Again, I wanted to get out on the water as early as possible. I needed to paddle the northern bay of Sturgeon Lake and wanted to get through there before the wind would likely get stronger in the afternoon. After breakfast and a coffee to wake up, I broke camp and was on the water at 7:45 AM. 

As I paddled south between the island and the western shore of Dore Lake, I turned to take a shot of my first campsite of the trip. 

I found the Deux Rivieres portage to Twin Lakes at the end of an inlet at the southwestern tip of the lake. The take-out landing spot was on a mound of granite next to the small chute where Deux Riviere poured out of Dore Lake.

This portage was 750 meters in length but felt longer. With the previous day's rain, the portage was quite mucky and buggy.  My food barrel was heavily loaded with two-weeks worth of food and the muddy conditions made my feet feel heavy. On the bright side, it was mostly on a downhill trajectory. 

Halfway across the walk, I stumbled upon a map case that had obviously fallen off someone's canoe pack. 

On the return trip for the canoe, I picked it up and looked inside. In addition to some maps, I found a trip journal. I took a quick peek inside to try to figure out what direction the owners might be heading. That way, I would know which end of the portage to leave it at in case someone returned to look for it. I discovered it belonged to a young lady tripping with her father and they looked to be leaving the park to the north based on what I had read. I carried it back to my canoe and left it there on the rocks at the take-out. I put a rock on it so it wouldn't blow away. Perhaps the owners were camped on Dore Lake and would return to the portage to look for it. Returning to my vehicle 8 days later, the map case was gone. I hope it was the rightful owner who picked it up.  

I returned to the opposite side of the portage with my canoe and food barrel and shoved off onto Twin Lakes.  

Twin Lakes are two small lakes separated by a narrows. The southern of the two is quite scenic with rocky cliffs on its eastern shore and a large mound of an island in the centre of the bay. There was a nice campsite on the western side of that island that was occupied. 

From Twin Lakes to Sturgeon Lake, paddlers must navigate Deux Riviere, a notorious slog of a river in low water conditions. At the high water that I was enjoying, I didn't touch bottom once. It was clear sailing all the way through. The water was so high that even the beaver dams were submerged; I just glided over them. 

I did have one unexpected obstacle on Deux Riviere. A family of Trumpeter Swans was guarding a bend in the river and wouldn't let me pass. Trumpy, the large overweight male, was on guard duty and swimming "point". 

I waited a bit, but they simply wouldn't move. I started to paddle closer. They moved slightly downstream a few meters and then Trumpy turned my way and fluttered swiftly toward me. Three feet in front of my bow, he slapped both wings on the water so hard that he created a minor tsunami effect, nearly swamping my boat. While doing so, he honked in a thunderous, gravelly tone that echoed off the forested walls around me, "You shall not pass!"

It all happened so fast, I nearly capsized in surprise. Grabbing the gunwales for stability, I quickly gathered my wits and recovered. Little did Trumpy know but he was dealing with a 4th-Degree Avian Ninja Blackbelt Canoe Jedi. I pointed my right fist in Trumpy's direction with my thumb and pinky extended. 

"I am not the enemy you are looking for," I softly mouthed in a declarative yet whimsical tone. 

"You are not the enemy I'm looking for," Trumpy feebly honked back. 

"You will move your family aside and let me pass," I uttered. 

"I will move my family aside and let you pass," he replied in a diminutive whine.

Then, as quickly as he turned toward me, Trumpy swam back to his family and guided them to the side of the river, creating a wide berth for my canoe. As I paddled past, his wife buried her head in her feathers in shame. Simple-minded, silly Trumpy, who was always making problems and looking for enemies that don't really exist, was no match for a 4th-Degree Avian Ninja Blackbelt Canoe Jedi. 

True story. 

Deux Riviere emerged into the swampy northern bay of Sturgeon Lake where the Pickerel River also dumped into Sturgeon Lake. I paddled southwest through a bed of wild rice next to an island and found myself entering a narrows with the wider expanses of Sturgeon Lake in the distance.  

As I emerged from the narrows into the larger part of the lake I could see whitecaps toward the eastern side of the main bay. The wind was steaming in from the northwest. I was happy that it was coming in behind me over my right shoulder since I was heading south. It would certainly give me some push; however, I still didn't want to be dipping and bobbing amongst whitecaps out on the open water, so I turned right between the headland and an island and paddled much closer to the western shore that offered a little more protection. 

Even amongst the chop on the lake on a gloomy day, I was happy to be paddling such a gorgeous lake adorned with tall pines perched atop rocky outcrops. It was a stunningly beautiful landscape. 

It didn't take long until I was at the halfway point to Sturgeon Narrows, Blueberry Island, a popular camping spot that was occupied even at midday. 

I soon reached the end of the bay and saw Sturgeon Narrows flowing south between rocky points on either side of the outlet. 

From there, it was a short paddle around a headland to Russell Rapids. There was a bare island campsite on a mound of rock in the middle of the swift-moving outflow from Russell Lake. The current was strong on either side of the island in the high water, making it impossible for a solo canoeist to paddle up. I got out on the island to investigate. 

I had been on the water for three and half hours by that point and needed a break, so I fished from shore at various points of the island but didn't have any luck. I then sat down and made myself some lunch while I contemplated my next move. 

This was one of the tricky spots that the Park Rangers had warned me about. I could easily line up the rapids past the island I was on; it was further up the rapids toward Russell Lake that had me concerned. Farther up the outlet, there was a portage on river-left past the much stronger rapids up there. What concerned me was that the Rangers had said the portage landing would be quite difficult to reach at current water levels. After lining past the island, it would be a hard paddle against the flow to get anywhere near the portage, particularly so for a solo paddler. From where I was on the island, I couldn't see where the portage landing was, but I could see the swirls and the moving water against me in crystal clear reality.  

The alternative was to paddle further south down Sturgeon Narrows to the next bay of Sturgeon Lake and take a 460-meter portage into Russell Lake from there. 

In the end, I decided on the 460-meter portage. At the time, I was hearing the warnings of the Rangers in my head. Perhaps, other canoeists had run into trouble at that spot. Why would they have warned me otherwise? Secondly, it looked like some darn hard work getting up against that flow by myself. Sure, I was so close to Russell Lake but I would probably be lining up the shore at many spots, and the shoreline did not look like it was lending itself kindly to doing that. After all, it was only a 460-meter portage. Even though it was out of the way and a less direct way of reaching Russell Lake, it couldn't be that bad, right? Right...? If only I had known! 

After lunch, I hopped back in my boat and fished from the canoe below the rapids. Nothing, again. It was supposed to be a good fishing spot at that location from what I had read online, they just weren't biting that day. That must have been it; it couldn't be the skill of the fisherman, right? Well, I had much better luck in the area when I returned a week later.

I trolled from the canoe as I paddled through Sturgeon Narrows, again not having much luck. It was a pleasant paddle in much less choppy water in the narrows. 

By 1 PM, I had reached the end of the narrows and saw the next bay of Sturgeon Lake widely unfurling ahead of me. There was a formidable rocky ridge that precipitously dropped into the depths of the lake on the eastern shore just before the lake began to widen. 

This ridge tapered to a point at the mouth of the bay where I made a left and headed for the eastern end of the bay to look for the portage. 

Looking west across the bay, my eyes were immediately drawn to a large white mound protruding from the water. 

Later at loftier heights from the portage, I tried to zoom in with my camera's limited capabilities to get a better shot of it. 

It looked like a white dome in the middle of the lake. I guessed it was some sort of glacial erratic.  The first time I heard the term glacial erratic, I imagined a Yeti that was zig-zagging on a snowmobile hopped up on too much Adderall and caffeine. Imagine my surprise when I learnt it is a large rock deposited by a retreating glacier many moons ago... geologist, I am not. In stark contrast to its surroundings, it looked out of place, even 1.5 kilometres away. Different though it looked, it created a gneiss view. (Sorry, I hit rock bottom with that pun.)

It took me a bit, but I finally found the portage into Russell Lake. It was a little further south than marked on my map. Remember? No portage signs in Quetico. 

The 460-meter portage into Russell Lake was wet and steep. I hadn't researched the portage because my original plan was to go up Russell Rapids. What I discovered was that it traversed a ridge between the two lakes. Some online reports have nicknamed this portage The Staircase Portage (not to be confused with the other Staircase Portage in Boundary Waters on the American side) because, on the western side that I started at, the rocks form a natural staircase to walk up. After the first 20 meters of relatively flat walking, the next 100 meters was a vertical assault. According to an online topographic map check, it rose 105 feet in those 100 meters or so. Yikes. The wet conditions from the previous day's rain made the staircase slippery, as well. I trod very carefully. Likewise, on the eastern side of the ridge, it was a slow descent down the steep slope to Russell Lake. I survived the experience but was thinking I might have tried lining up Russell Rapids. I'm still undecided on which route would have been more difficult or dangerous in the end. I probably made the safer choice. 

The eastern bay of Russell Lake was a calm paddle, but that immediately changed when I emerged out into the main bay of the lake. After crossing the bay and getting closer to the channel south of the two large islands in the center of the lake, the waves got weird. With bays and channels extending in all four directions, the wind was swirling, creating a washing machine effect in the middle of the lake. My 15' Swift Prospecter does not have a plethora of freeboard and some of that chop was finding its way over my gunwales and into the boat. I had to tack out of the way toward the southeast and then back to the northeast to avoid the worst of it, but for a moment or two, it was a little dicey. The picture below of the channel was when I was through the worst of it. It doesn't show the whitecaps I experienced in the centre of the lake. It wasn't the time for a photo while getting through that. 

Once in the safety of the channel, the waves were greatly diminished and I could relax a little more. The trees on the island to the north of me looked diseased and possibly dying. The evergreen leaves were brown.  

By this time, it was after 3:00 PM and I had been on the water for nearly 8 hours. I was getting tired and looking to make camp. At the risk of making yet another Quetico to Algonquin comparison, Russell Lake reminded me of McIntosh Lake in that it is a pretty lake with many campsites, located just so at the end of a day's journey. This made it busy. Thus far, I had only encountered a handful of canoeists on the trip, but looking at the shoreline of the islands west of Chatterton Falls, nearly every site appeared occupied. I spotted one site on the headland south of Chatterton Falls which was vacant. I would aim for that one, but first I wanted to paddle over and get a closer peek at the falls. 

I paddled across the bay to the east for a better look and began to snap a few photos. Chatterton Falls was a beautiful multi-ledged drop. The photo below is just the bottom of it. More drops are further upriver.

The wind was strong again in that inlet near the falls out of the lee of the island and I also noticed another canoe party coming in from the north. I would have liked to get closer to the falls and investigate them a little more, but I was tired and wanted to head back and snag that site on the headland just in case the incoming party was also looking to camp. In my fatigued state, the thought of doing another portage into Chatterton Lake to look for a campsite was not appealing, to say the least. 

So, I said goodbye to Chatterton Falls and paddled back around the headland. The site was atop a small cliff on the point and I had to paddle completely around the headland to the south to gain access to it. The landing area was on a large sloping rock and, from there, it was a bit of a steep hike up to the site. 

Despite being tired and not incredibly ecstatic about a steep hike up and down for water access, the views from the site more than made up for that. The dark clouds that prevailed for the majority of the day were finally blowing away and the views over Russell Lake were incredible. I found a couple of trees close to the water where I hung my hammock and sat down to enjoy the evening from my lofty perch with a westward view over the lake. 

Perhaps the best aspect of the site was that the wind blowing from the west was keeping the mosquitos at bay. My bug shelter could remain in its case. 

I got a fire going and cooked up another steak and rehydrated some hashbrowns with onions. Steak and potatoes. Hearty and yummy. 

While looking for firewood, I found an eagle feather placed on a log just back from the firepit. 

Eagle feathers are sacred to Indigenous people. With respect, I admired it, took a photo, and left it where it was. That was how I found it and that was how I would leave it. Obviously, the people who had placed it there (probably that very day because it hadn't blown off the log yet) were also aware of the feather's significance to the culture and had placed it on the log without removing it from the park. In fact, in the U.S.A., it is illegal for some people to be in possession of one. Much like seeing a bald eagle in the wild, I took it as a good omen for my trip.

By the time the sun set, there wasn't a single cloud in the sky and a nice breeze was still blowing. I scrambled down from the cliff to the rocks overlooking the lake and watched the sun disappear over the western horizon. It was beautiful.