20271 - Monthly September update

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Dag,
   Iris (McGregor, 20271 miles)

19510 - A man please

I am heading over to The Boundary Waters Canoe Area, but last moment V emails me:” Go to the Canadian side!” Giving me an incredible time in Anchorage, I better listen to him, and so I continue driving and heading over to Quetico Provincial Park in Canada.

Like every trip, it starts with the usual packing in the parking lot; a five day loop of kayaking, with the big difference this time, 9 portages. Many things have to stay with the Oto, food is reduced to the minimum and a backpack is added.

Different from the Boundary waters, Quetico has no marked campsites and no marked portages, allowing for the real wilderness experience. Portages are marked on my map, but to find an established campsite, I just have to paddle close to shore and scout for a fire pit or wood bench. After a whole afternoon paddling over Pickerel lake, I find a campsite on a small island and watch the sun set in the evening. There is nobody around and life is good.

The next day I continue and after a short paddle I come up to my first portage, 460 meters long. All my belongings disappear into my backpack and with some effort I mount the backpack on my shoulders and walk to the other side. Its kind of heavy…

I walk back to get my kayak and wrap the tip into 5 layers of duct-tape. The deal is not to drop and destroy the kayak, because I will be kind of stuck here in the middle of the wilderness for a while. So I have to stop walking before I get too tired, to be able to balance the kayak on its tip and then place it softly on the ground.

The first technique I develop is to carry the kayak on my shoulder, row skiff style. After 100 steps I have to drop the kayak down. It seems I carry the kayak more with my arms then with my shoulder. Hmmm, have to come up with something better. Of course, remember your sisters in Ghana, carry it on your head. And so for the second technique I bind my dreads on top of my head as a cushion and lift the kayak on top of my head. With every step I take I feel my spine shrinking and 150 steps and couple centimeters shorter I have to take a break.

With 3 more breaks and a sore back I make it to the other side. I paddle a couple of miles before the second portage of the day is presenting itself. I don’t know how I do it, but the 730 meters are covered without breaking my kayak or my back. Its just not the way to do this. I have to come up with some better technique or at some point of this trip I might be stuck.

The portage brings me to my own lake, nobody is around. Its me and nature. Jeh, it is 100% worth the struggle.

The route continues through a small river, which is streaming the way I travel. Should be easy, maybe I can even just float. That’s what I had in mind. Instead I drag my kayak over several beaver dams, up to 2 meter high, dump my Xtra Tufs a couple of times and fight off the reed blocking the channel. This trip starting to become a bit weary.

I paddle through the Sturgeon narrows and find again a campsite on a small island. Would have been so nice to have a man around now. Instead I pitch the tent, filter the water, make a fire, cook a meal and hang the food myself.

The evening is calm, beavers are encircling the island and flop their tail now and then. A bald eagle catches a fish right in front of me. An evening, every evening should be.

To spread the pain, I plan to do 5 portages today. Putting me in between the two 700+ meter portages for the night. The first portage is 100 meters but it takes me a while. I really have to think this over, how to make this more efficient without that strong man around.

The next portage is 120 meters, with a pond in the middle. To tired to unpack my backpack, I put the pack in the cockpit and sit on top of my kayak to cross the pond. For sure not the best idea at all, with some scary unbalancing moments, I hardly make it dry to the other side.

The next portage is undefined but seems long, very long. Instead of my hair, I place my lifejacket on top of my head. I feel tired and the trails are not the easiest one to walk across. The avoidable happens, I stumble and can just catch my kayak on top of my back. There I am standing, bend forwards with a kayak on my back in the middle of the wilderness. I don’t know how long I am standing there, but in the end I lift myself up to place the kayak back on my head. When I have it balanced on my shoulders, it actually feels not too bad. I can even walk kind of easier this way and for 300 steps I am fine. Then I slowly bend forward, balance the kayak on its tips, rest in this position and continue with lifting it back on my shoulders. This technique is definitely the best so far. I drag myself across another undefined portage and make up my mind for the last 740 meters of portage for the day. I cross a large lake and suddenly I am crying in the middle of the lake. How the heck am I going to carry my kayak over the next portage? Where is that man? I am tired, hungry and see not how I will able to do another portage today. Time to make camp and relax. Two 700+ meters portages in a row are worries for tomorrow.

The surrounding is so beautiful and relax that all sorrow of the day is forgotten quick. After my fourth swim of the day, I make camp and enjoy another evening alone. Well that man would still be nice to have around…

With fresh energy and the knowledge it will be over soon, I perfect my technique and work hard to get my kayak over 740 + 710 + 270 meters of portage the next day. Then its over and only 1 big lake is between me and the Oto. For one more night I build camp, a fire, cook a dinner. I am way too beaten up to filter water and just drink it straight out of the lake, but I do put on a rain fly on the tent and hang the food. At least I don’t have to get out of bed this night.

In the middle of the night I wake up indeed from the rain and thunder and hear the waves crashing into the shore. After surviving all these portages with the kayak, its not the right time to loose the kayak now. And so I still jump out of the tent and drag the kayak higher on shore. The next morning I find the kayak 10 meters away from the water, might have over reacted a little bit too much in the dark.

The rain keeps coming, but with the wind in the back I make it quickly back to the Oto. Here and there it becomes a little bit scary with the waves capping white around me, but the water is warm and I kind of know now how to get back into my kayak. So no worries and I enjoy the last bit of this amazing trip.

The statistics
Amount of days: 5
People I met: 1
Paddled: ±80 km
Walked with backpack: ±3500 m
Walked without backpack: ±3500 m
Walked with kayak: ±3500m

A very beautiful amazing trip again but next time you send me somewhere V, you better come with me. Or any other man…..please…

Dag,
   Iris (Quetico, 19510 miles)

19173 - Not much in common

We are the only one on the whole campground and contact is quickly made. The next thing I know, is that I am sitting behind K when we drive his ATV over some back country dirt roads to the nearest bar. It’s a bar were everybody knows everybody, the tvs are tuned to football and the talk is about hunting. You know, just a random small town bar in the middle of Minnesota.

At night around the campfire K invites me to hang around for a couple of days so he can show me what lives about around here. An offer I happily accept. K and some family owe some land in the nearby town, land not to live on, but to live from. And that’s were he takes me. We clean out the hunting trailer, mow the grass and call it home for a couple of days in the middle of the woods.

Archery deer hunting season opening is this weekend, and with the ATV we drive through the forest to check out all the deer stands. Hunting here is done from stands attached to a tree and with hours of patient waiting a wondering by deer will be taken out for food. I don’t know about this.

Trained in the army, K does not just owe a bow and arrow. There are many weapons and I have no clue what is coming by. I get to shoot a shotgun and K shows me the technique on all the others. I still have a hard time to be around weapons and will never appreciate them.

We go for a swim in a nearby lake to shake of the heat. I do understand that I can not swim in underwear on a public beach, but why I can not change on the beach is still unclear to me. For now, I just follow Ks directions and feel like a town boy in his swim pants and a T-shirt.

In the course of these days I am meeting cousins, uncles and grandparents. A grandma I haven’t even met gives me a beautiful handmade rug, an uncle shows me his vegetable garden and his canned food, a cousin stumbles late at night into my bedroom to meet me. When I crash a football party at an uncle, a person I have never met knows I took a nap yesterday at 5 o’clock. People know I am in town and make me feel more then welcome in this community. It’s a weird experience, because I don’t even like small towns. I like to be incognito in a big city, or alone in the back country, where nobody knows when I sleep or what I do.

Its relax time, and with some family we take the car out for a drive around the country side. In the middle of know where, we meet more family and with the usual booze we eat hamburgers and French fries. We hit another bar and play some pool. We are for sure not the only one in the bar, and not having seen any bicycle at the door, I can only imagine how everybody goes home.

Being religious, something I really do not understand, and voting republican, I am an Obama fan and vote far left in NL, I have not much in common with K. But how else can I respect somebody who owns his own company, who takes care of his mom, who is a sweetheart. K is happy in his way and that’s way more important then what I think about it. And to be honest, I even really like him.

Dag,
   Iris (Menahga, 19173 miles)

18453 - Great Plains

During the Cretaceous period (75 million years ago) an inland sea stretched across the Great Plains, and depositing layers of fossil soil. The sea drained with the uplift of the Black Hills and Rocky Mountains exposing the ocean mud to the air and upper layers were weathered into a yellow soil. A river flood plain followed, depositing alligator fossils and lush tropical forest material. When the forest gave away to dry savannah, different mammals roamed the plains which remains were buried under a thick layer of volcanic ash during the next epoch. The last deposits came from wind, water and more volcanic ash, making in total a 60 meter thick Paleontology heaven.


And they have an easy task, because within the boundaries of the Badlands NP, erosion has taken full force and exposes all the layers once again.

For a day I drive through the park and stop at the many view points.

And then its time to hit the real Great Plains. Straight flat roads and agriculture in a size I can hardly apprehend. Think cruise control, an IPod and 2 feet up on the seat...for hours...

Dag,
   Iris (Badlands, 18453 miles)

18281 - Black hills, next time better

Ten Sleep canyon
I pick up S from besides the road, a friend from Alaska, and we are heading for Ten Sleep canyon. With no guide book and no clue what is what, we jump on 2 random climbs in the middle of the day. Pretty pumping but good climbs. Later we find out that there are over 700 climbs, next time with a guide book maybe???


Devils Tower
The main destination is however Devils Tower. When erosion took away layer after layer of the surrounding landscape an solidified magma intrusion became exposed and formed an very impressive tower. The magma which formed Devils Tower cooled and crystallized into a rock type known as phonolite porphyry. But the more important feature for us, climbers, is that it formed hexagonal (and sometime 4-, 5- and 7-sided) columns separated by vertical cracks.

We do warm up climbs for 2 days, but then the weather turns bad. Meaning we never make it to the top and now I have to come back for sure. And for sure we will camp again in the garden of the local climber F, who lives inside the park. The place to be...


Mount Rushmore
I am a tourist, so we have to do it.


The Needles
Run out, super beautiful slab climbs on needles, I should climb here. Nonetheless I am a bit done climbing and drop of S, who meets up with a local climber. Another place to come back for.


Sorry Black hills, I will be back though.

Dag,
   Iris (Custer state park, 18281 miles)