Map provided courtesy of Toporama which contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. I have marked my route in blue and portages in red. 

It was still very overcast when I awoke around 7:30 AM. The world was damp, but not soaked. From this, I concluded that I was lucky to get away without a heavy rain over the night. I guess the chimney on the site was not wet certified, after all. 

I got a fire going in the fire pit (rather than in the chimney) to boil some water for coffee; I'd much rather look out at the lake than at a stone wall. That would make me feel a little Claustrophobic. When I explained this to the chimney, it responded by saying, "Fine. Soot yourself!"

The weather was chilly, but the fire certainly helped to mitigate that. I made my normal first-morning breakfast of egg and bacon wraps. I precook both the eggs and bacon at home for the first breakfast of any canoe trip and freeze them before heading out. This allows me to simply warm them up over a fire on the first morning and get them in my belly faster. 

For my second night of the trip, I booked a site on Islet Lake, which was only a few kilometres to the southeast of where I was. Despite having two portages to get there, it would be a very short day of travelling, so I wasn't in a great hurry to get moving. I enjoyed an extra coffee and dillydallied in the morning with my chores in breaking camp. When I checked the weather forecast, they were calling for sunny skies later, anyway.  Why not hold off a little for that?

I finally got my carcass off the island at about 10:45 AM. It was a short paddle across the bay to the portage that would take me to Hot Lake. Arriving at the portage, I turned to get a wider photo of the north end of Rain Lake and the island that was my home for the previous night. The skies were still portending gloom, unfortunately; the sunny skies had yet to show themselves.

Deciding my choice of route for the trip at the last minute, I had not really done much research about the route, and had no idea what to expect with portages. I would just trust whatever Maps by Jeff, my guide for the route, displayed for me. Looking up the portage trail, I gulped; it was straight up at the outset. 

One nice thing, among many, about Jeff McMurtrie's Algonquin maps is that he provides information about difficult portages. He has a colour-coded system, and on long and/or difficult portages, he displays elevation changes, often with notes. Well, on this particular portage, after seeing the elevation change in the first 20 meters, I referred to Jeff's map to see what was in store for me. It was coded as a yellow (the easiest) and didn't have any major elevation differences noted. I would be going up a total displacement of 18 meters  to Hot Lake, but that is relatively benign in the grand scheme of things. I deduced that the initial vertical assault in front of me would be short-lived, and the rest of the portage would be pretty straightforward. Indeed, that would be the case. Thanks, Jeff! Your maps are awesome and let us know exactly what we're in for. 

About a third of the way down the trail, I began to think that I might be the first person to use the portage for the year. I came across a shed moose antler that was just lying smack dab on the portage trail. Unfortunately, later in the season, I feel like it might be disturbed or taken. 

Bull moose shed their antlers every year in the late fall and early winter. This helps them conserve much-needed energy over the lean winter months. They begin regrowing them again in the early spring in order to use them during the rut in the autumn to attract mates and compete with other bulls. Over the warm months of the year, they regrow their antlers at a rate of about an inch per day. I guess the idea is that the bigger the antlers, the more attractive the bull. And you know what they say about moose with big antlers, right? 

Big shoes. 

Unfortunately, despite the weight of such an item (moose antlers, on average, weigh between 40 and 70 lbs!), some people feel that they can take such things home from the park as a collectible. Rightfully, this is illegal. Moose antlers naturally decompose and are a source of nutrients for other creatures in the park. I hope other canoe trippers are aware of this and leave any antlers they come across in Algonquin undisturbed without getting the notion of returning home with a souvenir. Leave no trace, right? 

The rest of the portage was straightforward, although at times I had to look a little more closely for the trail. In the early spring, with no leaves on the trees yet, and the trail not used since the carpeting of the previous year's abscission, it might be easy to wander unwittingly off the path into the forest. I have done that before on previous trips. 

I arrived at the Hot Lake put-in next to a pretty little pine tree. 

I always find it interesting how some lakes get their commonly used names. Many locations in Algonquin Park get their monikers from European translations of the original Algonquin names or from the Europeans'  experiences when they first arrived at a location. 

It's a little-known fact, but there is a story about why that small lake is called Hot Lake. On one particular scorching summer day in early July in the 1660s, a group of French voyageurs landed on the shores of that tiny lake. Once putting their canoe into the water after the portage, one young man turned to the others, wiped his brow, and said, "It's hotter than a pair of deer-skin leggings full of pemmican barbecue!"

True story. 

It didn't take long before I was across Hot Lake and taking out to portage again on the other side. I snapped a shot of Hot Lake from the portage take-out. 

Within a few minutes of making my way down the trail, I encountered another item that made me think I was the first one through the route that spring; there was a problematic fallen tree across the path. 

I put down the load I was carrying, pulled out my saw, and took care of it. After 5 minutes, the trail was clear. 

Bah Ba Baaaaa! Whenever the evil scourge of winter blowdowns rear their ugly heads, Captain Cleartrail is there! Whenever a forest goes horizontal on a path, Captain Cleartrail is there! Whenever smallish trees get sleepy and go night-night on a portage, Captain Cleartrail is there! 

With sharp sawteeth comes great responsibility. 

The rest of the portage was obstacle-free and straightforward; there was no need for Captain Cleartrail to re-emerge. (It was just as well. There aren't many phone booths in the forest to get into character.)  

At the put-in on Islet Lake, I was beginning to think that the forecast of a sunny day was just a cruel hoax perpetrated by the Meteorological Service of Canada.

I put in on Islet Lake and decided I should probably drop a line in the lake to see if any trout might fancy my shiny, blue Little Cleo. I headed for the point on the north shore of the lake, out of the shallow bay,  and into the lake proper. 

I booked my second night on Islet Lake, but it was only 1 PM when I arrived at the lake. I had plenty of time to look for the nicest available site on the lake. The site on the point was fine, but it seemed a little dark and foreboding. I knew from my map that there was an island site toward the south end of the lake, so I paddled in that direction. 

I trolled along the way, but alas, the brook trout population of Islet Lake wanted nothing to do with my Little Cleo. Within a half hour, I was at the south end of the lake.  

I pulled over to check out a campsite on the eastern shore of the lake, but after looking out at the pretty island group toward the western side of the lake, I decided to head in that direction to look for my site. 

Blue skies began to poke through the gloomy clouds. Perhaps the Meteorological Service of Canada was legit, after all! 

I paddled over to the island site and was happy with what I found. It was a small site that wouldn't be able to contain a large group, but for lil ol' me, it was just perfect. I decided to stay. 

There was a bit of kindling left on the site, so I got a small cooking fire going, pulled out my chair, and made some soup over the fire with toasted naan bread. Yum. 

After lunch, I got my hammock up in a nice spot under some trees and gathered up a bit of firewood from winter blowdowns that were strewn about the island.  

It was getting a little later in the afternoon by that point and I was happy that I could have a short day just to relax. I checked the weather on my ZOLEO device and saw that it would be going down to -2 degrees Celcius that night. Brrrr. I would definitely need more firewood than what the island could provide, so I hopped in the canoe and paddled across to the eastern shore to look for wood. 

The Western  Uplands Backpacking Trail runs parallel to the western shore of Islet Lake. I walked up a small hill to the trail and took a peek. At that location, it looked to be the remnants of an old logging road. I found a decent amount of semi-dry blowdowns and brought them down to the canoe in a handful of trips. After a bit of sawing, I loaded the canoe and went back to the site to process the wood. This was followed by a short paddle amongst the islands in the bay in an attempt to troll for some brook trout. 

Alas, I would return to my island home, brook trout free. Sigh. I'm really good at fishing...not so much at catching, apparently.

I returned to the island and began putting on some warmer clothes for the night. The sun was getting lower in the sky, and the temperature was dropping fast. 

I made a nice dinner of rehydrated chilli that I enjoyed with some toasted naan bread over the fire. It was, as the young people say these days, "fire."

Sitting next to my fire, my view was to the east. When the sun began to dip over the horizon to the west, I carried my chair to the other side of the island with a tipple of whiskey in my cup and enjoyed a bugless view of a sunset on an Algonquin Lake that I seemingly had to myself. It was incredible. I never get sick of those moments.