Day 6
After
breakfast, we packed up and paddled the very short distance to the
portage. This portage was a bit
nasty. It’s good we tackled it first
thing. The takeout is boulder strewn
into the water has no decent place to land a canoe, and you have to take your
gear and canoe out while teetering on rock points. Then negotiate all the boulders to the other
side. At least it is a somewhat short
portage. But, the worst part is when you
think it is over and get back into the canoe, you round the corner only to find
more rocks across the entire water. We
had to get our gear out again just to portage about 30m over the boulders. Then, after that there are many shallow rocks
in some narrows you have to negotiate to get to the main body of Sugar Lake,
although the good thing is if you navigate properly and go slowly you can
barely manage to do it without scraping up the canoe or running up on rocks.
We
paddled across Sugar Lake towards the long 1500m portage. At the very end of an inlet, there’s a place
with aluminum boats (presumably used for fishing) strewn all over… that’s where
the portage starts, although it wasn’t immediately clear until we got out for
some recon. The loaded up and started
down the portage. It wasn’t too bad of a
portage. We did it in a single carry,
although we stopped twice for rests.
Then we got to the end at the East part of Lady Evelyn, made our way
north to the channel that lead back to the dam.
The weather again was gorgeous.
We got to the second to last campsite before the dam at about 2:00. The campsite looked like a nice one so we
just decided to camp there. The
alternative would be keep pushing to Mowat Landing, return the canoe and drive
back until early in the morning, but it was very nice out, so no rush. That campsite was up on a large flat rock on
the side of the channel, and had a good tent spot back in the woods and a
thunderbox (a rarity in this area). We
had an afternoon nap just lying on the rocks there, while the sun was in and
out of the coulds. We took advantage to
take some good photos in the evening during the golden hour. Again, the fire wood fairy was here, and
there was a good stockpile. Some was
even covered from the rain by an old steel sheet. I think this was the only campsite that we
contributed to the existing wood pile. 
I
suspect during the summer this would not be as great of a campsite, since it is
the main traffic channel for the fishing boats to go over the dam to Montreal River,
but at this time of the year, probably less than 10 went by when we were
there. On the other hand, warmer weather
would mean good swimming, as there are some good jumping spots from the rock.
Day 7
Last Day, short
day. We took our time packing up, then
headed off, over the familiar dam back to Montral River, and back to Mowat
Landing, where we put everything back in the car, drove back to Smoothwater to
drop the canoe off, then continued back home.
It was a good day to go back as the encountered quite a bit of rain on
the way back. The fall colors along the
highway were simply stunning though, much better than the week before on the
way up, the sides of the highway looked like they were on fire from all of the
bright reds.
This was a great trip
and would certainly be recommended. It
is a good mix of paddling large lakes, smaller lakes and channels, hike to the
top to take in some great scenery at Maple Mountain, and some good portaging as
well.
Links:
For GPS Track:
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