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I did the death march this year, but in the opposite direction you would be travelling - i.e. the same as Snow Dog. Other than a bit of muck here and there where the trail is close to the creek, its not bad at all, just long. I started thinking about it as "the long march" rather than "the death march". That first section goes through some nice woods, with just a little up and down.
The Fisher map shows two long portages, and it is possible to break the hike into two parts like that, but probably not worth the trouble since the padde at the break is only a 100 yards or so. That
first portage, as the fisher map shows, does go down to the water - watch where you are going there, to pick up the continuation, unless you do want to do that short paddle - otherwise, you just parrallel the stream. At the end of that "pond", there is a large beaver dam - on your right is an area of big rock - you should be able to find a small inukshuk (cairn) at that point. There is a string of four or five inuks that you should watch for to help find the trail - at one point, there is a "new" section of trail - the more heavily used old path is down in the swampy stuff closer to the creek - the inuks take you on a higher dryer bypass for maybe a hundred yards, before you rejoin the main trail. That second section stays closer to the creek, and is a bit wetter. That long march is somewhere between a mile and a quarter and a mile and a half if you don't do that short paddle. What isn't shown on the maps, is that there is one more portage (about 30 rods) - going downstream towards Delahey, this portage will be on your left, at the end of another pond section you'll paddle (land on sloping rock)- it was mostly dry, but the downstream end was pretty mucky for a 100 yards of so - not real deep, but mucky. Then you just have that one more short portage before you get to Conmee.
There were five major blowdowns - the first you would hit, I sawed out so you can climb over it, the rest should have fairly obvious goarounds.
Some nice creek paddling between Veron and Camel - 2 or 3 portages on there, not very clearly shown on my Fisher map, but should be easy to spot - at the end of the first one that would get you to the stream from Camel, its only a couple of hundred feet to paddle or less, across a wide spot in the stream, to where you pick up the next portage. That portage from Camel to the stream is kind of different, in that you are traveling through an old logged over area (or burn?) and all the surrounding woods is young growth - that was a nice dry walk.
I'd guess that the route to Delahey from Camel is the easiest way to get there, not particularly hard, but there can be some long days. I travelled form Brent to Veron in about 6 hours double portaging, but I travel light. The next day was a long day, with 13 portages to get to Kawnipi, about a mile above the outlet - you might want to break that up into two days travel, especially if you are coming from mid-lake in Kawnipi.
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