bay. We camped at a most excellent site on Sunday Island on Sunday Bay and had a big campfire. Dan spotted the below fungus for me to photograph.
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| Day 5, Gratuitous Sunset of Sunday Bay |
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| Eagle on Inlet Bay, coming into Prairie Portage |
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| Back at Prairie Portage. Steve "adjusting" the day's fire threat. |
On the way home we stopped at the Wellstone Memorial in the Iron Range.. It is very moving. If you have been passing the road sign time after time on Highway 53 but kept putting off a visit, I would highly recommend the 30 minute diversion.
