another average portage with nothin

Day 0


I ran out of work on time and grabbed my daughter from daycare. My wife left work on time as well. After a brief goodbye and some last minute additions to my gear I was off to the airport in Detroit.



I had my usual luck on the flight?it was packed and I was sitting next to another large frame person like myself. I never get to sit next to a little petite thing that only takes up half a seat Matthias Ginter Dortmund Jersey , I always end up with someone like myself who is to tall and bulky to be comfortable in those sardine boxes they call airplanes. I landed at 9:30 PM local time in Minneapolis and waited for my luggage. Much to my surprise both pieces of luggage made it here. Unfortunately, because of the slow loading time and extra wait before the flight took off, the rest of my crew had been waiting for me for an extra hour.



The rest of the crew picked me up at the jump-n-run loading area and we headed for Ely. I think it was about 4 hours Mario Gotze Dortmund Jersey , or a little more, with the stops we made and the deer we had to dodge. You have to watch them, they are thick in there. We finally arrived at Ely at 2:30 AM and decided to nap for a couple of hours before we met with the outfitters.



Day 1



We met the guys from Wilderness Outfitters at the local breakfast joint (I cannot remember the name but they had excellent food) at 6 am. After breakfast we went back to the outfitter's and packed our gear. We had two canoes Marco Reus Dortmund Jersey , six packs, and two rod tubes. Everything we needed was in those packs including our food, fishing gear Marcel Schmelzer Dortmund Jersey , tents, clothes, cooking utensils Marc Bartra Dortmund Jersey , etc.



We headed off to the Chainsaw Sisters around 7:30 AM and climbed into the canoes around 8 am. The water was high enough that we could canoe down Pickett creek without much difficulty. I was in the canoe with our guide Jeff. During that first few minutes he went over basic canoe strokes and their effects and we tried them out in that slow moving twisty creek.
Mudro Lake was our first open water to cross and it didn't take real long. I didn't realize, however, that the nastiest portage of the trip was at the other end'the ?Stairway To Heaven.? I had been told by others in the group that this was nasty but I had underestimated it. The portage path was slimy with mud. The first half of the portage was mostly a gravel path up hill and the second half was an incredibly nasty downhill that was made up of water smoothed rocks like steps Mahmoud Dahoud Dortmund Jersey , if the steps had been done by a mad man. I huffed and puffed my way up one side and started down the other but I kept slipping with the weight of the double pack. One of the others came back and helped by taking the top pack off my back and that allowed me to finish the portage without falling and braining myself on a rock. After what seemed like forever, but really was just a few minutes, I made it to the end of the portage and arrived at Sandpit Lake.



The paddle across Sandpit was uneventful. While the lake is not really that big it is quite pretty and there are supposed to be decent Walleye and Smallmouth in the lake Lukasz Piszczek Dortmund Jersey , but that can be said for a lot of lakes in the BWCA. In short order we arrived at the portage between Sandpit and Tin Can Mike. This portage is longer than the first portage but it is a little easier because the slope of the uphills and downhills is not as great. You still need to watch your footing but you don't feel like your going to die if you fall over.



After we finished the Sandpit portage we found ourselves paddling across Tin Can Mike lake. On some maps this lake is known as Murphy lake, but no one seems to know why. Tin Can Mike looks a lot like Sandpit, only larger. Again it supposedly has good populations of Walleye and Smallmouth Julian Weigl Dortmund Jersey , but we weren't stopping there. The portage at Tin Can Mike lake takes you to Horse Lake. I don't remember much about the portage trail between Tin Can Mike and Horse Lake so it couldn't have been real tough.



Now that we are in Horse Lake our destination is the river. Luckily for us there is not much wind that day, because our guide said that this lake can get quite nasty to paddle across when the wind picks up. We paddled halfway up the lake and turned east into the Horse River. Shortly after that we came to our first river portage. At this point the guide had us get out of the canoes and he took them through the very short rapids one at a time and we climbed in at the other side. There were a couple of short rapids to negotiate before the next river portage and those were uneventful because we took our time and picked a good line through each. The next river portage was quite a bit longer than the first river portage but still not more than a couple hundred yards. Back into the river we went and paddled a while longer before coming to the final river portage before the falls. This is another average portage with nothing special to describe other than wonderful scenery like always. We now are on the last leg of the river before Lower Basswood Falls.



There are two different portages that I know if at Lower Basswood falls, one on the American side and one on the Canadian side. The Canadian portage is a little better in the long run because it positions you downstream from the falls outflow and make the paddling easier to start. After passing Lower Basswood falls we are now in Crooked Lake. The portaging is over for us because our destination is Skull and Crossbones.