The Big Rain

6/26/2007 -- Knife Lake, BWCAW, MN

Not much progress today. We've only canoed about 3 1/2 miles. After breakfast on Carp Lake, Crew 2 made it through the series of portages to get to Knife Lake, which took a couple of hours. We slipped past Robbins Island and made it to a campsite on the south shore where we decided to have lunch.

Keith McCann and I fished for a little while, which was somewhat successful. I caught four smallmouth bass, only one of them a "keeper." But since one fish wasn't enough for a meal, I released it as well. It was great fun catching fish, something I haven't done in years.

While we were fishing, it started to rain and big thunderheads appeared on the western horizon. Lightning soon followed and the rain started to come down hard.

Unfortunately, all of us were completely soaked and in need of a dry change of clothing. No one had hypothermia per se, but there were eight cold guys in need of dry clothes. Not only that, but the afternoon had progressed to the point where canoeing to another site further up the lake was pointless, so we decided to stay at the site for the night and worked as a team to set up tents.

Four guys held up the tent fly, while the other four erected the tent underneath it. Once each tent was up, we'd attach its fly and move on to the next tent. That way, we were able to put up all four tents without getting them soaked.

Today's biggest challenge was hanging bear bags. Thick ground cover made it difficult to walk outside the site, then the trees were either birch trees with no big, accessible branches for a bear rope, or they were tall pine trees, on which most of the lower branches were dead. We struggled until 9:30 or so putting up the bear bags, by which time the mosquitos were out in full force. We needed our head nets and long sleeves to protect us from the bloodthirsty swarm.

The guys in the crew are not pulling together well yet. Schyler is not taking charge, whether it's due to his illness or inexperience as a leader. He is not interested in pushing himself or his crew, whether it's doing all of the daily camp chores or setting goals for the trek. We'll see what happens tomorrow.