Adventures... West of Quetico
by Bryan Whitehead
Directly cross the bay several "fly-in" bases were busy, with colorful float planes roaring in and out from their docks. Tiny Nestor Falls was humming that cool gray June morning.
Once loaded, our fleet of canoes headed off across an arm of that giant lake, motors straining against the wind and the waves. After 45 minutes of full throttle cross lake boating we reached the stream and endless muskeg I mentioned at the start of the story. We left the choppy lake and moved relentlessly upstream. The spring waters were high with a brisk current - this segment of the trip would have taken days were we paddling it. The green underwater grasses waved in the current as we pressed Eastward.
The end of the Muskeg found us at a short portage. I got out of the canoe, grateful for the chance to stretch my legs, and began to remove the heavy Duluth packs. My buddy, already down the shore, motioned me to put the pack back into the canoe and give him a hand. To my astonishment, the other guys were pulling and dragging a heavily laden Grumman up and onto a makeshift wooden skid. The skid - there must be another word for these - was constructed years (decades?) earlier from the looks of the decaying logs. Rusty nails stuck up out of weathered logs - adroit and fancy footwork was required as we skidded the aluminum canoes on the elevated rack and over the short portage stepping and sometimes leaping from slippery log to slippery log. Keeping the canoes moving and sliding was the rule as we pushed and pulled the groaning Grummans and motors over the wet mossy logs and back into the water on the other side.
The first portage over, we fired up our tiny engines and continued up stream. The topography changed and became more interesting as we cruised deeper into the Canadian Wilderness. Occasional seaplanes could be heard overhead ferrying their clients to prime fishing spots. Another endless stretch of stream ended at still another small log skid portage. Again the canoes were dragged out of the water and across the wooden skids fully loaded, the small engines propped up and out of harm's way. Again, amazingly, none of our party got impaled on the long rusty nails that stuck up out of the crude and fragile wooden racks as we pushed and pulled the heavy canoes over.
