September 15
In preparation for this trip, I packed multiple items of clothing that are made of quick dry material, in anticipation of days like this. However, I’d anticipated a couple days/nights of rain, with some dry spells in between to recover. Instead, we have had rain every single night, and now over 48 hours in a row. Pretty soon our portages will become river canoeing.
Speaking of portages, that’s how our day started, after packing up our soggy tents (but mostly dry contents, thankfully) again. We watched a canoe successfully navigate the Chute running alongside the portage trail, but no team of canoeists from our group opted to run the gushing narrow outlet from Isaac Lake leading to a 90 degree turn into the river. Dad was up for it, but I’d pretty much reached my last set of dry clothing, and was not eager to get soaking wet on a 50 degree, rainy day.

We portaged a total of 2.8 muddy, wet, rocky, narrow kilometers, with a short paddle across the river in the middle. The portage involved multiple steep downhill sections that tended to awaken the free spirit of the canoe, leading it to buck and careen wildly as it picked up speed. We generally just run to keep up momentum as it moves downhill, but these sections tended to have sharp turns and steep banks, so I drove my toes into the end of my boots as I tried to slow the bucking beast in its descent of terror. Dad and I did suffer a rollover at kilometer 1.5 or so, dumping our canoe’s contents into the mossy ditch as the cart wheel slid off the trail.
Most mishaps avoided, we layered back up (after getting all sweaty heaving canoes over dry land) put in to McLeary Lake for a relatively short paddle to join the Caribou River. We were excited to see moose on the far edge of the lake – disagreements arose as to whether there were two or three – until we paddled nearer and discovered they were stumps. But they were very shapely stumps, so I still have pictures of them.

We met the Caribou with a rush, as the glacial silt-heavy water of the River churned rapidly in from the right, meeting the clear water of the lake outlet and swirling in muddy eddies until the water under our canoe was milky and opaque. We enjoyed a zigzag route down the quick river, a weather eye scanning the murky water for any hazards ahead. All five boats made it through the Caribou without episode, and we stopped for lunch on a sandbar to celebrate (and because we had a lull in the rain!).
The rain soon started up again, so we pushed on toward the west, a head wind (surprised?) building swells against our progress. I had to time my paddle strokes with the waves so that I could reach the water, and the canoe bobbed up and down aggressively, sending a few waves over the bow and into the boat. An hour later, we pulled out of the rain and into our site, a group camp with tent pads that doubled as small lakes. The wind grew in intensity and the sky darkened, and we all hurried to set up our tarp village before a storm blew in. The rain let up just long enough for us to get things mostly covered!
By 3 pm, camp was set up. By 4 pm, Dad and I were changed into dry clothes, fed, and cleaned up. We wiled away the evening hours sitting around the overturned-canoe table with our hand warmers and friends, elated to see sunshine on the distant western horizon around 5.

We were also able to confirm, for the first time in days, that the mountains surrounding these lakes do have summits, not just cloudy heads. We are all very excited at the potential of sunshine tomorrow!!