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- Feb 28, 2007
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I have been conspicuously absent from the forum these past two months. Several business trips, work and a strange fascination with reading about quantum mechanics in my spare time have kept me off the internets.
Despite this, I've been guarding my schedule for this week from any conflicts since March and planning a trip with Joe to visit Lake Superior Provincial Park on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The park is about 150 km from Sault St. Marie and perhaps 40 km South of Wawa. Rugged terrain, crazy contours, spruce/cedar forests and ultraclean trout lakes are what this gem of a park invokes for me.
We set aside 5 days for the trip. On Monday morning, we set up at about 8:00 am on the 9.5 h drive from Windsor to the park arriving there at about 6:30 pm. It rained hardcore pretty much the whole drive there and Joe and I were debating on simply finding a motel in Wawa that night to wait out the rain and enter the bush with rain gear on. As luck would have it, the rain stopped about 10 minutes before we arrived at our site and we decided to enter the bush knowing we had about 3 h light left to spare.
The first portage was more difficult than we anticipated. The map said it was 390 m, but when I did the distance using google earth after coming back, its closer to 500 m. Much of it was up-hill with a good amount of ankle breaker rocks situated on the trail. This of course was all after driving 9.5 h straight.
Slievert Lake, the first of the 4 lake chain we were doing turned out to be every bit as beautiful as we hoped. The campsite was located at the head of the portage trail at the other end of the lake. We paddled there without trouble, set up camp and did some night fishing. No luck on the fish, but the brookies were jumping and Joe and I played a few without hooking into them.
Next morning, we packed up and did the next two portages. The first brought us to a long, shallow, swampy lake called Dead Moose Lake. After canoeing it, we the portaged to Connell Lake where we set up camp to enjoy the day and night.
During the day at Connell, we walked the portage trail to our end lake, Belanger Lake, just to see what it was like. Its a brutal 500 m uphill lug throuw mud, rock and tripping roots. We both swam Connell and did a lot of fishing. I hooked into a nice trout with a spoon in the middle of the lake and brought it to the boat (Joe has it on film), but snapped the line before I could land it.
Day 2, morning found us portaging the Connell to Belanger lake portage. Phew, that was a lot of work!
Moose tracks
Belanger Lake, the day was sunny and hot. We camped on the island campsite. Went swimming in crystal clear, cool water and at evening tried our hand at fishing. We canoed along the top part of the lake when storm clouds rushed in forcing us to haul butt against driving winds to our campsite.
We had cracker-jack lightening and thunderstorms all that night. The next morning we woke up to constant rain. We were planning on portaging back to the first sight and spend the night, but owing to the heavy rains, the fact that we were all wet and our gear was pretty wet, we opted to complete the last portage home and drive out that night. All and all the trip was about 15 km round trip but with some pretty difficult portages that make up for the small distances traversed.
There were of course some bad parts of the trip. BUGS - black flies + mosquitoes + deer flies + stable flies meant you were bombarded at all times of the day. The stable flies were the worst of the lot because they seem to be immune to DEET and when they are in the mood they can land and bite faster than you can react. Firewood was hard to have. Driving rains the previous day of our arrival and on the last day of our trip meant wood pickings were slim. This coupled with softwood (which despite its namesake turned out to be a bitch to split (spruce and balsam fir)) made for hard earned fires that finished burning as fast as you could process the wood. Fishing was not as hot as we would have liked, but trout are finicky especially in lakes you haven't fished before and we didn't bring any live bait. On the plus side, we had wonderful scenery. The work of the portages tired the muscles but made you sleep like a log and the weather always seemed blessedly cool during those portages. We had one day of great sun that made for some awesome swimming. Plenty of bird song and driving our canoe through the fog, mist and calm waters during the last day left us in complete awe of the primordial landscape that surrounds Lake Superior.
I did edit a video for this trip, but given its length and Hi-Res, I will wait until overnight to upload it on the youtuber. Hope you enjoyed the thread! As always, it was fun to be able to do these things with Joe and take on challenges I wouldn't be able to do on my own or with my somewhat less adventurous spouse.
Ken
Edit - added a video. I will be uploading a HQ version later this week when I get access to better internet service...
[youtube]A3Z-Ta2ZHk0[/youtube]
Despite this, I've been guarding my schedule for this week from any conflicts since March and planning a trip with Joe to visit Lake Superior Provincial Park on the North Shore of Lake Superior. The park is about 150 km from Sault St. Marie and perhaps 40 km South of Wawa. Rugged terrain, crazy contours, spruce/cedar forests and ultraclean trout lakes are what this gem of a park invokes for me.
We set aside 5 days for the trip. On Monday morning, we set up at about 8:00 am on the 9.5 h drive from Windsor to the park arriving there at about 6:30 pm. It rained hardcore pretty much the whole drive there and Joe and I were debating on simply finding a motel in Wawa that night to wait out the rain and enter the bush with rain gear on. As luck would have it, the rain stopped about 10 minutes before we arrived at our site and we decided to enter the bush knowing we had about 3 h light left to spare.
The first portage was more difficult than we anticipated. The map said it was 390 m, but when I did the distance using google earth after coming back, its closer to 500 m. Much of it was up-hill with a good amount of ankle breaker rocks situated on the trail. This of course was all after driving 9.5 h straight.
Slievert Lake, the first of the 4 lake chain we were doing turned out to be every bit as beautiful as we hoped. The campsite was located at the head of the portage trail at the other end of the lake. We paddled there without trouble, set up camp and did some night fishing. No luck on the fish, but the brookies were jumping and Joe and I played a few without hooking into them.
Next morning, we packed up and did the next two portages. The first brought us to a long, shallow, swampy lake called Dead Moose Lake. After canoeing it, we the portaged to Connell Lake where we set up camp to enjoy the day and night.
During the day at Connell, we walked the portage trail to our end lake, Belanger Lake, just to see what it was like. Its a brutal 500 m uphill lug throuw mud, rock and tripping roots. We both swam Connell and did a lot of fishing. I hooked into a nice trout with a spoon in the middle of the lake and brought it to the boat (Joe has it on film), but snapped the line before I could land it.
Day 2, morning found us portaging the Connell to Belanger lake portage. Phew, that was a lot of work!
Moose tracks
Belanger Lake, the day was sunny and hot. We camped on the island campsite. Went swimming in crystal clear, cool water and at evening tried our hand at fishing. We canoed along the top part of the lake when storm clouds rushed in forcing us to haul butt against driving winds to our campsite.
We had cracker-jack lightening and thunderstorms all that night. The next morning we woke up to constant rain. We were planning on portaging back to the first sight and spend the night, but owing to the heavy rains, the fact that we were all wet and our gear was pretty wet, we opted to complete the last portage home and drive out that night. All and all the trip was about 15 km round trip but with some pretty difficult portages that make up for the small distances traversed.
There were of course some bad parts of the trip. BUGS - black flies + mosquitoes + deer flies + stable flies meant you were bombarded at all times of the day. The stable flies were the worst of the lot because they seem to be immune to DEET and when they are in the mood they can land and bite faster than you can react. Firewood was hard to have. Driving rains the previous day of our arrival and on the last day of our trip meant wood pickings were slim. This coupled with softwood (which despite its namesake turned out to be a bitch to split (spruce and balsam fir)) made for hard earned fires that finished burning as fast as you could process the wood. Fishing was not as hot as we would have liked, but trout are finicky especially in lakes you haven't fished before and we didn't bring any live bait. On the plus side, we had wonderful scenery. The work of the portages tired the muscles but made you sleep like a log and the weather always seemed blessedly cool during those portages. We had one day of great sun that made for some awesome swimming. Plenty of bird song and driving our canoe through the fog, mist and calm waters during the last day left us in complete awe of the primordial landscape that surrounds Lake Superior.
I did edit a video for this trip, but given its length and Hi-Res, I will wait until overnight to upload it on the youtuber. Hope you enjoyed the thread! As always, it was fun to be able to do these things with Joe and take on challenges I wouldn't be able to do on my own or with my somewhat less adventurous spouse.
Ken
Edit - added a video. I will be uploading a HQ version later this week when I get access to better internet service...
[youtube]A3Z-Ta2ZHk0[/youtube]
Last edited:
