Adventures... West of Quetico
by Bryan Whitehead
We headed further out trying to find a long lost portage to Slender Lake - a fabled and hard to find Lake Steve had been to once years earlier.
Several tries finally got us to a portage - or what may have once been a portage in the days of birchbark canoes! Motors were taken off the canoes, paddles and life vests were used as portage yokes and we were off up the steep, warm, buggy (and often very muddy) portage. I took the motor off my canoe and strapped it to my backpack frame and found that this was indeed the better way to move a hot motor across a portage. However, I came back and staggered under the weight of my 85 lb. canoe as the thwart dug into my shoulders, clouds of mosquitoes swarmed around my head and sweat dripped into my eyes. Up and up the 160 rod portage trail went until we broke out onto beautiful... and aptly named Slender Lake.
Steep hills and towering rock cliffs lined this very deep, clear and narrow lake. Evidently a dam had been built somewhere on this watershed years earlier as the water level must have been raised 4 feet. The skeletons and stumps of dead pine trees lined the shore for miles. We fished and fished this obviously perfect fishing environment and caught - absolutely nothing. Nonetheless the beauty of this lake was undeniable. If I close my eyes I can see it even today.
The return trip, and even the now downhill and muddy death portage, seemed to take less time and our exhausted party collapsed soon after dinner.
