Day 4 - Kawnipi Lake to McEwen Lake (20 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. 

I made up for the previous night's poor sleep with a fantastic sleep. I woke up feeling refreshed. I was out of my hammock by 5:30 AM

I did something that I rarely do that morning. I broke camp and got on the water before making coffee and breakfast. I just had a couple of snacks to get me going. The reason for this was that I wanted to get Kawnipi Lake behind me before the afternoon winds came up. I had to paddle the entire length of Kawnipi and I would be crossing some pretty large bays. 

I was on the water at 6:45 and snapped a shot of my awesome island home from the south as I departed. 

It was a wonderful paddle down the western shore of the lake in the calm waters of the morning. There was some wonderful rocky shoreline and listening to the water gently lapping against the rocks as I silently inched southward was hypnotic. 

There were supposed to be some pictographs on some large cliffs on the south side of a headland, but I couldn't really find them. It was hard to tell. I thought I might have found some orangey-red markings, but they were not clear and might have just be some natural colouring. Either way, it was fine just paddling beneath the rocks in the bright morning sunshine. Across the bay to the south, there were supposed to be more pictographs, but I couldn't find those either. 

Kawnipi Lake is huge and it took about three and a half hours to reach Kennebas Falls at its south end. It is a gorgeous lake with bays heading in all directions. One could spend a week alone just paddling this lake and investigating all its nooks and crannies. I wish I would have taken more photos en route but I was deep in paddle mode and operating on autopilot. Toward the south end, the forest on the eastern shore was in recovery from a burn that might have occurred between ten and twenty years ago. I did think to snap a shot of it at the point where the lake came to a rocky narrow just before Atkins Bay. 

When it was nearly 10:30 AM, I could see Kennebas Falls ahead. Having only had a snack four hours prior, I was famished and needed an energy boost, so I found a rocky outcrop on the western shore. There, I took out my stove and made some coffee and breakfast wraps. It was a nice break for an hour or so, spent listening to the nearby falls. By 11:30 AM, I was heading for the portage to take me past Kennebas Falls. 

It was a very scenic spot. Though the falls weren't incredibly high, there was a high volume of water pouring into Kawnipi Lake. It looked like it might have been an excellent spot to cast a line, but I had just eaten and I had some formidable portaging ahead, so I thought I'd better keep moving.  

I took out on a rocky outcrop, but it was steep getting my gear up and onto a spot where it wouldn't fall back into the lake. There was nowhere to pull my canoe ashore; I had to tie it to a tree so that it wouldn't float away. 

This was the first of the portages up the Falls Chain and was marked as 150 meters; however,  it seemed like it was only about 60 meters. Originally, I wanted to check out the Falls Chain and spend the day admiring the many falls and then heading west into McEwen Lake from Wet Lake, but in addition to Russell Rapids, this was the other spot on my route that the park wardens had warned me about. They recommended that since I was travelling alone, it would be safer to take the long 1270-meter portage into McEwen because the first two portages past Kennebas and Canyon Falls would have very tricky landing areas in the high water push above the falls. Boy, they weren't kidding. Seeing how incredibly close the put-in was to the top of the falls made me rethink my journey up the Falls Chain.

Unfortunately, the western shore was a steep bank of rock, so I couldn't really line up the shore further away from the drop. My saving grace was the plants growing out of the rocky bank. I got in the canoe and used the plant life and cracks in the rock to pull my way forward against the push, my paddle ready should a plant's root be unable to withstand my tugs. It was a little dicey, but it worked and after ten feet or so, I was in a bit of an eddy where I could paddle safely. 

By the time I got to the point on Kenny Lake where I could go east and up Canyon Falls, or west for the long portage directly into McEwen, I had all but made up my mind. Long portage it would be. I'd just have to save the rest of the Falls Chain for another trip. Now, I had a nice excuse to head back to the area!

There was a gorgeous campsite on Kenny Lake, but it was only noon -- too early to call it a day. I took a photo of the bottom of Canyon Falls from my location on the lake and then turned my boat west toward the portage. 

The portage landing was to the left of a weedy shallow creek. I got out and unloaded the boat. It started off flat and was quite wet through a jungle of a forest. There were a number of ferns in the first couple of hundred meters. As I marched past with my gear, I noticed another landing spot that I could have used because the water was high. It would have shaved off the first 100 meters or so. Sigh. 

After about 250 meters, the trail started heading up. It was rocky and I had to watch my footing carefully. 

Then, it kept going up. And then it went up a little more. At about the halfway point I put down my canoe pack and gear and went back for my canoe and barrel. Here is a shot of it in the dense forest at that point after I returned. 

It certainly was sweat-inducing work. The July air in that jungle of a forest was very humid. I stopped for a quick snack to replenish some calories. 

Other than the elevation change, so far the portage had not been too bad. The trail was clear and besides the aforementioned rocky bits, the footing had been fine. The second half of the portage would prove to be more challenging. 

Shortly following my rest spot, there was a large downed tree with no real way past it other than over. It required hoisting, dropping, hugging and throwing a leg over. Immediately following that began the stairway to heaven. The trail went straight up the side of a ridge face. I triple-carried that section. 

The top of the ridge was somewhat nerve-wracking, as well. The following photo doesn't do it justice, but the trail follows the rock up to the top of a ridge overlooking a cliff with a 50 to 100' drop into the valley below. One slip and it would be lights out. The photo is taken from where the trail is. On the bright side, I was done with going up! 

It was really quite an experience on this portage. I felt like I was living life on the edge. It's why I love canoe tripping; I'm always falling for a new adventure. For me, if I didn't embark on these kinds of activities, I would feel like my life has plateaued. I hope one day to have the pinnacle of a wilderness trip but dare not jump to any conclusions. One may argue with this philosophy, but for me, it is a sure-footed way of approaching life. You just need to have the right amount of balance on the precipice to keep yourself rooted in life. 

I was trying to end that paragraph with a cliffhanger. 

Anyway, the trail continued on the ridge for a few hundred more meters before engaging in a steep descent to McEwen Lake. When I arrived at the lake with my second load, I fell into the cooling waters of McEwen, boots, hat, clothes, and all. I let out a victory holler as I did so.  Ahh...relief. 

I paddled southwest along the northern bay of McEwen with a stiff headwind against me. It was after 2:30 PM. There were no campsites at all along this shoreline and by the time I reached the headland in the middle of the lake, my water bottle was empty. My map showed a campsite just around the headland, back toward Wet Lake, so I rounded the corner looking for it. 

I found the site, but it hadn't been used for a long time; a large tree was downed across the site. It looked like a giant praying mantis ready to pounce. 

Nonetheless, feeling majorly dehydrated, I got out and filtered more water next to the praying mantis. I added electrolyte powder to my Nalgene bottle. I had learned the hard way earlier in the summer what dehydration and a lack of electrolytes can do. 

As I sat drinking my refreshing and tasty drink mixture, and munching on a granola bar, I gratefully looked out over McEwen Lake. There I was, once again, on a gorgeous and large Canadian Shield Lake without another soul in sight. It was wonderful. 

Maybe it's because I lived in large cities in Asia like Daegu, Tokyo, and Hong Kong for nearly 20 years, but I feel that having such incredible beauty to oneself at a moment in time is such a gift. Our country is so vast and relatively remote. We truly need to protect these areas and make sure they remain as such. As a nation, we cannot continue taking these areas for granted.

Somehow, McEwen Lake was even more beautiful when I arrived at its island-dotted southern reaches.