Backcountry Lake Superior Canoe Camp Part 1

Ken and I just got to our first portage, and it's 7 o'clock, we decided to set up camp. It's been raining all day, it's got a break in the weather right now, so we're taking this opportunity to set up camp and get some stuff done while it's not raining. This is our campsite that they, there are designated sites here in Lake Superior Park, so we've got a fire pit, somebody made a bench, and I'm setting up right there. My tarp all set up. Last time I was camping I had my tarp set up over my tent and the wind broke my aluminum tent poles and it sliced through my tarp here. So I went out and got some seam grip, or seal grip, sorry seam grip and some nylon patches and it's like a rubberized on there now so I'll let you guys know how that holds up. This little guy when I was pegging down my tarp, it's a real cool color they don't usually come in the color he is where I'm from. He's real slow because it's been cold, come on bud. Lucky me, I get to listen to this babbling brook. Go to bed. Everything Ken and I have read about this place says it has awesome brook trout fishing, so you can bet we're gonna be trying to get some brookies for dinner. Oh yeah, this is the life, guys. This is awesome. I love the north. Some big slabs of birch bark to get a little bit of a scale. There's my knife, okay. And that one there is about the size of a long piece of birch bark. Well, this is pretty much the end of day one. I only really spent a few hours here since we got here, but the sky cleared up, it's a lot nicer now, it's not so windy. Ken's just getting that, one's sticking it real good. Getting that fire stoked up, we're gonna have some hot chocolate, I'm gonna head into bed after that. Oh, this is our second day, which would be the first morning. Very foggy and hazy out, it's seven o'clock in the morning. So we're gonna, we've just finished eating lunch and whatnot, we're gonna pack up and head down two series of lakes and set up again. For this trip, I went out and bought some new gear I got this down sleeping bag goes down to negative three Celsius, and I got a new sleeping pad This bag is awesome It weighs nothing and I'll show you how small it packs down to in a little bit and I stayed warm last night It's a little chilly here, and I'm the cold sleeper, but this thing is awesome. It's goose down Here's that bag and it's stuff sack and because it's down the good thing about it is like it's up to here right now I can stuff it down about half the size put it down about half the size there and it comes with this Good compression sack and get all the air out of it and then roll it up on itself pretty nifty we just humped our gear past the second portage and We still got the canoe to go. It's a little bit shorter of a portage But the rocks are pretty precarious to say the least so this is where we got to put in there's all these blowdowns So I imagine we're gonna have to go down past that away and there's the portage sign Apparently Trevor was here. It says Trevor was here guys. Here's another tray I don't get to play with a lot, it's a balsam fir and if you look at it's got all these little blisters on it everywhere If you pop one This is an idea of some of the terrain we're walking through couple examples of some real cool birch trees there's one that's just shedding his bark like in ribbons like crazy and then one right next to it peeling him slabs with this cool little foot bridge reminds me of what I've seen in Skog's videos with the Adirondacks pretty nifty just a log hewn in half we're on the dead moose lake now we portage the canoe and all the gear obviously and it wasn't so bad so we're feeling a little bit better now that this is all done and the sun's trying to come out a little hazy still but it's not raining. The water is very still. Little red squirrel getting mad at us. There's one of the many beaver lodges we keep seeing along the lake. There's a tamarack. All conifers on this lake. I haven't seen one deciduous tree maybe a couple birch here and there. All right I'm on our second portage for the day. This is the first one we've got all of our gear and come back for the canoe. We've made it to our put in spot. It's hard going. It's a long one and it's uphill i haven't had any luck with the brook trout maybe we'll give this a shot this is a really old yellow birch when it gets super old like this the bark isn't like normal bark anymore it's got it's big and thick it literally get shingles of birch bark okay we're done traveling for today um 11 in the morning portage twice canoed through a couple lakes and we found our campsite after a little looking we found this blaze orange campsite sign and uh it's actually not a bad site it's better than our one last night we've got uh somebody built a little chair there and there's a bench and some firewood and even covered it up for us in a bag so they're all ferns up to ken's waist or higher just saw a couple moose tracks fern gully here's the last lake which is Belanger Lake it's our destination tomorrow it's a nice lake it's got a huge hill back there nice clear water maybe we'll actually be able to catch some fish this campsite's looking like home Kind of went with the traditional tie on your leg pull and I did the old suspect device style. It's just gravity. It's friction that holds it on when you sit down. Yesterday the brookies started to bite at 10 o'clock at night so we came out about 8 o'clock right now. Now we're just going to sit around for a while and try and catch some fish. We're used to catching and fishing for bass so this is a little bit of a curve for it. Moment of truth. Here we go. and days and days and days in the making I can't see oh snap that's a pike no oh it's a trout nice-sized trout oh no a beaver over there I want to see if I can get him to smack his tail dive into the water beaver smack your tail and dive into the water second night still no fish Ken caught a real nice-sized brook trout right on the bottom of the lake and uh we almost had it in the boat but the line was too small and it snapped but now we know that they're on the bottom and uh tomorrow we'll get some