Day 9 - Funger Lake to Caribou River (11 km)

All maps shown on this page are provided courtesy of Toporama which contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. I have made additional markings to show route information

We awoke to cloudy and windy weather. Our aim for the day was to make it to into the north end of Caribou Lake, but the wind forecast was looking dicey. My satellite device was predicting some windy nastiness for the next couple of days. So far, on all of our large waterbody crossings, we had been fairly lucky with the wind. Our only windbound experience thus far was on Whitewater for a few hours on Day 5. 

We only had oatmeal left for breakfast at this point of the trip, so it didn't take long to consume it with a coffee and get going. We were paddling up the Caribou River by 9:30 and reached our first portage by 10 AM. It was a very short jaunt of 49m to the left of some rapids that were dumping into Funger Lake. Unfortunately, my only photo of the pretty rapids was quite blurry. 

The portage went through a rudimentary campsite that we would have probably had to stay at if we hadn't found the island site on Funger Lake. We were very glad we didn't have to stay there because the take-out area next to the site was absolutley littered with fish carcasses. Unsurprisingly, we spotted very fresh bear scat and pawprints on the sandy take-out spot next to the carnage. 

It never ceases to amaze me how thoughtless some people are. Whoever cleaned the 6 or 7 pickerel and left the remains to rot at the take-out right next to a campsite simply demonstrated callous disregard for anyone else who might want or need to use the area after them. Actions have consequences and the entitled attitude of doing whatever one wants without any consideration for those who follow is what causes problems. In this case, it potentially could have led to a dangerous animal encounter. In my opinion, there is no room for people like that in the backcountry; they simply have no respect. Would it have been too much to take an extra couple of minutes to dispose of the fish remains properly?

We put-in at a short pond below another set of rapids. This pond looked to be an excellent fishing spot and we spent quite some time enjoying the fishing there. 

We took the next portage, a 130m carry, this time on the right of the rapids to yet another small pond. We tried to fish this pond, as well, but found it too shallow. We did take advantage of that, however, and were able to line up the next set of rapids, skipping the 60m portage.  

The river widened somewhat after that and we could really feel the wind funnelling in from Caribou Lake. We arrived at the next obstacle, a Class III rapid that would have been quite a ride coming in from the opposite direction. We spent quite some time fishing there and had a lot of fun. In the end, we kept four pickerel that I filleted and kept in a ziplock for another lovely fish meal that evening. We did not leave the remains to rot on the portage.

We made some peanut butter and honey wraps for lunch and were just about to complete the 57m portage on the left when our old friends, John and Ken, paddled up behind us. We chatted for last time and gave them some suggestions on where to tap into some pickerel at the spots that had been lucky for us. 

It was a short paddle up to the last of our obstacles on the Caribou River, a 143m portage to the right that would take us up and over a rocky Class II rapid. We had our share of fishing by this time, so we admired the beautiful scenery and moved on. 

For the next 90 minutes or so, we enjoyed the scenery moving up the Caribou. The river began to widen and was dotted with gorgeous islands and inlets. 

We came to a large bay with an island in its center. It was nearly 4 PM at this point, and on cue for our daily rain visit, the skies in the west began to look threatening. It was weird because we were still facing a very stiff headwind from the southeast, yet the skies above were blowing in some nastiness from the northwest. The wind on the surface and the winds up in the atmosphere were blowing in entirely opposite directions. It took us a minute or two to figure it out, but when we did, we knew we would have to make a beeline for the next available site. Our maps displayed two sites across from each other at the mouth of the river near Caribou Lake, so we paddled hard for them. 

We certainly didn't outrun the rain, because it began to come in substantially before we got to the sites, but we did manage to outrun the thunder. The site on the west side of the river was occupied, but we were happy to find the one on the east bank vacant. We climbed up its steep, rocky front porch and were happy to find a lovely site in a grove of spruce and jackpines. We brought the canoe all the way up, flipped it over, and leaned it against a tree bough. This gave us a bit of cover from the pelting rain and lightning, while we dug into our dry bags for our tarp. We erected the tarp amongst the trees and were able to arrange it over the firepit. 

The thunder and rain passed fairly quickly, however, the wind from the southwest seemed to only increase as the night wore on.  We fried up our pickerel fillets in a garlic and chives batter, and along with a side of rehydrated hash browns, we had the best fish fry of the trip. As the sun went down, casting a beautiful pink glow over the cloudy skies, we enjoyed what would be our last campfire of the trip. 

The wind just didn't want to subside, though, so we retired to the comfort of our warm sleeping bags in our tents just after nightfall.