24-Day Solo Canoe Trip / THE LAND THAT GIVES LIFE (The Headwaters) PART 1

For years, I've had this trip on my mind, feeling like I wasn't quite ready yet. Until one day I came to realize, the only thing holding me back from what I could be doing is me. In the center of the world's largest stretch of protected boreal forest, winding its way through World Heritage Site, Tematchewen'ake, or the land that gives life, used and cared for by the Anishinaabe people for thousands of years, this is the Blood Vein River. Holy crap, I'm back in Woodland Caribou. I'm at the Lund Lake access point, and Claire just dropped me off here. It's about 9 p.m. already, so I gotta make haste. I got 500 meter portards that goes to the lake, and then I'm gonna stay right on the lake there. I think I'm taking over this guy's home. I am all set up here. It's about 11 30 at night. I'm just gonna go in my tent. Good night, guys. Time to leave my campsite here. It was a short one night, but it's a pretty nice place. I didn't see any of this last night coming in. This is an island right here. I got woken up by an eagle that's sitting at the tip of the island. Since this is the beginning of my trip, I got some loose leaf tobacco right here. I'm gonna put that down here for good spirits. And off she goes. Oh, it's good to be back. Another month long. Coming up to my first portage here. It says it's about 1,100 meters, so the first day or two are gonna be very physically demanding for me. Then I make it to the headwaters of the Blood Vein River, which is my goal for this trip. I'm running the entire length of the Blood Vein River all the way to Lake Winnipeg. This right here is how I found the portage. These little nookshooks. Yeah, and then the trail is pretty obvious because this is fairly close. So this is Rhodax's Lake, right? So this is probably fairly well traveled. And then the lake is just beautiful from here. It's all moss, so it's well threaded down. I think I'm about halfway in with the canoe, this portage, 1,100 meters. This canoe is super heavy. It's 88 pounds. It's a Novacraft 16-foot Prospector out of SP3. It is heavy. I'm almost at the next lake, and I just find a nice little collection of, I'm pretty sure that's wolf scat. I made it through the first portage, 1,100 meters. That's brutal with 250 pounds worth of gear. That is cool. That's where I came from, and the trail goes by here, back in the bush over there. This nice big open rock here. Oh man, that's comfy. Tempting to just take a nap here, but the reality is I still gotta carry my canoe 300 meters that way. I made it to the end of the 950 meter portage with my big backpack, my big Ostrom pack. I just want to show you quickly what my goal is for today. I made these maps myself from Topo maps that are free online. I used the Ontario Parks map as well as Hap Wilson's book on rivers of Manitoba, and I put in all the details on my own maps. I started on Lund this morning, then I did this 1,100 meter portage. I paddled across this lake, which I don't know the name of. I'm at the end of this 950 meter portage right now. I still want to paddle across this. Then there's a small 70 meter, 325, and then I will decide when I get there if I want to tackle this longest portage of the whole trip, or if I'll wait until tomorrow and start fresh maybe. Here's the third portage of today. It should only be 70 meters times 5. That's 350 meters for me. The next portage there is 325 meters, and I think I'm going to call it a day after that. I'll find a campsite there. I'll tackle that big 1,600 meter portage tomorrow, and then I have the worst part of all the portaging behind me for the whole trip really. I think this island here, we're going to be home for tonight. We're on the shore. Well, I had a quick look in the campsite there on the island, and it's so tucked into the woods you can hardly see the water. I'm not going to settle for this one. On we go. This looks a lot more promising. I'm starving. I'm going to make some dinner. There's a full fire ban in pretty much all of Ontario, so I brought my Jetboil, which is super fuel efficient and fast at boiling water, and since I'm only bringing dehydrated meals anyways, I'll be cooking fish as well. For the most part, I'll just have to boil water, and this thing's great for that. Not bad. These big circles here, it was a beaver. I guess all these campsites are taken by beavers usually. I like my setup though. I can't complain. I walked 12 and a half kilometers today. A lot more than I'd spend in a canoe today. I slept in. I'm so tired from the drive up still in my work week that I'm just listening to my body and not setting an alarm. I'm just going with what it tells me, and it's usually right. Slightly smoky on the lake here. You can smell the wildfire smoke this morning. Well, here it is. The beginning of that 1,600 meter portage. 1,600 meters. I have to walk it five times, so that's eight kilometers. Pretty nice forest. Tons of birch. It's like all there is is birch here. It's pretty mucky here. See, it's very wet. Knox Lake. Out of the whole trip, the past two days had all the worst, or not the worst, I don't know about that, but the longest portages. I don't think there's anything over a kilometer now, and I just did three in the past two days. I walked over 20 kilometers, and it's a canoe trip. While I'm getting close to the end of Knox Lake here, the north end turns into a river here, the Bluntbane River, and it flows into Murdoch Lake. All right. Whoa, did you see that? A little pikey. And there's the first walleye of the trip. Hell yeah. Oh my god, I missed this. I miss this fishing like this. Oh man, that's a king. Oh buddy. Oh, and he got it. Another one. This one's tail is full of leeches. Can you see that? Little leeches, little suckers. Extremely bouldery. Here you can see that completely burned a while ago. Nothing left. Pretty crazy. Well, that was it for portaging today, and the rest of the river. It's 7 30 now. I started around 8 30 this morning, so it's a good 11 hours. I'm gonna see if this is campsite material right here. That's honestly not bad, but there's another peninsula has a campsite six, seven hundred meters away, and it looks like it's got a nice rock outcrop. Well, this is it, and it looks very nice from the water, but let's go have a look. Making friends here already, and yet again, I'm taking someone's home again every night so far. So camp is all set up. The reason I chose this campsite over the other one is that it's got this beautiful rock right here. I'm gonna have dinner and watch the sunset. It's beautiful already. This is so much better than sitting on the couch and watching Netflix during the day. Good morning. It's about eight o'clock. Time to get going. Have a little bit of loose leaf tobacco here. I'm gonna put that down here. I like gradually just eating little bits during the morning instead of having one good breakfast. Works better for me. I feel better that way. Nice and windy on this next section here. I just crossed the bay. Well, that was the bay. I think I put my hat back on. It's getting pretty windy in the middle, which makes me a little bit nervous for the bigger part of Murdoch here and then Larris. Just taking a quick little break before I have a peek around the corner and see if it's even doable right now. So I just quickly pulled over here at the last little section of these narrows before I get out on the bigger part of the lake. It doesn't sound windy right now here, but you can see those white streaks on the water. It might just be a waiting game. Once I got far enough out, I was actually able to turn and now I'm slightly going with the wind. So I'm just in the lee of this island on my left. Once I get to the end of the island, I should be able to pick up a tailwind and just follow the wind right to my next turn. Putting down some tobacco here. Man, that's special. Well, it is starting to rain, so I'm quickly making my way to the shore so I can put my solar panel away. I'll just quickly put my Enerac on as well because it doesn't really seem to stop. There's nothing like watching someone's face while they're portaging, right? We like to see suffering, don't we? 88 pounds on my back. Probably push that over. See these little guys? The wild strawberries. They're just absolute gold out here. God, they're so sweet. I'll leave the rest for the bears, but man. Look at us here, guys. Watch your step. Always watch where you're going because, look, there's a hole. Probably about, I want to say, knee deep and someone's so friendly to put a little marker there. But if you're not paying attention and you don't put the brush aside, you wouldn't have seen that and you'd just break your leg out here. Right here is another one. There's the tree. There's my trail. You don't see much, eh, but there's a hole. Oh man, it gets deep. It's all washed out around the roots from when the river is high. It just leaves the roots, takes all the dirt away, and then the brush comes in in the spring Hopefully, there's some fish in here as a reward. That was the top one. Oh yeah. There you go. Second cast. That's not bad, eh? Look at them. Oh yeah. All right, enough fun here. Laris is one big lake and around the corner, it gets a lot bigger. I think I'm gonna check out this campsite right here. It looks pretty nice. Laris is still, not bad, but a little bit wavy. All right, slight dilemma. So I'm on a campsite on Laris Lake. Laris seems to be calming down. One side of me is like, now's your chance, go for it. And the other side of me is like, ah, just take it easy, just stay here, fish, relax. Either way, I don't know what to do. So I'm gonna go fishing. Fish on. Check out the video. I'm back. Second one from the campsite here. I might just stay here, guys. This is fun. That's it. I'm staying here. So I'm gonna go into the woods and set up camp. I'm just making some dinner. You might wonder why I bring such a big pelican case. When dinnertime comes around, you can put your feet up. I'm having another backpacker's pantry today, having a spicy Thai peanut curry with vegetables. And as an appetizer from the Dutch store, I have a little tomato soup this time. Nice and quick. Water's almost boiling. I'm just sitting here watching the mergansers. Walleye here too from the campsite. Hell yeah. Going back right away. That's a pretty nice sight to go to sleep to. Smooth water. I'm on my way to bed. My barrel right here. I have one of those little bear bells on it so that as soon as it moves, I will hear it. And I can scare the bear away with my bear spray and yelling at it. All right. Good night, guys.