2008: Ishpatina Ridge Winter Trek (Short Cut)

It sinks, the day is near, and I watch your feet, I feel your breath, as I'm in your dreams, it seems such a long, long time, as I will return, and you are the only spark I use, Going off on their first poo. It's February 17th, 948, so we've been walking for 48 minutes, and feeling pretty good. Did you see its paws? Yeah, they were like big snowshoes, or big snow boots, or snow furry. It was sitting like, right on the road. So here we are, we've just descended from the road onto the frozen Montreal River. It's our first time leaving the road here, and Carlin's just celebrating by giving Hendrick some snacks. Actually, there's some bear patches that we thought might have been open or slushy, but I think they're just windblown, they look pretty good. We've got about four kilometers of river ahead of us, hopefully we don't run into any problems, because it's a lot better going on the river than in the weeds. We're laying down in our first campsite, looking through... The snow's falling pretty good out there. Yeah. Alright, it's 239, our first campsite, we traveled lots of kilometers today, and we're excited to get this tent nice and hot. It's 255, and we are not at our destination. Yeah, I think it's time to set up camp. Long day, we're tired, and... Yeah, it's getting late, it'd be nice to have camp. What do you say, Hendricks? You know what he says. Is it time to set up camp? Yeah, he's like, there's a nice tree over there. Nice sit. It's a good sit. Alright, so, we just had the little showdown argument. I pushed Kylan into the snow, and I won out that we're stopping. So, big push, body slam, that's what I did, and then I... Day two. Big finish. Catch all that? Yeah. So, there goes Kylan, leading us off, finishing off Smoothwater Lake, which is our last large lake on the trip. It's a really big lake. There it is, some of it behind us. It was about six kilometers long, and the wind just howled across it. So, it was pretty cold crossing, but we're into a narrow section now, just about finished the lake. And yeah, now we're getting into a series of small lakes and portages, so that'll be a new challenge. Warmer, but tougher terrain. Yeah, it's day three now. Day two, we didn't do any shooting, but it snowed much of the day. It was a good day. Another big lake and some river sections, so navigating the banks of the rivers around some open water, stuff like that. It was a really cold night. Last night it was clear, but it's probably close to 30 below. But now the sun is out. We have a gorgeous blue day today and beautiful walking conditions. We've got a creek running into the right. You can't really see it there. I guess the mouth of it is frozen as well, but it might be thinning the ice here on the lake a little bit. So, Kylan's checking. She's got the pole out and being careful in this section. And then, yeah, we've got our trail. It starts with a little bit of an uphill right away, and we're off the lake. In one go. He's only going to make it halfway. He's got the stance, hitting himself a bit. He's ready to go. Ready, set, hut. Go, go, go, go, go. He's got the monkey crawl going on. Oh, yeah. Use those arms. Claw his way to the top. He's up, but the sled's only halfway. Keep it coming. Oh, God. He's coming. He made it. Good job. Anyways, as I was crossing the lake, it took us a couple hours to cross it, so I was thinking in desperate thoughts of how to modify our trip a little bit, how to make it a little bit easier. Oh, God. We're going to cut it short today and just have a long early morning tomorrow, which is fine. And then, yeah, that's what we decided. So we're going to set up camp real soon. So we're still doing the trip in seven days, but we're just having a longer day hike to the ridge. Tomorrow. But it will be good because we'll have wood cut and we won't have to pull our sleds tomorrow so we can go faster. Right on. Let's go. Oh, ----. All right, good job. Did you ever notice every hill has, like, false promise associated with it? You hit the hill. You begin to climb. Yeah, this is really easy. I'm rocking this hill. No problem. Then your sled reaches the hill. You're like, oh, gosh. I was wrong. Then it has a second false promise. You reach the summit of the hill like I'm at right now. I'm like, yeah, it's done. The sled's still hauling me back. This one in particular has a third false promise because it just seems to keep going. Still crawling. We got it downhill, though. Oh, yeah. Going to ride it. Strap my goggles on. Are you going to tape it? Oh, yeah. The devious Kylan. There she is. Look at that face of evil. Has coerced me into traveling another portage. So we've gotten through it, which actually feels pretty good, so that's nice. And here's the end of it. We finish off with a nice little toboggan down to the lake. And away we go. We got Kylan's 8, 9 feet. Oh, come on, it's 15. 10 feet. If that's 15, what's that one? You can do it. I'm caught on a tree. I'll just break it off, I guess. Here we go. We're summiting Ontario. Let's go. Here is the fire tower. And here is Ontario. My legs are a little bit stiff from the climbing yesterday. But I feel like I should have learned something out there on the mountaintop. It wasn't really a mountaintop, though, was it? More like a wee little hill. But it was still tough. Your snowshoes would sink, and then this heavy, crusty snow would fall on top. No trail, so it was thick brush at some point. Ranged from thin thick to thick thick. On Dave's scale of brush thickness. It was a lot of fun. It was a good adventure, taking the bushwhack route. We could have taken the Stoneville Trail up, because there is one. But it would have been lame. Three days home? Three days home. We should just walk all night. Could do. Yeah, we could. No.