Sunday
Next morning we were up early, breakfasted, packed and on the water by 7.50 am. We were now traveling southwest. As you might guess the wind had changed during the night and we were again paddling into a headwind, much stronger than yesterday. Three km. brought us to P9, 155 m long, leading to a 'small nameless lake'.
Brent reboarding after the portage
A further km and we arrived at P10, 190 m long, connecting the small lake with Freda Lake. We cut the portage short by dragging over some beaver dams near the end.
We carefully map read our way south west on Freda Lake, to make sure we followed the narrow channel into the main part of the lake and did not take a dead end. After 3 km we came to a shallow rocky channel which joins the north and south sections of Freda Lake. This involved lifting and dragging the canoe a few metres over the rocks. My flat water Kevlar canoe suffered. A further 5 km. into the head wind brought us to the end of Freda Lake and P11. This is 120 m long and connects with a small beaver pond. P12 is at the other end of the beaver pond. It is a rough and steep 204 m to get to Cariboo Lake.
Cariboo Lake is less than 3 km. long and we stopped part way along for lunch. We soon came to the meandering end of the lake leading to the Dog River and P12, connecting with a beaver pond on the Dog River. We hauled and stumbled with the canoe over several more beaver ponds on the Dog River and portaged upstream past some rapids (our P13, 14 15 and 16!). Eventually we emerged on Sulphide Lake.
After 1500 m on Sulphide we again made a 180 degree turn from southwest to travel northeast on another arm of Sulphide. After 4 km. we arrived at P17, 174 m long, connecting to Mekewap Lake, where we were attacked by clouds of mosquitoes along the portage trail. Mekewap Lake was supposed to be stocked and good for fishing, so we made camp on the south shore at about 3.30 pm, where the breeze kept the mosquitoes at bay.
Mekewap is a lake stocked with trout. Brent is an expert fisherman, but from the shore he got no bites. He then decided to try the middle of the lake, but with no better result, so we had to dine on our packaged food instead of trout.