Out for a while

I'm heading to Fiji, Australia and New Zealand for a while. Check out my site with Ben who is coming with me for a chunk of it. benandrobdownunder.com

"TO THE LIMIT" - with the OPC Trippers

Alright, at the end of every summer of paddling the OPC trippers go on a trip with just themselves. Typically this is a trip which is used to relax and chill after a summer of hard paddling. This year however we had a different mission; to push our bodies and most importantly our minds to the breaking point and to show Algonquin park and the mighty Nipissing River who was boss.

I'm going to break it down for you day by day as deemed by those participants during the trip itself:

Day 1: Vacation
Entering the North West corner of the park we past through North Tea Lake (the scene of a storm that almost killed me last year) and Biggar Lake. While doing so we showed our paddling proficiency by passing lots of people all the while sporting a Jolly Roger out the back of my canoe.

Many pirate friends were made yet none would hand over any gorp despite repeated demands from our armada.

The victims (minus the two on the right, they left the next morning and paddled out to meet their mommy. but seriously they paddled out to go on a trip with their parents)

Day 2: Physical Annihilation

This all seems surreal now that I'm home, but this day started out beautifully as I was up for the sunrise. Check out the pictures.... it gave no hint at what the day would contain.

This was the last my fishing rod was seen intact as it conveniently broke in two on the next (first) real portage.

**Stop reading now if you don't like portaging insanely far, paddling insanely far, going crazy or crappy maps. **

After a breakfast of bacon and eggs (a tripping rarity) we (the four remaining) set off on our adventure. 10 minutes in we saw a dead beaver belly up down a tiny creek leading up to a 2.0 km portage. This would be our first of eight portages that day totaling over 8km. To add onto that was the over 25 we actually paddled. (I use the term paddled loosely as we had to drag our canoes up a couple creeks where the water was really low) What made this possible was the fact that we did all the portages in one trip, two people had barrels and canoes, one person a barrel and the wannigan (red box with pots and pans) and one person, deemed "paddles" had a barrel, the paddles, the day pack and other miscellaneous stuff. At some point along the portage you just tell your body that pain is only in your mind and remind your body that you are in charge here and it will stop when you tell it to, not the other way around.

This was one of the creeks we wandered up for a couple hours as it got smaller and smaller. If you and the people in the other canoe stood up you could just see their heads. Here is a picture of Jeremiah on the left and Kelsey on the right.

This was an intense 12 hour day and we FINALLY found a campsite at 8:30pm. A postage stamp sized thing that hadn't been used for a really long time, but I've never been so happy to find such a crappy site.

Day 3: Mental Decimation

Ever looked at a map and said "that doesn't look too far"? Ya, that's what we did. We forgot to factor in that for every curve on the map the river probably did 20. We passed through an old POW camp early on in the day which was cool as it had some log cabins still visible and fences and roads and stuff albeit all grown over.


After that the river looked the same for the next 8 hours and by the same I mean exactly the same. To compound this was the weather that day. It was overcast and the lighting never changed. It looked the same at 8am as it did at 5pm. It was like we were stuck in a time warp or on some sort of conveyor belt of water and bushes with a beaver dam here and there.

This is me looking over the shore only to see that it looked the same both ways and the end was nowhere to be seen.

I caught a Garder Snake.

Oh ya, we had lunch at a falls that was along a portage. I had to take this picture on black and white b/c otherwise you'd see the colour of the water, a scrumptious tea brown, yum.

We had a pretty good campsite that night but it was overrun with mice. We actually locked one in our barrel all night and it managed to take a taste of everything. Luckily we only had to eat oatmeal and then we were outta there. There is another story of a mouse but it's gross so I won't post it. It was at this campsite that the number of trout was crazy. Cleaning our dishes in the river obviously gets some food in the water and these brown trout were more than happy to eat it. They were everywhere. Unfortunately my rod was snapped and we had left the reel at a portage so I had to catch one in a bowl. My first trout.

Day 4 - Out of the Woods

If you survived Day 1-3 you were lucky enough to leave on day 4. We got picked up on Cedar Lake. Thanks Darryl for driving, it was quite the hike.

Kelsey and Charity paddling out.

Our family portrait.

This is back at camp with our driver. Darryl is the man, he drives for Pioneer all summer (usually a bus full of yelling kids) going all over the place. Without people like him we'd be going to Devine (the next lake over from Pioneer) alot.