Day 4
Awoke early again and this time because of how cold it was, I imagine that it was between 2-4 degrees Celsius, I couldn’t sleep anymore in this cold so I decided to get up; I put on some warm clothes and warmed up around the fire. At first thought I’d take some early morning pictures of the lake and the horizon; boy did I ever get lucky this time around, there was a loon swimming around the lake washing itself and basking in the suns warm rays. Initially I had thought that it didn’t notice me and just kept going about its business, but soon I realized that it was well aware of my presence as it kept looking over at me. However this didn’t seem to bother it as somehow it knew that I posed no threat, it kept doing what it was doing while slowly swimming towards me. I had managed to get some really nice shots of it while it was swimming by. It seemed like this early in the morning it actually enjoyed my company, and I its. It was great, I have never taken pictures so close up of a loon before, later I realized how great they turned out as you could make out the individual markings on its wings from them.
Some pictures of the loon
As the loon went by, I decided to check the time; boy was I surprised to learn that it was still 6am! But I had been up for already a good 40 minutes so I decided to just stay up and make some food and coffee. Getting the fire going was a easy as everything was dry by now, I had warmed up the soup we made the night before and also got a cup of coffee going. All in all it was a great time to spend by myself while the guys were still sleeping. I just sat around the fire warming up and writing journal entries for this trip report. At around 8am I noticed that the clouds were coming in hard and fast, and not the good kind, it had also started dropping in temperature and I felt like a storm was brewing. In a few minutes I had seen a few snowflakes drop as I was pretty sure that it wouldn’t snow. I was proven wrong 20 minutes later as a huge storm from the north had hit us in full force. The winds were picking up speed and snow started to fall with great ferocity. The snow was getting so heavy now that it was becoming white out, that day I realized the true power of northern weather; it went from sun early in the morning to a snow blizzard in a matter of hours, it made me respect the weather and what it could do. Naturally as it was coming down I took this time to take some amazing pictures of the downfall; it was like a photographers dream the winter weather without the winter. I was however having a hell of time trying to keep my camera and lens dry; I parked myself right under a tall tree so I could take some pictures without being hit too much by the snow.
Some pictures of the blizzard
A whole three hours passed as I was out there by myself keeping occupied before the guys finally woke up. At first it was one of my buddies, we had decided to make the last of the pancakes and right as we are about to eat them our other friend wakes up. His timing was impeccable always waking up a minute before the food was ready, skipping out on the whole cooking and fire making process. We definitely had a good laugh about that as it was really convenient for him and not so much for us. After me and my friend had put on our winter coats and tuques my friend who just woke up finally divulged to us that he had badly packed for this trip, only brining 2 shirts and no jacket or even a sweater. He only had his bright orange fishing vest with him, we had laughed for a good long while at him for being this ill prepared; we also took some pictures of him freezing his ass off. It had also turned out that he hasn’t been sleeping well at nights because of his sleeping bag was not well suited for this cold weather. It was funny because as we were preparing for this trip for months our buddy decided to leave it all until the last minute and naturally had forgotten a bunch of critical things such as clothes and utensils. I am pretty sure that this snowy weather had taught him a good lesson in the importance of packing early.
Adam "Northman" Lantz, freezing his ass off
After having a good laugh at the expense of our friend we had decided to go get some more wood gathered if we’re going to last it through this storm. We had headed to the same spot where we had raided the wood earlier in the trip to see if we could find some more downed trees for us to chop. Luckily this campsite was free of marshes all around and we had found a bunch of downed trees for us to bring back to camp.
Now this is where things got interesting, I had decided to bring back the canoe with the wood all by myself across the lake which was only about 300m from our site. The trip there was easy, as the canoe was nicely loaded at the front keeping me going straight. On the way back as I took all the wood out it had not occurred to me that the canoe would be way too light for me to travel alone in it and it would be uncontrollable if any wind picked up. This is exactly what had ended up happening, as I tried to steer the canoe the wind would push the other side in the opposite direction of my steering, after fighting with the wind for a good five minutes, as I was doing a major steer in the right direction a huge gust of wind comes in and capsizes the canoe with me in it. I take a dive head first into the water, at this point I had started to panic a bit freaking about over the fact that we could lose the canoe. The water oddly enough was not as cold as I thought it would be; I had only a few seconds to gather my marbles and turn over the canoe to let out the water in it. I had decided that I couldn’t get back into the canoe in this windy weather and had only one shot to swim with the canoe in one hand and paddle in the other fully clothed back to shore. Luckily I was only about 300m away from shore but the swim was very hard as I had no use of my arms only my legs and being fully clothed had definitely weighed me down a good bit. After struggling through the water for a good 10 minutes I had finally reached the shore. I could see the guys on the other side of the lake and I yelled over to them that my canoe capsized and that I was soaked. The great thing was that I the snow gave us some reprieve at this point, so it wasn’t as cold as it could have been. I took off all my wet clothes laying them out on the rocks to dry, leaving only my boxers; I put a bunch of wood back into the canoe to weigh it down at the front and got across the water to pickup my friends. They definitely had a good laugh at my expense, but at least I figure I got out of it with no problems and saved the canoe for us. The next couple of hours were spent drying out my clothes on the fire, while I put on my spare dry clothes during the wait. The night was capped off by a huge bonfire which was our last big hoorah before the end of the trip; after the bonfire we all set off to bed to our final night in the park.
Day 5 Leaving the Park
We had awoken all at the crack of dawn 7am, got together all our gear and setoff on our way out to Rain Lake. Once again as it was when we were getting into the campsite it was raining on our way out. We had all put on rain gear and got ready for our final push out of the park. Things went pretty easily until canoe back on Rain Lake, we didn’t realize how long it was the first time around, it took us about 2 hours to paddle just on rain lake. An amazing thing happened as we were paddling out though, my buddy yells HOLY CRAP! And we look up and there we see a cow moose with its young calf standing about 10m away from our canoe in the water. However as I am about to go for my camera the fact that my buddy yelled so loudly the cow moose had bolted into the forest with its calf following closely behind, alas a picture of a moose has eluded me once again.
We finally reached the access point 4 on Rain Lake after a long 5 hour journey, we were all soaked by this point even through our rain gear, and we threw our gear in the car and took off.
Conclusion
All in all it was a great trip, we were all glad to be out there after a long two year lull in our camping travels. The trip was ridden with inconsistent weather at times downright disastrous, but we were able to cope quite well with it, apart from only 1 person the rest of us were well prepared for the cold, rain and snow. We got home all pretty worn out from the 4 days and relaxed the next couple of days before we had to get back to work. We’re already planning another trip this fall so I am looking forward to get out there again hopefully this time with better weather!
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4
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