Final Ex: Day 1 October 25 th

The plan was to leave Pembroke at 5:30 am, our caravan didn’t leave the town until approx. 6:30 am

Stopped in Mattawa & Sturgeon Falls for gas, and made 2 other quick stops along the way

Once off the Killarney highway, we made it to our access point at Bell Lake at approx. 1:30pm and the whole group unloaded the boats and gear out of all the vehicles

Dustin, Myself, and Julia then left to the park office at George Lake to get permits, there we left my truck and Dustin’s truck at George Lake (our take out point). While all this was happening the remainder of the group was making lunch and loading boats

Boats touched the water at 3 pm and we were on our way to our first campsite on Bell/Three Mile Lake

With only one minor confusion in navigation, we arrived at our desired campsite at 5 pm By 6 pm camp was set and dinner (steaks & potatoes!) was being cooked by Julia &

Dustin Most of the paddle was in fair sunny skies and high winds Shane paddled Winnie today The winds really started to get worse after camp was set and continued to remain very

windy for the rest of the night By 11 pm everybody was in bed

Final Ex: Day 2 October 26 th

The plan today was to be on the water by 10 am. There were a few people who slept in pretty late, it was 9:15 when the stragglers crawled out of their tents for breakfast

Breakfast today was good, we had breakfast sandwiches cooked by Winnie & Kat On 3 Mile Lake today, Dustin & I spotted many juvenile loons, 2 pairs on the water While waiting for the rest of the pairs to load up their boats, Dustin, Melody and I went to

search for the remains of a trapper’s cabin that was near our site, we didn’t find any structural remains but did find a really old turn of the century bear trap

So without further delay we finally put boats in the water, just before 12 noon After paddling from camp for a while, we reached our first portage, on the map it said

40m but with water levels this was a lot shorter, marine railway remains and a small waterfall were some cool features near this portage

Dustin and I tried running in our canoes, the moving water right at the waterfalls… We hardly moved anywhere

The portage only took 20 minutes to complete Now we are on Balsam Lake and here we start making some decent time paddling, right

towards disaster

We were coming up to our second portage, a fairly steep 650m portage into David Lake At 1:35 pm gear and boats were starting to get moved and we started portaging, this

portage was a particularly grueling portage, it was rocky, steep and muddy. But this is what I was expecting and this was nothing I haven’t done before. I could tell already after my first trip of portaging some people were very much disliking portaging. After 2 more trips and 2 hours all the boats and gear were at the other end of the portage finally. This was another huge delay, a 650m portage with everybody pulling their own weight plus some of the group weight doesn’t take 2 hours, I’ve gone on a back country trip with 20 people and a 650m portage didn’t take us 2 hours. I was pretty frustrated and if this pace keeps up this trip plan is going to be altered something fierce.

The portaging finished around 3:15 pm, the lunch started soon after and boats were back in the water at 4:15 pm to make the final leg of the day to camp

Paddling David Lake in this direction is beautiful, Silver Peak sits majestically just behind the lake

On the far side of David Lake we had a few choices of campsites to choose from, the best one being a hiking site, H34. It offered direct access to the Lacloche Sillouhette trail which we are going to be hiking tomorrow to Silver Peak.

We had the boats out of the water around 5:30 pm and camp set up thereafter Chey and I cooked burgers tonight, it sucked. Shane had the idea to put a flat stone on the

fire to cook the burgers; I tried to find a few flat stones to make an ‘oven’ which did not work out at all. Eventually the flat stone we put on the fire to cook the burgers began to crack and explode, Thank You Shane for bringing heavy duty leather gloves. In the end Chey and I were cooking one burger at a time on 2 stoves, Don’t ask me how many burgers I cooked tonight.

Final Ex: Day 3 October 27 th

This morning pancakes were made by Dustin & Julia Once breakfast was eaten we broke everybody into 2 groups; most of us went on the

Silver Peak hike while Shane and Julia tended to the campsite On the trip plan we were to leave camp by 10 am to begin the hike. We left the campsite

at 10:40 (not bad) with a GPS and trip plan on hand Dustin began navigating and as soon as I saw the trail we were treated to some awesome

views of the Lacloche Mountains I navigated for a bit after Dustin, and today Winnie was keen on the navigation and I

switched off to her, after Winnie I tried to get the others to navigate but they weren’t as keen so I had to delegate the task to navigate throughout the rest of the hike

We reached the summit at 1 pm where we had wraps for lunch, the views I’ve all seen before were just as beautiful as the first time seeing them!

From the top we saw rain, and apparently it was a lot of rain, coming off Georgian Bay At 1:40 just as the rain hit us we started descending from Silver Peak back to camp The hike back was fairly uneventful, we reached camp at 3:30 pm. Shane and Julia had

some tarps set up for us hikers to put some of our wet gear Shane and Melody were in charge of dinner, making some pretty good meatloaf and we

were all finished eating by approx. 6:30 pm We packed up all our food in a canoe and covered it in a tarp so it wouldn’t get soaked

and anchored the canoe about 60-70m away from camp We made a bear hang for all our snacks Once that was finished we debriefed around 7:30 and checked the weather, looks like

more rain and high winds tomorrow

Final Ex: Day 4 October 28 th

So the rain lasted all day today, everything was pretty well soaked from this morning till now, the end of the day

We were all packed and ready to go at 10:15 am which I was pretty happy with! Considering we thought the departure time on the trip plan was 10.. it was actually a 9 am departure today but it was all good, we left 15 minutes after the time we thought we were planned to leave

Ok here goes the portages, the first of 4 were upon us after paddling for 45 minutes The first portage took us an hour, the weather conditions, portage conditions, and general

group attitude were definitely against us today A short paddle to our longest portage (700m) and after completing it lunch was made. I

remember after this portage I was really frustrated, this wasn’t the pace I wanted to do! Dustin, Shane and I discussed what our possibilities were and the conclusion here was to cut the crack hike out of our trip plan. Needless to say I was very disappointed, not only because the trip wasn’t going to plan, but the whole group is going to miss out on an awesome experience because of the pace we are on

From here we completed the 3rd and 4th portages, passing through Log Boom Lake and camping on site 63 on Johnnie Lake at approx. 4:45pm, about 6km away from the site we were supposed to be on

Camp was set up, we made a really awesome tarp set up at camp, we had to because the fire pit was facing the wind

Dinner was a group effort to make spaghetti and meat sauce, it was definitely the second best meal on trip so far, other than the steak

So the debrief tonight was pretty brutal for me, I was REALLY frustrated. But I held my composure through it and was able to fill the group in what the next couple day were

going to be, tomorrow is going to be all paddling to Terry Lake and then the next is conquering this huge portage into Kakakise lake minus the layover day for the crack hike

We finished up bear hangs around 9:30 pm, it was too windy to anchor a canoe tonight and there was a substancial group presence to get the bear hangs finished up

Final Ex: Day 5 October 29 th

Today was a legitimate sleep in day, we got to dry out a lot of our clothes on the clothes hangs we set up yesterday

We finished up breakfast at 10 am this morning, tore down camp and left around 12:15 pm

We started paddling at a good pace and made it to the dam at Johnnie Lake by approx. 2 pm where we landed our boats and had a quick 15 minute break since we’ve been fighting a strong headwind for the past couple hours

Today we paddled through lunch aiming to make it to Terry Lake early Once past the dam we were into Carlyle Lake which we were on for another 1.5 hours

before we reached our site on Terry Lake This site had a small waterfall a short walk from camp We quickly ate lunch, Dustin got a fire going as soon as we got on the site Dinner tonight was jerked chicken stir fry with rice. It took a while to rehydrate the

chicken but in the end it was so good! There was a really short debrief and then it was bed time (approx. 10 pm) I paddled Winnie for the past 2 days, for a total of 17 km of solo paddling

Final Ex: Day 6 October 30 th

It was freezing this morning! We had a pretty hard time getting the food canoe in, the lake was really deep and the rock

we used was too big and heavy. Dustin pulled it up single handedly after several attempts, what a beast

At 10:40 am Dustin contacted Ian with the info of our alterations we’ve made to our trip We made it on the water around 12:15 and took us only 5 minutes to paddle to the 860m

portage At some point we all took a 20 minute break to catch a breath Our portaging has gotten better this time we were back on the water at 2:30 pm Along the way some of us ran into a few hikers who were spending a couple days in the

park We were in Kakakise Lake and made it to camp at 3:30 pm

Dustins and I paddled ahead after unloading boats to scout Kakakise Creek to make sure it was paddlable, the alternative being a 1400m portage would most likely would of killed the trip

Lunch was ready when Dustin and I returned, we set up our tents then continued on to relaxing at camp

Myself and Chey made Mac & Cheese for dinner or as everyone else called it “Mak & Chey”

Bed time was 9:30 pm

Final Ex: Day 7 October 31 st

Wow looks like winter showed up today, I’ve never been on a trip where one day was fall weather then the next morning I was snowed into a tent, but tis the season

This morning we deliberated on what our next course of action was going to be, our options were to paddle to the next site and continue with the trip, or we could paddle to our take out

This kept us a camp a little longer than anticipated but together we made the decision to take out since the snow squalls weren’t letting up

We had camp taken down and boats in the water by 1 pm, the group paddled to the creek in good time where we came to our first of 5 beaver dams

Paddling through the creek was almost surreal, like paddling in a scene from the Lord of The Rings movie

Kakakise Creek flowed into Freeland Lake which was only about a 30 minute paddle to the end of the lake, where our final portage lay into George Lake

Along the way we were starting to encounter high winds again Our takeout time was 4:15 pm today and once I got there myself, Julia and Winnie left to

go get Julia’s car at Bell Lake. The high winds knocked over many trees and on the road to Bell I moved about 12 trees off the road, just to get by

Dustin called Ian to inform him of our plans and location By 6 pm we had the cars loaded and were ready to leave Killarney We made it to Pembroke at 2 am, messages Ian at 2:05 am, Ian responded at 9:54 am