2015 is turning out to be a fucked up year

That week-end could not end fast enough. Hopefully most of the bad stayed there.

Between washing machine dying, lawn mower parts staying in my hands when I start it, and a slew of other problems, this was a horrible week-end.

Hell... my friends didn't even make it to Lac Vert.   Almost all routes to Lac Vert in the municipalite of Lac Ste Marie, have been damaged. One route  on wooden platform was completely destroyed 2 years ago with a Tornado.. [probably same time frame as the tornado that destroyed the wooden platform of l'ile aux juifs].

Other routes seemed to be either flooded or full of large downed trees.  From my understanding though my friends never made it on to Lac Vert, there is one 2km portage trail that makes it however, their 90lb wooded canoe was too much for that long trek.  THIS IS VERY SUCKY.   Lac vert and that area were part of my friends best camping spots. I had gotten hooked too and was planning another trip there for August.

I dunno what other Gods I've angered other than the canoe Gods. But it would be nice if things started to work out.   This morning other then all the other stuff I have to deal with , I have to call a Maytag repair man as my washing machine DIED on Saturday....in the rinse cycle of my 2nd load. I had 3 loads of laundry to do.

The only good thing to have happened so far in 2015, is I met a new friend in late April, and not on Plenty of Fish.  Not going to say much more except we have a nice time together.

Note: This is the 2000th blog post since 2006.... 

More about the Widerness camping trip Labour Day week-end - Part 3

If you want to find on google maps the spot where we actually camped, this is it.  This is one of two islands on Lac Vert, Last year we camped on the other island next to it.  The spot where we camped seems to be one of the highest points to jump into the lake and seems well known to all those who come to canoe-camp in Lac Vert.

View behind our tents, and where people would come to jump

You can see the beginning of the rainbow

More rainbow on Lac Vert

On the other side, where we landed, there is a jumping rope and a rope to help you climb  back out of the water. So the island is well known for jumping into the lake.

The jumping rope off Tree on island in Lac Vert

The jumping rope is dangling on a tree. you can see several generation of ropes, so it gets repaired when it gets too ratty.  There's a branch near the tree to help you grab the rope so you can use it to swing and jump into the water. My friends did it but I just wasn't feeling it.

The spot with the jumping rope was also a good fishing spot. We got dozens of walleye, also known as dore in French.  Most of which was caught and released. Only 6-8 made it to dinner, fish chowder.

Walleye fish chowder, very yummy

One of the bigger walleyes I caught at dusk and released

One of the many large walleye my friend caught.

After the big storm we had Sunday there was a double rainbow.  We were disappointed though we saw the end of the rainbow there was no pot of gold. Just water!

Teyha looking at the Rainbow :)

Sunset after the massive storm

On our way back to lac des Bagnoles on Monday, we stopped at the entrance to walk the portage trail to Lac Stick.  Was very pretty. The rain from the previous days had made many mushrooms grow

There were lots of these amanita mushrooms

stream between Lac des Bagnoles and lac stick

Lac Stick

Stream going into lac stick

The only disappointment, is while we did see a few dragonflies around lac stick, we did not manage to photograph any. Saturday and Sunday were cloudy and I know dragonflies tend to come out more when it's sunny.

Canoeing solo in my 12ft sportspal

More about the Widerness camping trip Labour Day week-end - Part 2

By the time we packed the canoes back with gear Friday morning, the fog had cleared and it was a beautiful sunny day. We crossed back the bay to the starting point and went back to our cars to add/remove gear for the trip to Lac Vert.  By then we'd seen 2 people arrive with motor boats, probably for  a day of fishing. We'd seen another group of canoe campers, who'd camped across the other bay overnight also gear their canoe up and leave.

Lac des Bagnoles once the fog cleared

My friends canoeing with their dog.

Then we canoed across lake towards a little island, and next to it is a passage that brings you to lac des roches. We were lucky it was not too windy. It was interesting paddling a canoe alone like it was a rowboat.

Me canoeing in Lac des Bagnoles on Friday

I found that if I go solo with this canoe, I have to use the entire back to sit to be able to paddle properly. I have to learn to travel even lighter. The gear was stacked pretty high.

I did ok considering it's the first time I used my canoe solo. But I had a hard time keeping up with my friends. I suspect if I had went a few more times over the summer, I might have kept up better. We canoed along lac roche and took the turn to go towards lac vert. We saw a few more people also canoeing. We stopped to check out one spot. It was ok.. So we moved onwards. I knew we were not going to camp on the same island that we did last year, and it was full of people already anyway as I canoed past it.

At some point I passed by 2 women, and they were like, they it's a woman solo in her canoe! And they were like, that's so cool.  It felt empowering :)

I could see my friend ahead, but there was also another canoe not too far away.  I stopped a few minutes to take the photo of a seagull sitting on a rock in the middle of the water.  and then I could only see one canoe at a distance and it wasn't my friends, no shape of a dog.

I fgured they went around the other side of the island so I turned there and started going around that island.  I heard a loud sploosh and saw that a girl had just jumped off a  15--20  drop rock and as I approached another one jumped.  As I crossed them going to a spot to be able to get out of the water we exchanged pleasantaries and I asked them if they had seen a canoe with a dog. They said no, but they had seen a dog on the island near the jumping point where they were, and the other pointed out it was a dog with a life jacket. 

That had me puzzled, as we had talked going further at the end of the lake.  I kept going , went around the island and around the point I stopped, I needed to relieve myself as well as needed to be out of the sun for a few minutes.  This is when I encountered the water snake.

Water snake in lac vert

Water snake swimming away

It didn't stop me from jumping knee deep into the water, once I figured the spot the snake wanted to hang out in.  After a break I continued going around the island. I remember my friends missing me last year, because they hadn't gone quite far enough around an island. So each time I'd see a new alcove in the shape I'd be hopeful that they had landed there, and then I saw their canoe and their orange tarp put up so I'd spot it from a mile away...

Where they had landed you can't see from the other island or the channel between them, so I'd missed them going there.

Another snake I saw

Where we camped, right behind our tents is the high water jumping point.

Interesting stump

This dead tree broke forming almost a pentagram.

More about the Widerness camping trip Labour Day week-end.

The trip was an adventure. When I got to Hawksbury I stopped at the McEwen on the 17, just down the road from the Canadian Tire and Walmart. I bought worms for the first time.  So when I was paying, the clerk asked me if I wanted a bag, I said no, the worms wouldn't mind. The guy behind me asked "What if they got away". I replied "bah, I'm faster then they are. They aren't going anywhere".

We met up in the Walmart parking lot, between 5:30 & 6pm. We then drove to Lac Ste Marie by the 50, then the 5, and then the 105.  A bit past chemin Ste Marie we take the road to Lac Peminchigan and then drove down that road. At some point my friends stopped, perplexed, as the sign that usually advertises which lakes are available from the road was ripped off and there was a huge "PONT FERME" sign.  Since we both have SUV's we decided to investigate. From my friends memory this had to be the right road.

The road itself compared to when I last used it 2 years ago has deteriorated visibly due to rainfall and erosion. When we got the the bridge, again a huge PONT FERME and "passage interdit". This was a small bridge over a small creek, that techinically we wpould have been able to drive through with our trucks. The bridge had been repaired completely with new wood. We walked across it, all 6foot of it. Jumped across it, and then decided to go one truck at a time. THeir truck has a winch, so if something happened we would have been fine.

In the end the bridge was fine, and like good Quebequois we proceeded on. When we got to the parking lot on the edge of Lac de Bagnoles, we found not only that were was 4-5 vehicles there, but 2 small cars. Not sure how they got down the road, but they did.  There was also a jeep with a trailer holding 8 canoes. Like really? DOwn that road?

What surprised me is that there was also guys from Ontario. I mean I know Quebequois don't listen very well ....

By the time we got our canoe's in the water and packed it was dark. But we were going to camp just across the bay, and we did it using head lamps.  We set up one tent and hunkered down for the night. The next morning we woke up to heavy fog on Lac des Bagnoles. It was really awesome.

Tayha on the edge of Lac des Bagnoles

My friend looked like an elf or tree sprite here

Sun coming up through the fog on Lac des Bagnoles

Loon stretching

Loons meeting in the fog

A sampler from long-week-end trip

Lac des Bagnoles in the fog

Lac Vert

Lac Vert

My biggest Walleye

An even bigger Walleye

After the storm a rainbow

Sunset on Lac Vert

Wilderness here I come!

Today I am going canoe-camping in the Gatineau region. Will be camping somewhere around Lac Vert, the one that you can portage to from Reservoir du Poisson Blanc.  I'm specifying it because there is another Lac Vert not that far away from the one we are going to.

We will go to Lac Ste Marie, and then continue to some small road that will take us to a parking lot on the edge of Lac des Bagnoles. [I always wonder if the lake has an old car graveyard].  From that lake we will go to Lac des Roches, and then make our way to Lac Vert, which has one of the most beautiful shades of green for a lake in Quebec.

This time we hope to camp at the further end of the lake, not on the really big islands.  I'm so excited. I love canoe-camping, and this time I'm even canoeing solo. I'm going with a couple but paddling my own canoe.

Which reminds me one of my favourite sayings "Love many, trust few, always paddle your own canoe".

I'm waiting to go meet my friends in Hawksbury and then head over to the Gatineau area. I'm so hyper right now, I can't wait to leave!

Bear with me....

What I forgot to mention when going on about the Butane stove is that I finally bought some "bear spray".

Basically it's a form of hot pepper spray.

I had to sign a paper that said that it was to defend myself from bears in the woods, and not to use on humans in a crowded metro for instance.


So between my 2 bear bells and the bear spray I'm ready for camping anywhere...

2013 has been a good camping year

So far it seems this summer I have camped out 23 days. There could have been 4 more times but things just didn't turn out as expected.

I seem to sleep so much better out in the wilderness in a tent. There should be at least 4-6 more nights of camping , hopefully there's 10 nights of camping left this year.

Wilderness camping - Some people unclear on concept

Wilderness camping - that is camping in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity, no hot water, no washrooms, no garbage cans etc.   If you're going to be camping in the wilderness, the first thing you have to take into consideration is to leave the area you've been at in the same pristine condition as you found it. 

The campsite rule. You must leave the campsite in as good or better condition then you found it in. That means you do not leave your empty beer bottles or pop cans. You don't leave your candy bar wrappers or your box of cereal lying around.  Since there is no washrooms, there is nothing wrong with leaving your urine or feces in the woods. It will decompose and make compost for the forest.  HOWEVER do not leave your toilet paper or wet wipes, tampons, pads or condoms. Those can all be burned, if fires are permitted because it's not too dry, or they can be collected in a bag and thrown out later. 

It is particularly disgusting and revolting to get to a wilderness campsite and wander the woods around it to find all these little mounds of toilet paper, not one or two but 30 or 40. Please people have some consideration. Bleached toilet paper takes longer to decompose then your excrement.

If you're going to burn wood, look for dead trees. DO NOT CUT LIVE TREES. For starters wet wood just makes smoke and really doesn't burn well, secondly you're destroying a live thing. Any forest has plenty of dead trees. You can tell because it has no leaves, no needles, it's very dry and if standing if you push it a little it will just fall down. Or alternatively it's already on the ground. 

It sucks to go to places like Lac Vert, off the beaten path to find that some asshole has been there before me and left traces of his passage.