Day 5 - Rush Lake to Rice Lake (11 km)

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. 

Night 4 of this trip was not one of my better nights camping. I had failed to put a smackdown on all the mosquitos that had sneaked into my hammock when I crawled into it. They, somehow, evaded my keen detection skills by hiding in the dark recesses of my hammock bug net and had a free-for-all after I had fallen asleep. GRRRR! 

In addition, it rained pretty hard for most of the night, waking me up a number of times. When I finally awoke after daybreak, it was still raining hard. I did a weather check on my Zoleo and saw it would rain on and off until mid to late morning. I drifted in and out of a fitful sleep until 8ish or so. I did not feel rested or refreshed when I finally got up. 

Although the bug plague was not as severe as the previous evening, it was still pretty awful. It was not so pleasant breaking camp and having breakfast. On the bright side, the weather was supposed to drastically improve by late afternoon.  What was it about that campsite? It was my second time staying there in the past two years, and both times the weather was less than stellar. I snapped a photo of it from the water, nonetheless, as we finally departed its shores after 11 AM. Boy, we were getting late starts on this trip! 

Thankfully, the wind had died down from the previous evening and we made short work of the eastward crossing across the wide expanses of Rush Lake. Nobody else was on the water that we could see, but we did hear a generator humming from the southern shore about halfway across. Although we couldn't detect it from the water, there was a cabin up the hill behind the trees. 

We had paddled through a field of wild rice and entered Rice River about a half hour after leaving our campsite. Once again, we were digging deep with our paddles against the current. 

Despite the upstream battle, the higher water level was making it easier than the last time I had gone through there. The lower Rice River area is quite shallow and the greater water volume allowed us to get more push with our paddles. 

We were making good progress for 10 minutes or so until we were forced to stop for quite an unexpected reason. A large cow moose was standing in the middle of the river blocking our way.

We crept a little closer, but she had her head in the water eating something or doing whatever it is that moose do with their heads in the water. She did not seem to detect us at all. We were hesitant to get any closer. We felt that sneaking up on a moose with its head underwater would not be a wise move. 

Eventually, we thought it would be best to let her know we were there, so we lightly banged our paddles on the gunnels of the canoe to get her attention. She turned her head toward us and let out the most tremendous stream of pee that I had ever seen an animal unload. It was really something. I mean, litres came out! I hope it wasn't out of fright. It was not our intention to scare the poor creature.

She stood there for quite some time not sure what to do. We edged toward her slowly and she eventually meandered into the forest on the east bank. We listened to her crashing through the bush for a bit before proceeding. It was quite an encounter.

Within 15 minutes, we arrived at the first set of rapids after veering east at a sharp bend in the river. It was a shallow, rocky drop that allowed us to wade up on river-right. This was much easier than taking the 185-meter portage on the opposite side. 

Five minutes past the first set of rapids, we arrived at the next one, which was considerably rockier and steeper, especially at the top; we opted to take the 60-meter portage on river-right (our left).   

The portage was marked by a small sign (the handiwork of Brad from Explore the Backcountry, I presume!) and a rusty flashlight circa 1790. Ok, I apologize...that might be a slight exaggeration. My mother has told me a million times not to exaggerate. 

On my last time through the area, I named this portage "Rusty Bedsprings Portage" because, in the first ten meters of the portage, the intrepid canoeist will inexplicably discover an ancient bed frame discarded to the side of the trail. I say inexplicably because there are no other relics or evidence of a cabin anywhere in sight. It's like someone chucked it out of a plane and it landed there. Aliens, perhaps, after they had finished with a probing?  

Rusty furniture aside, there were no other impediments along the trail. It was an easy, if not bushy, carry. 

The put-in at the top of the rapids was quite close to the brink of the drop, but the push wasn't too bad and it was fairly easy to paddle out. An island sporting a couple of plump cedar trees divided the chute at the top. 

Fifteen minutes past rapid number two, we arrived at the third set.  The river was narrow there and the tree cover on the banks was dense and thick. The rapids were shallow and had several strainers across the river.  My map showed a 440-meter trail on river-right, but having never taken it, I have no idea of its condition. I had successfully waded up the river there two years prior, and I was willing to give it a try again. The higher water levels concerned me, though; it would be more difficult to get the boat under those strainers.  Here is a shot of the rapids from the bottom as we approached them. 

The above photo was snapped shortly after 1 PM. Unfortunately, something happened with my camera after that. I remember taking more photos throughout the day afterward but for some reason, they did not save on my device. The next photo I have from that day was timestamped at 8 PM! Weird. Another alien probe, perhaps? Did they use that little pen thing from Men in Black to erase my memory?! Oh well, I shall describe in words what happened between 1 and 8 PM. 

The upstream wading up that third set was certainly a challenge. The high water forced me to extract my saw and remove several impeding branches attached to sweepers and strainers. In one particular location, we were forced to cross the river at a deeper spot where the flow was quite strong and we nearly overturned the fully loaded canoe. That would have been trouble, but a quick move from Dad allowed us to keep the boat upright. In the end, we made it up the rapids in one piece. As I mentioned earlier, the forest was thick there and the portage would likely have been a nasty bushwhack, so I suppose we endured the lesser of the two evils.  

We were only in the boat for five minutes before we found ourselves wading up the fourth set, allowing us to forgo the 180-meter portage. The river, again, had a strong push there, and we were waist-deep in spots, but it didn't take too long. In the end, Dad said he quite enjoyed the challenge of wading upstream and negotiating the river past those two sets of rapids. I remember feeling the same way two years earlier after I first tried it. 

At the top of that fourth set of rapids were a couple of massive old-growth white pine trees. They were huge! I thought I took a photo of them but, alas...those darn aliens! 

We paddled for about twenty minutes in calm water before arriving at the last set of rapids just before entering Rice Lake. The steep drop there forced us to take the short 50-meter portage on river-right again. It was only our second portage of the day, so we felt we were ahead of the game. 

Dad made us a couple of lunch wraps while I tried my hand at fishing from shore below the rapids there. There were no pickerel to be had, but I did tap into a couple of mean-fighting pike on the smallish side.

Eventually, we double-tripped it up the portage, put in and paddled hard up through a formidable swift, and emerged into the shallow northern bay of Rice Lake. There was a campsite on a point next to the swift there and we got out to take a look. It was getting on in the day and we knew we had to camp at one of the sites at the northern end of the lake before moving on. 

It was a nice site in a scenic spot, but once on it, saw that it was well-used by fishermen. At the water's edge under a tree was an old fishing boat-cum-bathtub collecting rainwater.  There were a lot of other junky remains on the site, as well, so we decided we would continue paddling east and try our luck at a site closer to the Northpoint River. 

It was a good thing that we did because we found an incredible site at the north end of an island across the northern bay of Rice Lake. The wind had picked up which made the crossing to get there a bit of work, but it was well worth it in the end. The site was in a flat clearing in a lovely grove of trees with a wonderful rocky front porch that was excellent for swimming. It had great views east, west and north over the north end of that large, gorgeous lake.  We made camp and hung up a lot of items that were still damp from the earlier rains.  

We were surprised by a couple of motorized fishing boats cruising around us in the early evening. This was our first "human sighting" since the end of Day 2 when another fishing boat cruised past our lovely beach site that evening. Rice Lake is a popular fly-in fishing destination with some established camps on the lake. We also tried a bit of trolling in the early evening but didn't have a lot of luck. 

It didn't matter much to us in the end, because we were fortunate to have the skies open up in the early evening finally. We celebrated the moment by sitting on our rocky front porch and watched the sun the go down across that beautiful northern lake.