I kept thinking – “Give it time! You’re not 25 anymore – it takes longer!” However, after a visit to the doctor and an ultrasound and x-ray later, it looks like a partially torn tendon in my rotator cuff and a 5 mm. Three extra-strength ibuprofen daily were also a part of the answer.Īs I write two months later, the pain is still there. For the rest of the trip, my right arm was operating at 70% as I adjusted my stroke and canoe hoisting technique, and even the way I slept, so as not to aggravate the shoulder. We were on our way back to do a two-person carry of the canoe over the logs when I slipped and fell awkwardly, landing on my upper right arm and shoulder. The light pack that he was carrying actually provided a bit of a cushion for his fall. Both Max and I took tumbles as we hopped from log to log. The trail clearing at the top end gobbled up some time, as did the scampering over the logjam itself near the end. We pulled up to it around 2:15 and only paddled away at about 4:30. The mess of a logjam you see below is the one which took us the longest to deal with. Lunch spot on the Pikitigushi before Logjam #3 Logjam #3: Sometimes we get nostalgic for the good ol’ days!īut there are benefits too! At the put-in, I fired up the iPhone and took another look at the saved image of the first of the four logjams we’d be facing. Now we take cell phones, a Garmin GPS device or two, an inReach Explorer for off-the-grid emergency communication, and two or three digital cameras – point & shoots and DSLRs – and jars of batteries and power packs. We’d bring five or six rolls of 36 100 a.s.a. Our manual-focus Nikon SLRs rarely came out during the day.

Seeing the photo below of me staring at the iPhone in my hands is yet another reminder of how canoe tripping has changed since our first trips in the late 1970’s! Back then it was a half-dozen paper topos at $2.50 a sheet and maybe a paperback for rainy days. We’d meet the couple from Texas staying at the camp a few minutes after we had loaded up the canoe and were ready to start. It is a fairly well-used trail with Bear Camp guests walking it to access the fishing spots below the rapids. We had spent a half-hour the evening before walking to the put-in and doing some trail work at the same time. Looking south down the Pikitigushi from the culvert crossing by the Bear Camp From the Bear Camp guys, we learned that water levels were at an almost historic low.

Topographical maps still show the portage to which Bell refers. Using it would eliminate fifteen kilometers of paddling around the Big Bend.

Once below the Bear Camp rapids, recent satellite images showed that there were four logjams and one more set of rapids to deal with.

the measured on-the-river distance was 50 km. as the crow flies from the Bear Camp to the mouth of the Pikitigushi on Windigo Bay. We set off from the Bear Camp knowing this – Lount, who had gone up the river as far as Pikitigushi Lake (named Round Lake in the report): Now in a report he contributed to the Geological Survey of Canada Report of Progress For 1871-1872, he summarized the work of his colleague, a Mr. He had come up the west side of Lake Nipigon in 1869 and written a report on his findings. The earliest reference I found to the bottom stretch of the Pikitigushi was by Robert Bell of the Geological Survey of Canada. We had little information except for some satellite scans courtesy of Google Earth and Bing and the Ontario Government’s map site. Now we were heading down the last fifty kilometers of the river to its mouth on Windigo Bay on Lake Nipigon. Max made clear we would be doing no such crazy thing. Also indicated is my brilliant idea to deal with three of the four logjams with a 5.2-km. Location of the four logjams on the Pikitigushi, as well as the historical Big Bend portage.

Upper mud river lake map