Saturday, 20 October 2012

Lady Evelyn Smoothwater Trip Report - Part 2/3



Day 3
We had not made quite the progress we had been hoping to the previous days due to high winds so the goal for today would be to get to Maple Mountain.  It was mostly overcast but the wind was very light and made paddling easy.  We slipped into Sucker Gut Lake, into the west arm of it and through a meandering stream into Hobart’s Lake.  I have seen recent photos and accounts of the water being very low in this area but luckily it was quite high and made paddling  very easy.  We made good time and started off towards Hobart Lake, the trailhead for Maple Mountain.  As we approached Tupper Lake we heard some rushing water, wondering what it was – there was no portage on the map.  When we got to the source of the sound, we found it was a beaver dam.  There were no obvious lift over or portage spots that people have used so we chose the right side of the dam to stand on the freshly cut and placed logs the beaver had put on the dam to stand on while we pulled the canoe over.  We paddled to the other end of Tupper Lake, looking at the map as to where the trailhead would be but it was easy to find only thanks to the ribbon tied to a branch where we docked the canoe.  There’s the ruins of an old ranger cabin, a spring and an old rusty bed at the beginning of the trail to Maple Mountain.
After eating a quick lunch and hanging our food in a tree, we headed off up the trail to Maple Mountain.  The hike was welcome contrast to the paddling and to give the arms a rest. I have never seen so many mushrooms in both number and variety in one place before, in the lower path.  The upper part near the summit, there’s an old rusty leaning ladder to get up the first five meters or so, then a scramble to the top.  It was partly cloudy at the top and the view was spectacular, especially with the changing fall colors. There’s not many trees at the top of Maple mountain apparently due to a fire set by the fire tower rangers’s kids playing with fire at the top a while ago.
After taking in the view and waiting unsuccessfully for the clouds immediately above up to clear for some good lighting for photos, we made our way down and camped at the site on Tupper Lake.  We took photos of the sun as it set behind Maple Mountain.  It was neat surprise to see the previous campsite guests had set up a fire so we just had to light the birch bark.  In fact, most of the campsites we saw or visited happened to have ‘wood fairies’ as we called them, or in other words some considerate pay-it-forward previous inhabitants that had gathered or stocked some wood campfires, but I don’t think I have ever seen someone set up a whole fire ready to go before for someone else – just light and go!
 In the evening as the sun was going down, we also heard first, then saw two moose on the opposite shore of Tupper Lake in the swamp.  Unfortunately they were too far to get a good photo of, even with our 200 and 300mm lenses on our SLR cameras.

Day 4
We got out of Tupper/Hobart Lake and back to Sucker Gut, then went towards the north arm of Lady Evelyn River.  Our intent at the start of the trip was to go up The North Arm to Katherine Lake and down the South Arm to Willow Island Lake (as per the trip in Kevin Callan’s Top 50 Canoe Routes of Ontario), but since we only had 7 days to deal with and we got somewhat delayed, we chose to just do two portages and camp at Centre Falls for the night, then come out the same way we came in.  Frank’s Falls has a good practice portage on it, then a longer one to Centre Falls.  We left the canoe at the portage and just took our gear.  Centre Falls is pretty amazing,a wide cataract about 25feet high.  There was quite a good volume coming over the falls from the recent rains and it was loud.   
Camping at Centre Falls was fun, if not strange.  I have never had the opportunity to camp right next to a large waterfall before, let alone one so large and loud.  But it was a novel thing to do, although we were grateful to get away from the roaring water and have some peace the day later after spending 18 hours by it.  I washed up in the chilly river and we spend much time taking photos of the scenic area both in the evening and first thing in the morning.

Day 5
After spending a bit taking some great photos of Centre Falls as the sun was rising, we packed up and got back to Sucker Gut lake, where we found a couple in a canoe (one of only 3 canoes we saw the entire time) taking in Franks Falls.  We went north around the point and turned southward again to get to Willow Island Lake.  The day was absolutely perfect for paddling – bright sun, comfortable temperatures, glassy waters, zero wind, awesome fall colors everywhere.  We located the first 500mof the portage to get to the West expanse of Lady Evelyn Lake.  The portage was decent, we did it in 1 ½ carries, leaving the canoe part way after my shoulders had enough and returning for it after dropping the other two bags I was carrying at the end of the portage.  This unnamed lake was quite nice and serene,.  We ate a quick lunch and paddled the short km or so across.  We didn’t immediately find where the next portage started and landed at what looked like a sandy beach campsite just on the right of the creek.  The portage was actually across the small creek along the left, and we hopped across a log and completed in the next portage in a single carry.  We were then back on Lady Evelyn.   We made our way through all the beautiful small islands in the south of the lake and northward.  We wanted to go through Sugar Lake and our goal for the night was two more portages to an unnamed lake south of Sugar Lake.  
 We made our way up to the eastern shore of the Western part of Lady Evelyn and into a beautiful small creek.  A kilometer or two in we got to the first portage towards Sugar Lake.  During the portage there’s a fork towards Angler Lake to the north or Sugar Lake to the east, and we went towards  Sugar Lake the way we planned.  There, there was a first unnamed small lake to be paddled across.  We had a little difficulty locating the start of the portage and Peter had to get out to find it.  It’s on the left.  We finished this last portage for the day and ended up on our destination goal for the day.  The campsite location on the Chrismar map is a little off, we got out and looked around on a place that looked like it hadn’t been used in quite a while, although we saw an very old firepit…  the actual campsite is on a rock ledge more to the west.  This lake was very serene, the campsite is pretty awesome, too with an easy spot for getting things out of the canoe, a good firepit, some nice options for tent locations, and rocks to jump into and easily get out of the lake.  We jumped in the cool lake to wash up and enjoyed the rest of the sun and the day after we spread all our gear out to dry out.  Dinner that night was great, we had reconstituted homemade chili, a toasted ciabatta bun and some cheese.  The only trouble we had was finding a place to hang our food for the night…  we walked all over in the bush for at least a half hour looking for a decent spot to do so but couldn’t find any.  Actually in the end we found a half decent spot in a pine tree pretty close to the camp that took a few tried to get the rope over a branch.

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