I spent my third night again on Big Porcupine Lake. The wind really picked up as I was completing the 200m portage from Bonnechere to Big Porcupine, and I figured that the paddle home the next day would only include two easy portages so I'd stay on this lake again.

This is the last photo of the trip, since day four turned out to be an extremely difficult paddle home. The high winds from the previous evening continued until past sunset, and started right back up again just after sunrise. I was on the water by 8:30am, but the wind was already picking up, and by the time I reached Ragged Lake, whitecaps were already abundant in open water, making travel across wider stretches impossible. I was forced to paddle along shore, all the way around Ragged Lake, which took two hours instead of a simple 30-minute paddle across the lake. What was worse, though, was large Smoke Lake, and the wind was really blowing by the time I put-in after portaging from Ragged.

It took over three hours to paddle Smoke Lake on the way out, while on the way in, it took less than one. It didn't matter which way I was moving, the wind was always in my face, and there were very few areas of the lake that offered any protection from it. It was not a fun ending to what had been a good trip until then. I suppose if there were two people in the canoe, the going might have been a bit easier, but with only me against 30 km/h winds, progress was extremely difficult and slow.

» This image also found in: Algonquin Canoe Trip, May 2004

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