Tuesday, July 27, 2010 Day 3-4: The portage from Olifaunt into Sturgeon. 7/27-28

That was a beaut. The mud was the worst I have encountered in my two years of travel.

It was worse than it looked. I slipped and dropped the canoe, off my back this time. Good thing the aluminum is strong. A Kevlar would have split in two with that drop. One of the boys came along carrying my 50lb food bag, so we tossed it in and slid the canoe through the next 200 feet of mud until we got to a dry spot where I could hoist it back up. It was a messy one. We got to the end and the girls are all cleaned up from falling in the mud, so I sent them back for the life jackets and paddles. It didn’t seem too bad if you are not carrying anything. Well, a half hour later, I go back to look for them. I find them slopping through the mud, shoes getting sucked off, and the occasional face plant to add insult to injury. Where is the camera when you need it? Back in the dry bag, of course. Victory is in sight as we make it to the end and clean off the mud again and push on. We make the stop at Blueberry Island for a rest and blueberries, of course. The boys proceed to catch some pike and lose some pike and their chompers jigs. I head to the far side of the island and start catching pike and then land the first walleye. Nice, we will have to stop back here. After we are all refueled, we make our way down to the Maligne River. The current is stronger than I thought, but at least not rapids like I imagined. We didn’t fish much, just tried to get through so we could make the end destination. We were able to make it up the Maligne and Russel Rapids into Russel without having to get out. The girls dug in when we needed to and muscled through. We met another group with two teenage boys and a dad who couldn’t make it through without getting out, so I was really proud of my girls being able to get it done when needed. Chatterton Falls. I have heard so much about this from the boys, and so much from posts on here, that I wasn’t sure what to expect. We arrived about two and the nice campsite on the point to the right of the falls was open. I voted for this since it is next to the cliff for jumping off of and not on the hill in the woods that we have to carry our gear up to. The boys wanted to be right next to the falls up on the hill. It is a really nice site too, but I think it might have been a little too noisy and buggy. The point it is: tons of big blueberries all around, cliff jumping, or falling in my case. There are rocks below if you don’t “jump” out far enough, and swimming out into the whitewater and being swept out into the bay rounded out the day. Even with life jackets on, one of the boys disappeared under the rapid for a few seconds. I thought I was going to have to use my SPOT and call for help. His dad didn’t seem concerned though. (don’t worry Sheri, it wasn’t Noah). He popped up and was ready to try it again. The rest of us couldn’t swim that far into it, so we just got pushed out before danger set in. We had good pike and walleye action in the eddy with jig and twisters and had enough fish for dinner each night. We never did get to eat a pike though. Every time we were going to keep one, it either twisted out of our hands or we didn’t have a stringer handy. That’s ok, the walleye were good enough. There was a lot of traffic in the area. A large group of girls (16) part of some camp program, a father and three boys, and a couple skinny dipping around the corner, plus a few more pass through groups. We still had enough solitude and peace at night to be a million miles from anyone.