Maps provided courtesy of Toporama which contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. I have marked my route in blue and portages in red. 

Happy Canada Day! Yes, it was July 1st and what better way to celebrate Canada than continuing on a Northern Ontario canoe trip?!

We awoke to cloudless sunny skies again. Yippee skippy! We would have to go a little longer on the day to get to a viable campsite, but that didn't motivate us to get out early. We didn't leave our lovely beach site until 11 AM. We were only on the river for the day, so there were no worries about getting out early to beat the winds on large lakes or crossings. It was a nice relaxing morning. 

Here is my customary shot of the site as we bid it adieu from the boat. 

We rounded the bend, and immediately paddled under the Dore Road. 

There was a spot to launch boats on river-right. This location could also be an alternative place to put in and begin the trip from there. 

We paddled past the bridge and for 15-minutes or so, both sides of the river appeared to have road access to the river. There was a large cleared-out camping spot on the north side of the river where we saw some structures and what appeared to be a well-used fisherman's campsite. 

About thirty minutes after taking that picture, I commented that we might not have much luck in spotting any moose due to so many nearby roads, probably leading to a good amount of hunting. No sooner had the words escaped my lips when we rounded a bend and I looked up to see a rather large bull moose standing in the water looking at us from about 30 feet away. Obviously, my hunting theory was shot down. (See what I did there?) The massive creature was so still, it just blended into the scenery and neither of us immediately noticed it!

It just stood there watching us, as we did it. 

Well, that delighted us to no end. It was actually a little unnerving. I wouldn't have wanted it any closer. It was big! 

We paddled around a bend, turned, and watched the moose traverse the bend in the river. It watched us as we gently floated downstream. 

Then, it turned back, entered the water where we originally saw it, and swam across the river. Even though it was out of view, it created quite a din. There was so much splashing of water and swishing sounds that I thought it might actually be doing some sort of four-legged cervid break-dancing routine. Phil Wizard would have been impressed. Oh, the things moose do when they are out of sight! If a moose break dances in a river, does anyone hear it? Too philosophical for a canoe-tripping blog?

The next 30 minutes or so wasn't as exciting. The scenery was a mixture of forest and swampy wetlands as the Wakami River meandered. The most exciting things en route were a couple of old hunting blinds which looked like they might be from the 1700s. (Well, maybe not that old, but they were old.)

Within a half hour, we entered an area that had burned the previous year. 2023 was an unprecedented year for the number of hectares of forest being burned across Canada. The part of the Wakami River that we were paddling, on the lower edges of the boreal forest, was also susceptible. For approximately 8 km at that point, the northern bank of the Wakami and some on the south looked like the images below. 

Paddling through the aftermath of a recent burn is a sobering experience, indeed. Picturing a large swath of forest totally ablaze is a frightening image. 

We soon came upon a narrowing in the river where an old bridge used to span the water over a rapid. Somehow, that particular bend in the river seemed to escape the fire. The footing of the old bridge still remains there in the middle of the Class 1 drop. A large boulder at the top of the rapid gave us a good place to scout the rapid and see our line. It was a straightforward run from right to center. 

I turned to take a shot of the rapids from below after we easily ran through them. 

The following 40-minutes or so was a fairly boring paddle continuing through the burn area. 

Eventually, the river made an S-turn through a narrow, canyon-like area. The rapid there was more formidible than the previous one, but it was still a fairly straightforward run down the left side only with slightly bigger standing waves. Fun! The picture below doesn't do it justice.  This rapid may be more technical in low water conditions. We had high water and still bounced off a rock or two. 

Following that rapid, we soon arrived at the confluence with the Woman River and we said our good-byes to the Wakami. 

My information showed that there was a campsite on the north bank of the river just after the confluence. What we found was a dilapidated cabin of some sort that had clearly seen better days. We would have liked to investigate it, but the river bank there had long overgrown and it looked like a bit of a bushwhack up a steep bank to access the area. We took a photo from the boat and paddled on. 

It was nearly 2 PM by this point and we had not stopped for lunch. In addition, our water bottles were empty and we needed to filter more drinking water. We had been looking for a good spot to stop but the river banks were bushy. We had seen very little rock on the river since the previous day. 

There was supposed to be another campsite at the next bend in the river. When we arrived there, we did see a rocky rise on the bend but, again, the access was not good. The steep rocky bank and downed trees at the logical spot to get to the site made it not worth the effort. We paddled on feeling hungry and thirsty. 

Eventually, at a bend, we saw a little mound on river-right at about 3 PM. We got out and hauled our canoe up on it. We yanked out the food barrel and got into some cheese and pepperoni sticks in wraps despite withstanding a coordinated attack perpetrated by mosquitoes and stable flies.  These little b@st@rds look like a common house fly, only they bite. And they love ankles! Apparently, they know the skin is thin in this location of the body -- all the easier for them to get to the delicious red nectar underneath that is close to the surface. Mosquitoes do the same to a large degree. I have learned long ago to double up on socks around camp during prime bug season because DEET does not seem to work against them. In short, they really, really suck.  (pun always intended)

We had been close to our next portage but had decided to stop anyway. We had no idea what the portage landing would be like and if it would be suitable to have lunch there, so we got out on that mound.  We felt so much better after replenishing some calories and water despite the attack of the flies. 

Ten minutes after departing our lunch mound, the river turned to the north and we arrived at our first portage of the day. It was a short 35-meter carry to the right of a small waterfall where the Woman River dropped about 10 feet over a ledge.  There was a broken ancient portage sign at the take-out. I quickly snapped a photo of it for posterity -- a little too quickly as you can see. 

The Woman River would drop through a series of three falls over the following three kilometers. The portage around the first one was clear. It made us wonder if it was still regularly used, and if so, how and why.  The Backroads Map Book does not show any roads into this section of the river. Perhaps, there are ATV trails accessing the river nearby that we did not see.  

Here is a view of the falls from the put-in.

We fished in the wide pool below the falls for a bit. We were aiming to stay at a site at the bottom of the last set of falls and were hoping to have a pickerel dinner there. We did not have a lot of luck below that first set of falls. 

We didn't see a campsite below the falls but felt it would be a good place for one. It was a pretty spot. There was a rocky point on the right that could possibly be used as a site, but the access to it didn't look great. 

It was a very short paddle to the next portage. We could see a clearing to the left of the river. The drop in the river was apparent from above it and it appeared that this next drop in the river would be larger than the previous one. 

This portage was a little longer. My research showed that it was 64 meters in length. It quickly disspelled any notions that this route was still commonly used because there was quite a bit of deadfall on it. We walked through it with our saw first and spent a bit of extra time clearing it. 

We put in off a steep rock to the left of the falls. 

This falls was larger and more interesting than the last.  It had a mound of rock acting as an island dead in the center of the drop. 

We spent more time fishing below the falls, probably more time than we should have. We were bound and determined to catch some dinner. Oddly, we did not catch anything in the pools and eddies close to the falls on either side, spots where pickerel usually frequent. As we started moving downriver somewhat in the pool below the falls, Dad managed to haul in a nice one. It was a three-pound pickerel that was blue! This was a first for either of us to catch a blue one. Apparently, some of the pickerel (walleye) in northern Ontario turn blue due to a prehistoric bacterium in the slime that causes them to have that colour. Don't quote me on this, however. I learned that from a rudimentary Google search and cannot comment on the validity of that statement. Blue or not, that fellow would be dinner. 

We trolled the river on the way to the final portage of the day. Ironically, we had more luck  catching fish paddling downstream than below the falls, however most of what we caught was too small to eat. Eventually, I reeled in a pickerel that was a little over a pound, and we stopped fishing, having enough to make a decent meal between the two fish. 

The portage past the third falls was on the right and was 220 meters in length. It was flat and clear through a deciduous forest with a mossy base. We were pleasantly surprised by this, anticipating a lot of deadfall like the previous portage. There was an aluminum fishing boat cached at the take-out; we cleaned our fish there amongst an incredible cloud of mosquitos.  There was a steep drop to the put in at a pool below the falls, but another path veered off to the right and up a cliff overlooking the river. We carried our bags up there and found our campsite for the night. We left the canoe and fishing gear down at the put-in. 

The site was a nice flat spot with a great view over the river and falls, but it was buggy! Even though it was July, there were still a lot of blackflies hanging about. It didn't look like it had been used much in recent years, but it surely was an established campsite.  There was even an old grill at the firepit. 

It was after 6 PM when we arrived at the site and we took about an hour to set up camp with the bug shelter in place. Once our camp was up, we  needed to wash off the grime of the day with a cool dip in the pool down at the put-in. By the time we cooked our pickerel in some batter with a sidekick and got a fire going, it was nearly 9 PM. We tried to sit beside the fire for a bit but the witching hour had arrived; the bugs got to be a little much so we retired to the shelter for a nightcap and called it a night early. It had been a long but fantastic day and we were tired. It was pleasant with the sound of the falls lulling us to sleep.