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I like checklists.
On my wall, I’ve had a list of canoe trips to take this summer. Hopefully not a ‘bucket’ list, exactly, but as I’ve gotten older and dissatisfied with some of the priority calls I've made, maybe a similar idea. That list had 5 trips for this seasons: The St. Regis Canoe Area, The Allagash Wilderness Waterway, The Moose River Bow Trip, Lake Umbagog (my young kid’s first trip), and an Unspecified Adirondack exploration trip. Because of work, family and all the other things that are important, (like the length of the portage!) I’ve decided the Moose River Bow isn’t happening this year, leaving just one more trip.
About two weeks ago, I decided this last Unspecified Adirondacks trip was probably Low’s Lake, and started trying to figure out if it would be crowded this time of year or not. Which brings us here.
I wasn’t able to leave the Boston area until later in the day, but I was able to sneak out of work on a Thursday. The trip up to Low’s Lake is not noticeably shorter than to the St. Regis area, but it is noticeably less rugged. Instead of Lake Placid and snow-capped mountains, you’re driving through pretty but fairly normal-seeming small towns.
So I was not prepared when the numbered state highway with a speed limit of 50mph was suddenly a dirt road.
It was easily after 3PM when I finally got on the water. The parking lot was pretty darn full, especially for a weekday afternoon. A few day paddlers were taking out, and a couple groups were putting in. I was able to find a spot in the second lot (and was the only sedan-sized car in the lot, amusingly) and quickly get my gear out and canoe loaded.
At the launch, I met a group of 4 on their first canoe-camping trip. “I love canoe camping, because you can still bring 1000 pounds of crap with you into the wilderness, without carrying it,” I volunteered, unasked. Social skills like that is why I like solo trips. It turns out they were science postdocs, though, so they were probably used to it.
It was unquestionable a crowded, busy launch area, and this made me nervous. One of the major reasons I was here was to find some silence, so I could work on a writing project I’ve been avoiding, and if I’m going to be spending time racing to campsites, that’s not going to be fun. The last trip to Maine I did was all campsite-racing and I don't want to do that this time.
Regardless, I was there to paddle and I got to paddling.
I did notice, however, that one of my dry bags was a little bit lighter than expected as I was loading it.
And maybe a quarter mile down the Bog River I figured out why. I’d left my cold weather gear (jacket, long underwear, etc), back in the car. Luckily, plenty close to turn around and get it.
After the false start, with maybe 3 hours of sunlight left, it was back on the water for real. I’m goal oriented, so let’s play:
I set out on the Bog River and immediately was impressed. In the fading light, the first mile or two of the Bog River is beautiful. Rocks rise on either side, evidence of past water levels etched into the granite. The sun frames the river perfectly.
The Bog River, maybe unsurprisingly to people with experience in river names, is quite boggy.
It wasn’t long until I took a turn too tight and found myself in the mud. But, having not-long-ago dragged a ton of sandbars on the Allagash, it wasn’t hard to drag a mud bar or two. I can see why this seems like a very popular day paddling spot. Most (all?) of the camp sites on the river were empty, but with several hours left of light I wasn’t interested in staying so close to the car.
It didn’t take very long to get to the portage, where I ran into the friendly quad group again. The portage was easy and pretty, which is how I like my portages.
We chatted a little bit, and a couple of them actually helped me carry some of my 1000 pounds of gear as we double-carried. I don’t encounter that many straight-up helpful and friendly people day to day. I’m still not really sure what to make of it.
On the other side of the dam is a bit more Bog River flow before Low’s Lake proper. The sun was getting pretty low to the horizon, so I was looking to stop at maybe site 12 before the entrance to the lake. The quad was going to 10.
As the sun slowly set, the loons started calling. Right in front of me, two loons decided to head down the flow, in the same direction I was headed. I turned to give them some space but pulled out my camera to get a picture. They didn’t seem to care I was there at all.
And another one:
After taking my pictures, I turned and paddled, getting increasingly eager to set up camp before it got dark. The floating bog was pretty wild and I’d never seen anything like it. It’s, well, what it sounds like. Flowers and bog grass and moss that’s just… solid and floating. I didn’t see the portage for it that’s on some maps. I'm not sure it's actually there anymore. And anyways, there’s a tiny channel to the left.
Not winning any awards for pictures directly into the sun. Oh well.
The sun continued to get close to the horizon and I had to stop to dig out sunglasses just to see.
Alas, campsites 10 and 11 were already taken when I got there. I continued to 12.
As I'd expected, 12 was free. But the group of four new canoe-campers were still right behind me, and I could see on the map that it was a couple miles until the next site. Was I going to, right before sundown, take site 12 from the group of nice, helpful people who had helped carry my cooler over the dam?
Hell no I wasn’t.
So, I continued. I could see the next few sites were in a cluster, and figured some of them would be free. Maybe I’d try to take 13, on the banks of the lake proper. But, canoes were at all four in the cluster. As I was checking each site, the sun set all the way.
I tried 18. I’ve read 18 is nice, sandy, elevated. Taken.
By this point, I wasn’t that pleased. While the moon was rising, I don’t love paddling in the remote wilderness in the dark, especially solo. Like many humans, I can’t actually see in the dark and that makes things complicated.
I turned south over the open water and started looking for 40. The water was like glass and, despite not being thrilled about the increasing dark, I can't argue that it was pretty.
It was now dark enough that I couldn’t really see details on the shoreline, so in large part I’m looking at my map and the little compass I have clipped to the side of the map case to find the right direction. I have a headlamp and a real GPS in a bag I can reach; I have done a real open water crossing with GPS before, so I can find my way if I need to… I’m starting to think of digging them out.
But fairly quickly, there’s 40. No canoe by the water. No tent setup. It’s free!
I pull in and definitely need the headlamp to setup camp, but it’s quite nice. It’s on the lake proper, it has a nice view of the shoreline, it has a very nice tent spot. I make a fire for light and cooking, which was a treat for me: doing solo trips I almost never go through the effort to gather wood and keep a fire going.
I threw a steak on it. I’m tired and end up eating is very rare (but still yummy).
I could see a fire at 18 but otherwise nobody. It was dead quiet, without even air traffic at night. If I was referring back to my objectives at the top here, this is solitude.
No rain, so I didn’t put up a tarp or my tent’s rain fly. The night was cold (30s?) but I’d brought my cold weather bag so it was plenty warm for me. There are worse places to spend a night.
The morning brought a ton of fog (like darkness, I can’t see though fog), so I didn’t hurry. I recently bought myself a titanium stick-stove as an alternative to my jetboil, so I decided to try it out for the morning coffee. It worked great.
Sitting, drinking my coffee, warm by the stick stove, I even consider staying at this site.
But I really want a site that’s on the main body of the lake, further down. I want to feel the wind, and get expansive views. And sitting is just not how I’m wired. So I pack up and go. It occurs to me that a ton of my stuff is orange. This isn't really relevent to the narrative here but here's picture of stuff that's orange.
This is an interesting part of the lake. There’s islands, mapped and unmapped tiny ones, open water sections, sections with giant downed trees, and more floating bog. I take my time and poke around, trying to explore and not rush (as best I’m able).
I explore Boone’s Landing; it’s nice enough and I understand I can camp there without a permit in September but it’s too early in the day to stop. I also explore 39 and its just beautiful, but I’m looking for a site that’s less boggy. I poke around Moose landing for a bit and make my way back to 35 and even though it’s early, I take it.
I would say that 35 is a hammock site, clearly, with almost no flat spots. But the view and location is just exactly what I want. I dropped off some of my gear and had a snack, and take out my notebook. One of my goals for this trip is “write 10,000 words.” I have a job, in tech, that I really, really like, work hard at, and spend innumerable hours on. But what I’d really like, maybe 10 years from now once I retire and don’t need things like money or health insurance, is to be a writer. To do that, I need to actually write.
But I don’t. I tell myself it’s too early in the day and I’m there to paddle. So, even as the wind picks up a bit (there’s a Nor’Easter back east), I do an open water crossing and check out Grass Pond.
Everyone online likes the Grass Pond campsites but I’m not sure I really get it. The view is nice. There’s grass in the pond (hence, Grass Pond?), and it’s a bit more sheltered than the main lake, but I prefer the expensive fetch back the other way. I take a picture of Grass Mountain (or a mountain that I can see from Grass Pond, at least) and explore for a bit. There’s an inlet with an old bridge and some hiking paths but I don’t really find anything of that much interest here.
I head back and cross the open water again. This time there’s whitecaps, and I don’t have a chance to stop paddling. The Northwind Solo performs super well in the wind but the camera stays in the box.
When I get back, I hear loons and try to take pictures of them instead of doing any writing. I sneak up on this one by my campsite and get a great picture. Trained ornithologists might suggest this isn’t actually a loon but with the glare it was hard to tell at the time.
Then, I make dinner instead of doing any writing. Zero words will get written today.
But what a nice day of paddling.
The moon rises.
The next day I decide to explore down Moose Bay into Bod Lake (which I’ve also seen named Bog Pond). I leave most of my gear and head south. There’s a wetland “stream” that connects the two, but it’s unnamed on any of my maps. I’ll call it Moose Bay Stream. Moose Bay Stream winds past two more numbered campsites and as I pass them it’s super clear they’re not often utilized.
Past them, there’s a very boggy area and a culvert that leads out into the “stream” proper. I understand people who paddle the Adirondacks like paddle-able culverts, and this one is nice.
The stream has four beaver dams, where the beaver has arranged the wetland into two tiers, so no matter which branch you take you need to drag two. I don’t really like dragging beaver dams: the water is always just deep enough to go over my boot’s top. But two isn’t a big number.
It’s tight for a long boat and there are plenty of wrong turns. On my map, there’s a channel to “stream-left” but no there isn’t. It’s not there. The DEC map shows this whole wetland as just open water. Take my word for it, it’s not.
It’s quiet back here. I get the sense this is a road less traveled. There's maybe not as much wildlife as I might have expected, and the tight wetland honestly reminds me a lot of the suburban wetlands I’ve paddled back in the Massachusetts suburbs, which is damning with faint praise.
But here there’s zero people, zero houses, zero cars, not even much air traffic. I see one footprint in the mud, that isn’t mine, but that’s it. It takes maybe an hour, maybe two, to paddle though the whole thing and I turn a corner into Bog Lake.
I can just tell I’m the only person on this whole pond. There’s this tickling in the back of my neck that tells me that I’m definitely not being watched. Solitude.
I find an unmapped put-in with a nice little dock and the old unnumbered campsite that’s on this pond.
I explore a little on foot and find this odd clearing which looks like it used to be a major structure of some kind. Still not sure what this was.
I eat lunch and then it’s time to head back. It’s an easy enough paddle. As I’m headed back out onto Low’s Lake, the wind starts to really howl.
It’s really hard to capture waves and wind in photographic form and the weather on my InReach says this was still just around 10MPH winds. It was more than that; not in a "the fish was 2, 3, 4 feet long!" kind of way, but for real.
It starts to really rip over the water. I don’t have anything in my boat that’s not waterproof, though, and I've already been swimming (on purpose) and know the water is warm. And I’m very near shore. So rather than intimidating these whitecaps are fun. No picture but I stand up in my boat (a dicey proposition in the Solo most of the time) and full on surf back to campsite 35, nearly laughing.
The wind is ripping even at the site once I pull in. It's not that easy to take pictures of the wind, but here's a shot:
Getting my stick stove lit in the wind takes like four tries and the freeze-dried chilli I make is gross. But I’m rewarded with a very nice, orange, sunset. I like orange.
Once the sun is down, I can’t write. A notebook doesn’t have a backlight or a keyboard, sooo, can’t. Zero words written.
It’s windy all night. Very windy. I’m taking the fetch of the whole lake, plus I know the leftover winds from the Nor’Easter are getting to us, and the path back up the lake and bog river are, well, to the north east, and I have to head back that way.
In the early morning, I use my InReach to pull a new forecast and it looks like the wind is only going to get harder.
I break camp in the dark. I load the canoe. At very first light, I’m back on the water, hoping to beat the worst of the wind. I think about how this is a nice bookend to arriving late and getting to my first camp in the dark. I still can't really see that much in the dark, especially around the floating bog and the shoreline, so I'm not sure how wise this was. B`ut I see some loons in Moose Bay. which is very sheltered from the winds, and I think I’ll beat the gusts.
I don’t really beat the wind at all. It’s directly in my face. For hours.
I’m in a well-trimmed solo canoe with all my gear, so it’s not like keeping the canoe under control, or headed where I want to go is difficult. But if I stop paddling, the 10 MPH+ wind easily pushes me backwards. I’m not exactly in the best shape of my life, so continuously paddling as hard as I can for extended periods of time isn’t that easy. If I want to take a break, I have to duck behind an island or into a bay and there just arn’t that many of those when my route is primarily through open water. This was a hard paddle. I try to do one hard thing each trip and this was surely it.
And it’s hard in a good way. It’s pretty. It’s not too cold. It’s not too hot. I have plenty of water. The waves are on the larger size but not anywhere near going over my gunnels. It’s an excellent way to spend a morning.
This was the longest paddle of my trip, and maybe the hardest paddle I've done this season. I'd like to have more pictures of dramatically pressing through the waves in open water on the center of the lake, but I was just too busy to take pictures.
I make it off the lake into the river-like sections around 10 or 11. I expect the wind to be better here, but it’s still right in my face. There are less waves, though.
I triple-carry the dam, and take the time to explore the area a bit.
The Bog River is also pretty windy, and it’s quite hard to paddle against it when your paddle is tangled in the grass. But it’s still downright beautiful. I’m ready to stop for the day when I make it back to the parking lot. It’s much emptier than when I arrived.
This was an amazing place to paddle camp. In the end, I think it was smaller than I expected, and not quite as wild. But it was quiet, pleasant, pretty, and fun. It might end my camping season (or at least the season without a drysuit) and it’s a great way to wrap it up. I think the Bog River section might sort-of get the short end of the stick when people talk about it: it’s super nice, too.
On my wall, I’ve had a list of canoe trips to take this summer. Hopefully not a ‘bucket’ list, exactly, but as I’ve gotten older and dissatisfied with some of the priority calls I've made, maybe a similar idea. That list had 5 trips for this seasons: The St. Regis Canoe Area, The Allagash Wilderness Waterway, The Moose River Bow Trip, Lake Umbagog (my young kid’s first trip), and an Unspecified Adirondack exploration trip. Because of work, family and all the other things that are important, (like the length of the portage!) I’ve decided the Moose River Bow isn’t happening this year, leaving just one more trip.
About two weeks ago, I decided this last Unspecified Adirondacks trip was probably Low’s Lake, and started trying to figure out if it would be crowded this time of year or not. Which brings us here.
I wasn’t able to leave the Boston area until later in the day, but I was able to sneak out of work on a Thursday. The trip up to Low’s Lake is not noticeably shorter than to the St. Regis area, but it is noticeably less rugged. Instead of Lake Placid and snow-capped mountains, you’re driving through pretty but fairly normal-seeming small towns.
So I was not prepared when the numbered state highway with a speed limit of 50mph was suddenly a dirt road.
It was easily after 3PM when I finally got on the water. The parking lot was pretty darn full, especially for a weekday afternoon. A few day paddlers were taking out, and a couple groups were putting in. I was able to find a spot in the second lot (and was the only sedan-sized car in the lot, amusingly) and quickly get my gear out and canoe loaded.
At the launch, I met a group of 4 on their first canoe-camping trip. “I love canoe camping, because you can still bring 1000 pounds of crap with you into the wilderness, without carrying it,” I volunteered, unasked. Social skills like that is why I like solo trips. It turns out they were science postdocs, though, so they were probably used to it.
It was unquestionable a crowded, busy launch area, and this made me nervous. One of the major reasons I was here was to find some silence, so I could work on a writing project I’ve been avoiding, and if I’m going to be spending time racing to campsites, that’s not going to be fun. The last trip to Maine I did was all campsite-racing and I don't want to do that this time.
Regardless, I was there to paddle and I got to paddling.
I did notice, however, that one of my dry bags was a little bit lighter than expected as I was loading it.
And maybe a quarter mile down the Bog River I figured out why. I’d left my cold weather gear (jacket, long underwear, etc), back in the car. Luckily, plenty close to turn around and get it.
After the false start, with maybe 3 hours of sunlight left, it was back on the water for real. I’m goal oriented, so let’s play:
- Find some solitude.
- Do a hard thing.
- See some loons and get a good picture of a loon.
- Explore a bunch of the lake.
- Write 10,000 words on the writing project I’m working on (not this trip report, but another thing).
I set out on the Bog River and immediately was impressed. In the fading light, the first mile or two of the Bog River is beautiful. Rocks rise on either side, evidence of past water levels etched into the granite. The sun frames the river perfectly.
The Bog River, maybe unsurprisingly to people with experience in river names, is quite boggy.
It wasn’t long until I took a turn too tight and found myself in the mud. But, having not-long-ago dragged a ton of sandbars on the Allagash, it wasn’t hard to drag a mud bar or two. I can see why this seems like a very popular day paddling spot. Most (all?) of the camp sites on the river were empty, but with several hours left of light I wasn’t interested in staying so close to the car.
It didn’t take very long to get to the portage, where I ran into the friendly quad group again. The portage was easy and pretty, which is how I like my portages.
We chatted a little bit, and a couple of them actually helped me carry some of my 1000 pounds of gear as we double-carried. I don’t encounter that many straight-up helpful and friendly people day to day. I’m still not really sure what to make of it.
On the other side of the dam is a bit more Bog River flow before Low’s Lake proper. The sun was getting pretty low to the horizon, so I was looking to stop at maybe site 12 before the entrance to the lake. The quad was going to 10.
As the sun slowly set, the loons started calling. Right in front of me, two loons decided to head down the flow, in the same direction I was headed. I turned to give them some space but pulled out my camera to get a picture. They didn’t seem to care I was there at all.
And another one:
After taking my pictures, I turned and paddled, getting increasingly eager to set up camp before it got dark. The floating bog was pretty wild and I’d never seen anything like it. It’s, well, what it sounds like. Flowers and bog grass and moss that’s just… solid and floating. I didn’t see the portage for it that’s on some maps. I'm not sure it's actually there anymore. And anyways, there’s a tiny channel to the left.
Not winning any awards for pictures directly into the sun. Oh well.
The sun continued to get close to the horizon and I had to stop to dig out sunglasses just to see.
Alas, campsites 10 and 11 were already taken when I got there. I continued to 12.
As I'd expected, 12 was free. But the group of four new canoe-campers were still right behind me, and I could see on the map that it was a couple miles until the next site. Was I going to, right before sundown, take site 12 from the group of nice, helpful people who had helped carry my cooler over the dam?
Hell no I wasn’t.
So, I continued. I could see the next few sites were in a cluster, and figured some of them would be free. Maybe I’d try to take 13, on the banks of the lake proper. But, canoes were at all four in the cluster. As I was checking each site, the sun set all the way.
I tried 18. I’ve read 18 is nice, sandy, elevated. Taken.
By this point, I wasn’t that pleased. While the moon was rising, I don’t love paddling in the remote wilderness in the dark, especially solo. Like many humans, I can’t actually see in the dark and that makes things complicated.
I turned south over the open water and started looking for 40. The water was like glass and, despite not being thrilled about the increasing dark, I can't argue that it was pretty.
It was now dark enough that I couldn’t really see details on the shoreline, so in large part I’m looking at my map and the little compass I have clipped to the side of the map case to find the right direction. I have a headlamp and a real GPS in a bag I can reach; I have done a real open water crossing with GPS before, so I can find my way if I need to… I’m starting to think of digging them out.
But fairly quickly, there’s 40. No canoe by the water. No tent setup. It’s free!
I pull in and definitely need the headlamp to setup camp, but it’s quite nice. It’s on the lake proper, it has a nice view of the shoreline, it has a very nice tent spot. I make a fire for light and cooking, which was a treat for me: doing solo trips I almost never go through the effort to gather wood and keep a fire going.
I threw a steak on it. I’m tired and end up eating is very rare (but still yummy).
I could see a fire at 18 but otherwise nobody. It was dead quiet, without even air traffic at night. If I was referring back to my objectives at the top here, this is solitude.
No rain, so I didn’t put up a tarp or my tent’s rain fly. The night was cold (30s?) but I’d brought my cold weather bag so it was plenty warm for me. There are worse places to spend a night.
The morning brought a ton of fog (like darkness, I can’t see though fog), so I didn’t hurry. I recently bought myself a titanium stick-stove as an alternative to my jetboil, so I decided to try it out for the morning coffee. It worked great.
Sitting, drinking my coffee, warm by the stick stove, I even consider staying at this site.
But I really want a site that’s on the main body of the lake, further down. I want to feel the wind, and get expansive views. And sitting is just not how I’m wired. So I pack up and go. It occurs to me that a ton of my stuff is orange. This isn't really relevent to the narrative here but here's picture of stuff that's orange.
This is an interesting part of the lake. There’s islands, mapped and unmapped tiny ones, open water sections, sections with giant downed trees, and more floating bog. I take my time and poke around, trying to explore and not rush (as best I’m able).
I explore Boone’s Landing; it’s nice enough and I understand I can camp there without a permit in September but it’s too early in the day to stop. I also explore 39 and its just beautiful, but I’m looking for a site that’s less boggy. I poke around Moose landing for a bit and make my way back to 35 and even though it’s early, I take it.
I would say that 35 is a hammock site, clearly, with almost no flat spots. But the view and location is just exactly what I want. I dropped off some of my gear and had a snack, and take out my notebook. One of my goals for this trip is “write 10,000 words.” I have a job, in tech, that I really, really like, work hard at, and spend innumerable hours on. But what I’d really like, maybe 10 years from now once I retire and don’t need things like money or health insurance, is to be a writer. To do that, I need to actually write.
But I don’t. I tell myself it’s too early in the day and I’m there to paddle. So, even as the wind picks up a bit (there’s a Nor’Easter back east), I do an open water crossing and check out Grass Pond.
Everyone online likes the Grass Pond campsites but I’m not sure I really get it. The view is nice. There’s grass in the pond (hence, Grass Pond?), and it’s a bit more sheltered than the main lake, but I prefer the expensive fetch back the other way. I take a picture of Grass Mountain (or a mountain that I can see from Grass Pond, at least) and explore for a bit. There’s an inlet with an old bridge and some hiking paths but I don’t really find anything of that much interest here.
I head back and cross the open water again. This time there’s whitecaps, and I don’t have a chance to stop paddling. The Northwind Solo performs super well in the wind but the camera stays in the box.
When I get back, I hear loons and try to take pictures of them instead of doing any writing. I sneak up on this one by my campsite and get a great picture. Trained ornithologists might suggest this isn’t actually a loon but with the glare it was hard to tell at the time.
Then, I make dinner instead of doing any writing. Zero words will get written today.
But what a nice day of paddling.
The moon rises.
The next day I decide to explore down Moose Bay into Bod Lake (which I’ve also seen named Bog Pond). I leave most of my gear and head south. There’s a wetland “stream” that connects the two, but it’s unnamed on any of my maps. I’ll call it Moose Bay Stream. Moose Bay Stream winds past two more numbered campsites and as I pass them it’s super clear they’re not often utilized.
Past them, there’s a very boggy area and a culvert that leads out into the “stream” proper. I understand people who paddle the Adirondacks like paddle-able culverts, and this one is nice.
The stream has four beaver dams, where the beaver has arranged the wetland into two tiers, so no matter which branch you take you need to drag two. I don’t really like dragging beaver dams: the water is always just deep enough to go over my boot’s top. But two isn’t a big number.
It’s tight for a long boat and there are plenty of wrong turns. On my map, there’s a channel to “stream-left” but no there isn’t. It’s not there. The DEC map shows this whole wetland as just open water. Take my word for it, it’s not.
It’s quiet back here. I get the sense this is a road less traveled. There's maybe not as much wildlife as I might have expected, and the tight wetland honestly reminds me a lot of the suburban wetlands I’ve paddled back in the Massachusetts suburbs, which is damning with faint praise.
But here there’s zero people, zero houses, zero cars, not even much air traffic. I see one footprint in the mud, that isn’t mine, but that’s it. It takes maybe an hour, maybe two, to paddle though the whole thing and I turn a corner into Bog Lake.
I can just tell I’m the only person on this whole pond. There’s this tickling in the back of my neck that tells me that I’m definitely not being watched. Solitude.
I find an unmapped put-in with a nice little dock and the old unnumbered campsite that’s on this pond.
I explore a little on foot and find this odd clearing which looks like it used to be a major structure of some kind. Still not sure what this was.
I eat lunch and then it’s time to head back. It’s an easy enough paddle. As I’m headed back out onto Low’s Lake, the wind starts to really howl.
It’s really hard to capture waves and wind in photographic form and the weather on my InReach says this was still just around 10MPH winds. It was more than that; not in a "the fish was 2, 3, 4 feet long!" kind of way, but for real.
It starts to really rip over the water. I don’t have anything in my boat that’s not waterproof, though, and I've already been swimming (on purpose) and know the water is warm. And I’m very near shore. So rather than intimidating these whitecaps are fun. No picture but I stand up in my boat (a dicey proposition in the Solo most of the time) and full on surf back to campsite 35, nearly laughing.
The wind is ripping even at the site once I pull in. It's not that easy to take pictures of the wind, but here's a shot:
Getting my stick stove lit in the wind takes like four tries and the freeze-dried chilli I make is gross. But I’m rewarded with a very nice, orange, sunset. I like orange.
Once the sun is down, I can’t write. A notebook doesn’t have a backlight or a keyboard, sooo, can’t. Zero words written.
It’s windy all night. Very windy. I’m taking the fetch of the whole lake, plus I know the leftover winds from the Nor’Easter are getting to us, and the path back up the lake and bog river are, well, to the north east, and I have to head back that way.
In the early morning, I use my InReach to pull a new forecast and it looks like the wind is only going to get harder.
I break camp in the dark. I load the canoe. At very first light, I’m back on the water, hoping to beat the worst of the wind. I think about how this is a nice bookend to arriving late and getting to my first camp in the dark. I still can't really see that much in the dark, especially around the floating bog and the shoreline, so I'm not sure how wise this was. B`ut I see some loons in Moose Bay. which is very sheltered from the winds, and I think I’ll beat the gusts.
I don’t really beat the wind at all. It’s directly in my face. For hours.
I’m in a well-trimmed solo canoe with all my gear, so it’s not like keeping the canoe under control, or headed where I want to go is difficult. But if I stop paddling, the 10 MPH+ wind easily pushes me backwards. I’m not exactly in the best shape of my life, so continuously paddling as hard as I can for extended periods of time isn’t that easy. If I want to take a break, I have to duck behind an island or into a bay and there just arn’t that many of those when my route is primarily through open water. This was a hard paddle. I try to do one hard thing each trip and this was surely it.
And it’s hard in a good way. It’s pretty. It’s not too cold. It’s not too hot. I have plenty of water. The waves are on the larger size but not anywhere near going over my gunnels. It’s an excellent way to spend a morning.
This was the longest paddle of my trip, and maybe the hardest paddle I've done this season. I'd like to have more pictures of dramatically pressing through the waves in open water on the center of the lake, but I was just too busy to take pictures.
I make it off the lake into the river-like sections around 10 or 11. I expect the wind to be better here, but it’s still right in my face. There are less waves, though.
I triple-carry the dam, and take the time to explore the area a bit.
The Bog River is also pretty windy, and it’s quite hard to paddle against it when your paddle is tangled in the grass. But it’s still downright beautiful. I’m ready to stop for the day when I make it back to the parking lot. It’s much emptier than when I arrived.
This was an amazing place to paddle camp. In the end, I think it was smaller than I expected, and not quite as wild. But it was quiet, pleasant, pretty, and fun. It might end my camping season (or at least the season without a drysuit) and it’s a great way to wrap it up. I think the Bog River section might sort-of get the short end of the stick when people talk about it: it’s super nice, too.
- Find some solitude. -
Easily done. - Do a hard thing. - We’re counting open water with whitecaps.
- See some loons and get a good picture of a loon. - Yes. I could have written more about the loon calls. Lots of Loons.
- Explore a bunch of the lake. - Yes.
- Write 10,000 words on the writing project I’m working on (not this). -
Zero words written.
