superior01

Lake Superior Adventure 2001

I spent much of the winter daydreaming about and planning a kayak adventure on Lake Superior, and - despite a few glitches on the organizing road - eventually managed to get the party, boats and boat shuttle organized. I messed up our put-in day (somehow I can't tell Sunday from Monday, it seems) and we got an extra day at my parents' camp, but it did eventually all work out...

I planned the route from Michipicoten River to Agawa Bay, with a boat shuttle to pick us up at Agawa. This way, we'd put in at the outfitter's (Naturally Superior Adventures) and never have to strap boats to cars. As usual, packing up was a jigsaw puzzle, and this year's boats (particularly the three Current Designs Storms) had a lower capacity.

We had a relatively short paddle (maybe two hours) south along first a beach and then some cliffs, and Superior fortunately cooperated with calm conditions. Our first site was just inside the boundary of Lake Superior Provincial Park, though it wasn't at first obvious to me: the terrain matched the map, but I couldn't find any tent pads or a privy. The GPS showed another 150m, but since that was inland, I figured that I'd probably entered the coordinates incorrectly.

We camped on the cobble, which provided a surprisingly great surface for sleeping (then again, the previous year we'd slept on bare rock every night). Rebecca and I were on cooking duty, and we fried up a mess of fish my mom had donated and emptied my Nalgene of the white wine it was mysteriously holding.

The pictures at left were from the next morning. Maybe that's why they call it Smoky Point? It was a wee bit chilly that morning, but we had oatmeal, and within an hour it had turned into a stunningly beautiful day.

We stopped for a snack break at the next site marked on the map (Noisy Bay). Great spot, though it probably wouldn't have comfortably accompanied our three tents. We continued to Brule Harbour (at right) for lunch and aimed for Old Woman Bay for the night.

They say you can see an old woman's face in the cliffs. I imagined I saw it several times, but I don't think I ever did. Then again, I showed the picture on the far left to a friend after the trip, and he seemed to be able to see it no problem!

We didn't find the actual site (at the far end of the beach, across the Old Woman River) immediately, and I explored and picked up garbage for a bit and then stumbled on it. We set up and had a relaxing hot afternoon - I even brought out the kiddie pool and let water warm so we could wash without getting soap in the lake. We had a lovely chicken stirfry and a fire that evening, and disposed of our garbabe plus the stuff I'd collected on the beach in the bins at the public access.

Once again, we were unbelieveably lucky with the weather - the water was flat and we could look down at huge boulders and bits of shipwrecks on that day's paddle. Check out the third picture from the left - the red speck is a kayak. The cliffs really are huge.

We rounded Grindstone Point - and if you've ever paddled that area, you'll understand why they call it "grindstone". There are boulders the size of apartment buildings lurking just under the surface, and I can easily see how, if a wave picked you up and slapped you down on one of those, you'd be history.

Not surprisingly, there was a decent emergency site on Grindstone Point, with beautiful raised cobble beaches. Our destination, however, was the Red Rock River, and we still had to round Cap Chaillon (that's Rebecca rounding it above).

When we got near the Red Rock River site, we saw another group just pull into it. We weren't in a social mood, so we camped on the cobble beach on the other side of the river. From there, you could neither see nor hear the other site. Ours was a decent spot, though it offered very little respite from the blazing sun that day. We spent the remainder of the day swimming (I think I went in five times, though for no more than 2 minutes each time).

There was a good rock for sitting and filtering water, and I mixed up more than just a couple of jugs of juice and iced tea. I think that day's hot and sticky paddle had left us all dehydrated. Dinner that night was spaghetti (yum) and then Phil built a super-duper firepit and we roasted marshmallows and made s'mores.

I was really looking forward to the next day, because we'd reach Gargantua - and I didn't get to explore nearly as much of it as I would have liked to the last time I'd paddled in this area. The view at left was my first glimpse of the "mighty Gargantua" (you know that Ian Tamblyn song, which has the line "I have walked the agate beaches of the mighty Gargantua"? I couldn't get the song out of my head the entire trip).

Unfortunately, our run of good weather was over, and we hit nasty rain and winds, and thus chose to bypass Indian Harbour. The sites at the cape weren't considered suitable, so we continued on to Warp Bay. We arrived wet, cold, cranky, and very miserable. I think Superior was sending us a reminder...

I don't think the reminder came from Nanabozo, though - I'd made a tobacco offering at Michipicoten... Fortunately, we had some beef stew for dinner that night, and the hot apple cider didn't hurt either.

We'd been in such a cold hurry to get camp set up that we picked the first site we saw. Unfortunately, there weren't enough decent spots for all three tents, so Rebecca and I decided to relocate in order to get a good sleep. We were planning on two nights in the same spot here, and we figured we might as well have a nice pad for our tent. We got a great spot, but I drove Rebecca nuts with bear paranoia - there was a "bear sighting" sign up near the sites, and there was very definite evidence of a bear recently digging on the beach (some bright person had buried garbage, and bears can easily smell through three feet of sand).

The next day was hot and beautiful, and I reorganized the food packs while Rebecca washed our boats and the others washed themselves and did launtry. After lunch, we paddled out to the Devil's Chair (where Nanabozo rested after leaping across the lake from Thunder Bay, legend has it), and I made another tobacco offering.

I couldn't capture the ominous feeling that the Devil's Chair gave me with the camera. I do see why it was/is a sacred site for the natives. The sharp rocks all around its base are called the Devil's Frying Pan - and the water seethes over them on windy days. It really does look like a frying pan!

Rebecca and I continued on to Devil's Warehouse Island. We attempted to go to the top, but weren't in the mood for that much bushwhacking. We settled for skinny dipping in the protected bay at the northeast corner of the island.

Maybe the tobacco just wasn't good enough - the next day was simply awful. The fog was thick, and the winds high. It was the biggest water I'd ever paddled, and I wasn't entirely comfortable. Strangely enough, though, it didn't seem as nasty as the chop we'd hit on Georgian Bay the year before. I took no piktures this day - my camera isn't waterproof. We stopped for a snack break in Gargantua harbour (where we checked out the wreck in the harbour and borrowed a weather radio from a nice family from the Sault to check the weather forecast).

We stopped for a break at Rhyolite Cove, but the "problem bears" story posted on a tree there certainly didn't encourage us to stay. We headed for Beatty Cove. The fog was so thick that we had to paddle into every tiny bay, and I even turned the GPS on to figure out where we were. That handy tool pointed to the site exactly, not even 10m off! We lazed around at Beatty for the afternoon. The site has received really heavy use lately, and wasn't nearly as nice as I'd remembered it. I picked up some more garbage, and felt about as "wilderness-y" as I did when we were within hearing distance of Highway 17 at Old Woman Bay.

The fog STILL hadn't lifted by the next morning - doubly frustrating since we were sure it was a bright sunny hot day above the mist!

The fog did, eventually, lift, and it WAS a bright hot sunny beautiful day. The guys had paddled out and bought some whitefish and lake trout from some fishermen, and we stopped at coldwater creek so they could clean them.

Lunch was in paradise at Katherine Cove (in the protected bay south of the headland that defines the public access). Rebecca and I went for a hike along the trail (blueberries!) to ditch the garbage we'd generated plus the stuff I picked up at Beatty Cove.

Paddling conditions were ideal the rest of the day, and we did a 6km crossing (had the GPS turned on again) to Agawa Point. I figured we'd camp at a site on the point after we'd looked at the pictographs, but once again, the site wasn't the greatest.

The pictographs are definitely best viewed from the water (and there's no danger of touching them and thus decreasing their lifespan even further). We couldn't find the second site on my map, but we did find a whole bunch of sites that weren't on my (two year old) map on the Agawa Beach a few kilometers up from the public access.

Our last night was idyllic - the boys cooked the fish and dinner was delicious, we got a beautiful sunset, the water was warm enough to swim in, and I took a picture of Superior's agate cobbles that is now the wallpaper on my computer.

I love Lake Superior. Hopefully, I'll be able to put together a group for a trip from Hattie Cove in Pukaskwa to Michipicoten River in the near future - I'm determined to paddle Gitchee Gumee again, and the sooner the better.

So... did Johanna go again? Check it out on my homepage.