I'm sorry it took so long to post this promised report, and I won't waste time with excuses, so here it is.

The trip followed this route: From Prairie Portage east and north to Birch, Carp, Sheridan and That Man; then south through an unnamed lake to Emerald and back out via Carp. Assuming reasonably straight paddling between major waypoints, the round trip from Prairie Portage is about 25 miles. With the estimated side trips, I'd guess 30 miles for the whole trip, not counting double portaging which would have added only an additional mile.

We did this relatively short loop in six days, taking time to spend two days on That Man and two on Emerald. There was a fair amount of rain before our June 24th departure and additional rain almost every day and night during our visit, so most of the portages were more or less muddy in places. Rain and wind limited the amount of fishing and exploring we originally planned to do, but it's a pretty area and subtly different from much of Quetico with a greenstone geology rather than the predominant gneiss in most of the park.

Most would not consider the portages too difficult, though they were plenty challenging for Kathi and I. We're going on 50 years old and enjoyed watching younger people bound across the portages while we took them easy. I intend to add portage descriptions to the portage database.

There were many good camp sites on Carp Lake, but quite a few people, too. The population thinned noticeably northward toward Sheridan though. We shared That Man Lake with two other parties, and apparently had Emerald to ourselves for two days. That's not surprising since Emerald was hit harder by the '99 windstorm than the other Canadian lakes we saw . Decent campsites seemed sparse on Emerald. Several were ruined by felled trees but they could be cleaned up with significant work.

We camped somewhere near the old iron mine on That Man. We couldn't locate the mine, but we did find the remains of several old log cabins and some small trash dumps. Nature has been recycling the trash and they looked more like potential historical sites than polluted areas. Still, they're the only actual trash dumps I ever saw in Quetico.

There were a few pieces of 1" diameter, stone, core samples laying around in the area of our camp as well as some small pieces of the iron ore. I'm not sure, but I think the mine dates back to the 30's.

The portages from That Man to Emerald were not very muddy, but that's only because they were so steep. But I always wanted to see Emerald, so up and down we went. In spite of the wind damage there, it was worth it. We had traveled only a relatively short distance but had a major lake all to ourselves. I also finally discovered that the water in Emerald Lake really is green. In fact, when the lighting is right, it is emerald green.

Probably no more than 10% of Emerald's lake basin was damaged by the wind, but it seemed to have treated the campsites like tornadoes do trailer parks. We only saw about 50% of the lake, but found only one decent camp. The view from our front porch was dynamite and the camp had several other natural amenities, but the back yard was total devastation.

I did very little fishing, but all evidence suggests there was good fishing to be had. Other fishermen had good reports and I saw some nice bass cruising in the depths. Some evenings were very calm at sunset and the bass started hitting something on the surface all over our end of the lake. Normally that would send me running for a Zara Spook or Baby Torpedo, but this time I just sipped on my coffee while I watched from camp. I eventually fell asleep listening to the splashes and the Loons.

We did not see much wildlife other than fish, chipmunks, loons, an eagle and other birds of prey. A grouse tried to chase me out of our camp on That Man Lake and the resident chipmunks kept rummaging through our packs. The only other mammal I saw was a beaver swimming across Emerald Lake. We saw many mammal tracks, though. I saw some I didn't recognize but we saw quite a few moose tracks including those of an adult with a calf on the south portage from Emerald to Carp. These tracks did not exist the afternoon before, so we had to assume we missed seeing the moose since the end of the trail was visible from our camp site.

We would have done more with less rain and wind, but I still contend that I have never had a bad trip to the Canoe Country. As a friend says, an important part of the experience is always the unexpected.

…Tom

Posted by Tom Swulius on July 22, 2000 at 02:57