Lakes / Rivers Traveled:
Misehkow River
Travel Time: 10:14
Distance: 4.75 miles / 7.6 km
I lost my small yellow note book that I carry with me with the detailed information for this day. I write down information as I go through the day. My notebook is water proof, but we have been getting wet everyday so I came up with the not so great idea of putting the notebook in a plastic bag. I thought it would save time trying to dry it out.
My small notebook is usually kept in my pants pocket. What happened with this notebook was the plastic bag caused the notebook to float out of my pocket when I was swimming above Iron Falls. This actually happens tomorrow, but I thought I would let you know now. In fact, even after I discovered my notebook missing I was able to jot some information down about this day because it was pretty fresh in my mind, but....
Now back to the trip report...
Yesterday, I was lucky we stopped early to write in my journal. I filled in most of the information for those three days from my yellow notebook, but left some stuff out to be filled in later. Now that won’t happened since all that info is now floating in the Misehkow River some where.
The information for this day is a little sketchy.
I don’t know what time we got up, but we had another of Dave’s fabulous breakfasts over an open fire. Once camp was broken down we carried all our gear from the campsite to the put-in I found yesterday. We walked the whaleback for 65 meters to the inside corner of the bend to the start of another older portage.This inside corner where the portage begins is on river right. We followed the faint old 60 meter portage through the wet moss to the put-in. (UTM # 7)
So far everything was going smooth, but about one kilometer away we ran into more rapids we couldn’t run.
The water levels were extremely high and the water was racing. Under normal conditions I’m sure if we couldn’t run the rapids then we could probably safely line the canoes through. I say that because we found some portages that haven’t been used in years. When we found the old portages we actual had to get out of the canoe further upstream.
Well, this portage was example of what I was talking about. After we got out of the canoe on river right ( UTM # 8) we walked through the bush looking for any old blazes marking a portage trail. We found some but we needed to go through some different areas because of all the down trees.
Dave and I spent about three to four hours, maybe a little more, cutting our way through this area. It ended up being a 340 meter portage. We also put new blazes up for those who follow our trail in the future. You should do it soon because the boreal forest is constantly changing. Dave and I spent a considerable amount of time cutting the portage and I must say it was a damn good job! Put-in (UTM #9).
We needed to cut another 195 meter portage on river right not far from the 340 meter one. We had the portage marked as 60 meters. Again, this took at least a couple hours.
Take-out (UTM # 10) ; (Put-in UTM # 11)
Most of the time when we cut our way across an area we each took a pack and a saw.That way we only had two more carries after cutting our way to the end.
I remember Dave asking me if I wanted some bug repellant. He saw my arms bleeding from all the fly bites. I accepted and later on I found my own stuff.
Once we were back on the water we paddled while continuing to look for an area to camp. Once we got to the widening on the Misehkow we were aware of a moose camp some where in this area. We didn’t have any location of it so while we were paddling along river left we kept looking about for any sign of the camp on the far shore. It wouldn’t be easy to spot anything on the far shore as we were looking from a distance.
We were now approaching the end of this widening area of the river. I was beginning to think we would be making our own camp when we saw on river right with what appeared some sort of rugged frame, possibly the old moose camp. We pulled over and got out of the canoe. The area was mostly underwater. I walked further back away from shore on a trail and found a small dry area, but it wasn’t suitable for one tent let alone two. It was surrounded by water.
Dave looked across the river and saw what appeared to be a boat pulled up on shore. We paddled to it and found two boats cached. (UTM # 15) There was a well worm 50 meter trail up an incline to an actual moose camp. (UTM # 14) Well, it was 7:44 pm. It’s been a long day, but we now have a good area to camp.
We looked the area over before putting up our tents. I walked the trail back down to the water and cut a tree that was lying across the trail before getting water to filter.
Dave used two large pieces of cut logs to set up his grill to cook dinner. We were cooking and eating in the dark. There were even wooden benches to sit on around the fire. What luxury!!
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