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September 1, 2020 - Scarecrow Lake

Early start this morning as we had a fairly significant push to basecamp ahead of us. Despite the howling wind that continued all night, fortunately the air had calmed by the morning making our paddle across Smoothwater fairly pleasant. Eight portages followed, whith short paddling breaks between, fortunately most of them fairly short. The longest one was 1.3 km, just enough to get the heart pumping.

Paddling along.


A lot of this today.



We scouted a couple of campsites along the way and have selected the best as our camp 3 position for the attempt on North Peak in a few days time. As we approached the landing at portage number six, at the south end of Mihell Lake our way was blocked by the largest Bull moose I have ever seen. We stopped paddling and just drifted to get some photos. At first this big animal just ignored us and continued snacking on the plants in the water. After a bit he decided to move on along the shoreline and we moved inward towards the portage trail. At some point he must have felt threatenned as he turned and faced us while snorting and stamping his feet in the water. This was a little scary to see from such a large animal, even at 50m distance! As we paddled away he took off at a gallop in the other direction. We all felt fortunate to have witnessed this spectacular display, but decided to move on across the carry quickly to put more distance between us and an annoyed animal likely weighing more than all of us and our gear combined.

Departing onto Mihell Lake.


A big bull.


At Scarecrow Lake, I explored along the north beach looking for a campsite while Deb and Bill were working on their carry, but none was to be found here. Once all boats and packs were across, we paddled over to the old fire warden camp, catching some nice views of the towering molehill we are to climb tomorrow. The site here was not appealing and full of garbage, so we moved on out into the lake to a tiny little island which will make a suitable base for our hike tomorrow.

Ishpatina tower shows itself.


Our island camp.


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