Humidex

It's been a filthy hot week up here in the northern wilds, so I've been swimming before and after work in Clearwater Lake on a regular schedule. We get two radio stations up here: Community radio WTIP - 'The Tip' - and a terrible Canadian rock station out of Thunder Bay called 'The Giant'. It's fundraising week on The Tip so I was listening to some Fine Young Cannibals on The Giant while painting some signage in the workshop - I really enjoyed their weather reports, which are fairly accurate for our location. Of course they use Celsius! But my favorite part is the regular updates on wild fire smoke- and haze-forecasting and the use of 'The Humidex'. This is Canadian for 'heat index'. Today the Humidex reached 35!!! 44-thousand hectares or forest were burning out of control, haze everywhere! Whoa!

When the heat wave hit the north I knew it was time to trim down on the hair. I gave myself an emergency hair- and beard-trim with a tiny scissors, looking in a tiny mirror, but I think it turned out OK. I kept trimming here and there for several days as I discovered lingering longies, and my brains have breathed perfectly throughout this spike in the Humidex.

This abnormal humidity-event was capped today by an unusual storm, which dropped 9 inches of rain in total on July 20. I awoke to a strobe-light monsoon at 4 a.m., and between then and 8, we got 8 inches, which nearly sunk the fleet. Had we not gone out in the storm at 7 a.m. to emergency bail the vessels, they probably would have sunk. All our roads were washed out. I spent the day shoveling gravel into the roads-turned-stream, and then after dinner it rained another inch. The lake is up nearly a foot already in one day!

And yet the humidity persists and I sit by my fan... I cannot get far enough north to escape this heat, this suffocating Humidex... These fires of summer...

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Addendum (7.22.11): I wanted to also note the concept of a 'personal humidex'... as in: Geesh, my humidex is at 50c right now... I need to jump in the lake.

Cloud camp

One of my goals for the summer was a multi-night solo camp, so last week when I was the only one off work I set out on a trip to a nearby 'mountain' lake that was full of brook trout. These are not actual mountains, but the eastern section of the boundary waters is often called the 'Minnesota Mountains' - and it is exceptionally rugged terrain. The overall elevations are not impressive on paper, but the climbs you can find here are certainly challenging, especially with a full pack and canoe on your shoulders.

My destination was 'three lakes in' and well above neighboring West Pike Lake. To get there, I paddled the entire six miles of Clearwater after the day's work was done, into an east wind, then portaged 214 rods to West Pike, then paddled a short distance to the final portage, which was 80 rods of steep climbing. It's like carrying a canoe and full pack up a ladder made of wet rocks and roots, and I was shot by the time I reached the top, where I saw the lake's only campsite unoccupied (whoo!). By this time I had about 30 minutes of light and there was thunder on the horizon, so I paddled across to the site and got to work on my rain fly and hammock.

Since our Clearwater Loop trip I've been fascinated by hammockry, and I intend to camp only in hammocks if possible from here on out. It's a good thing I brought that rain fly, because five minutes after I set it up over my hammock the rain started, along with energized wind. I was too tired to start a fire in the rain with wet wood so I quickly cooked a few Zup's wild rice brats in the frying pan and writhed into the hammock for the night, where I sipped on whiskey and read a large slice of Bill Bryson's Walk in the Woods, which was given to me by a guest that had hiked three days on the Border Route Trail the week before. All the while I watched lightening and listened to the thunder and rain.

It seemed the clouds were right on top of me.

The next day I had a delicious breakfast: One pound of thick pepper bacon (also from Zup's!) and four eggs, with an entire pot of coffee... Then I tested the box shitter... Then I sawed up and split a couple large chunks of cedar and read more of my book, before heading out to look for brookies. I got about halfway around the lake on my first trolling run when I caught a nice 11-incher (below). Later I got a foot-long brookie in the same area, casting the same lure, but with the added bonus of seeing the strike, which always thrills me (he escaped getting his picture made, the rascal!). Had I not brought a pile of delicious meats with me, I would have eaten a great brookie dinner, but I was well-meated so I let them go.

I didn't fish very long. Like solo camping, solo fishing is relaxing but lonesome. I'd much rather have company.
Solo camping did offer the opportunity for lots of hammock-reading and note-taking for my book project, thinking, and napping. The sunset on night two was outstanding, and I cooked my brats on a one-person cedar fire, making sure to leave plenty of good split firewood for the camp's next visitor (bonus camping points!).

Click images to view full size panoramas

Since I had to work at 1 the next day, I planned on getting up at first light and setting a course home, but I awoke to the densest fog I have ever seen. My hammock was maybe ten feet from the shore, and I couldn't see the lake. Could barely see the tree my hammock was hanging in! It was an odd feeling, like cloud camping. Regrettably, I didn't get a photo of this, but I'm sure the Fuji wouldn't have done the scene justice. I went back to sleep for another hour (or two) and then had to turbo-paddle to get back to the lodge by noon-thirty. Being out of the office and up here for over two months is starting to show - I worked a full shift and cooked dinner for 16 and wasn't even sore, even though the entire adventure required a great deal of energy.

July is here and there is lots more to do: I'll have posts on berry picking (strawberries are here!) and slip bobbering leeches on a dynamite walleye lake in the near future. And next week I am heading west, meeting up with Slowhand Lucious, Chinwhisker Charlie and Warden Cass for some big water trolling and cabin shenanigans at the other end of the boundary waters.

Solstice Wolf

I spent a whole summer up here and never saw a bear. Or a wolf. Less than two months after getting up here this year and I've got both of them in my sights, plus a mamma moose and a baby moose and a bull moose. Ever since I saw those dark black wolves skipping across two feet of snow on Squirrel Lake at about 80 mph back in Wisconsin, I've been yearning... aching... for another encounter with the canine rex of the woods, and on the longest day of the year, my wish was granted.

Click pic for big version

I was out in the remotes, driving a hiker to the far end of the park, when we came around a corner and saw it running directly at us, up the roadway... It's a baby moose, was my first thought, but it quickly stopped it's trot and wheeled to the north, escaping our sight up into the brush... And there was no question, that was the closest I'd ever been to a timber wolf, and it was a lunker. I stopped the truck where it ran in and whispered out... here, chip chip. whoo whoo whoo...

Nothing. The woods shimmered, we're hiding him, get along, so long, so long.

So we proceeded, never got a picture, goose-bumps both. I told the hiker, most folks never get that close, I've not done it, no, that's a rare thing you just experienced... I rolled down the window and gave a loud yip into the wilds. That's something most don't get to see, that's a good omen for your hike. We both smiled... We knew it was special.

I marked the mileage and on my way back through I stopped on the spot... a straightaway a mile past a moose pond. No track though. No sign. A ghost like all the rest, probably... A long gravel road and just me and a truck and the silence. Three miles back to the turn, 14 miles to the road home. Nothing. Maybe he was watching me. Nope. Alright let's go... 

I took a sip of coffee and put the truck in gear, went around probably three corners and then I saw him again, running in the same direction but away from the truck this time. He was at least twice as far away this time, but you could still tell how big he was. A tall beast. Lanky. His head would have reached up over the front of the truck, easy. The legs on this thing... an easy trot, gliding west.

But this time it held the road, finally turning back and looking at me, idling in the road. I got my camera out and fired off a few shots, blindly out the window, mesmerized. Smokey mixtures of grey with red shoots out of the back, it gazed back at me with a calm curiosity, then trotted off to the north again... hiding out until the roadway was cleared... The same wolf twice! Or maybe it was a different member of the pack, if there was a pack on this long and rainy day, this solstice, noon exactly.

Nice print, notice the next step in the upper right.

I caught my breath and pulled up to where it dissolved into the woods, put the truck in park and got out, leaving the door wide open. Up ahead I caught the tracks in the shoulder of the forest road, big wolf tracks, almost as big as my hand out-stretched. There was moose tracks on the same line, too. Was my boy following the moose? Coincidence? Hard to say. Back to the truck and home, full of hope, excitement, coffee. Back darkness, today we appreciate the light.