A good trip, including that dam portage ~ May 23, 1996

David Heiller

Our canoe trip got underway with a thud last week. The goal was to get from Snowbank Lake to Ima Lake, which is only six miles. But one thing stood in our way from Snowbank to Parent Lake: ice.

The ice was an issue.

It was pack ice, rubbery sheets of it. Some the size of a table, some the size of a football field. Some thick and white, some black and broken, all sloshing together like ice in a glass.

We launched our canoes amidst it, and travelled a total of about 15 feet. We thought we could slip through the ice, but the leads closed up. We tried to blast through the rotten stuff like an Alumacraft icebreaker, but it was too thick for that. A whack with the paddle wouldn’t break it either.

The last thing we wanted was to get wedged in an ice jam. So we had to turn around, take out our packs, and carry the canoes 50 yards through the woods to open water.

As we approached the portage to Parent Lake, we saw that it was surrounded by half a mile more of the same jig-sawed ice. There was no way to get through it.

Oh, beaver dams, only bigger...

Dave, our unofficial leader, had an idea, like he always does. He spied a small creek from Parent to Snowbank on his map. We paddled to it. It was a creek all right, but we weren’t the first to find it. That honor would go to the beavers. They had made dams all along its half mile length.

These were not your Pine County beaver dams. These dams would have made voyageurs drool. Three and four feet tall, curving grace-fully from shore to shore, made of logs and sticks and mud and rocks. They were like Hoover Dams for beaver.

They were really pretty, except that they were in our way.

But Dave being Dave, talked Jim into it. That didn’t take much talking. Jim is always eager for adventures like this. It gives him something to talk about in case he can’t talk about all the fish he caught.

So they dragged their Old Town canoe over the bottom dam, then paddled as far as they could, then dragged it over another dam and paddled again, and dropped it over another dam, and so on, slogging through muck and scraping through trees and puzzling over which channel of water to follow to the next dam.

Paul and I dutifully followed, hoping with each step and each dam that we would not come to a dead end and have to go back the way we came. We didn’t know what was ahead. That’s what makes an adventure like this fun. But you hate to turn back.

Portaging Paul.

To say that Paul was not as enthusiastic as Jim would be an understatement of some magnitude. He fought off brush like it was his personal enemy. One branch swept his glasses off and into the bottom of the canoe. I always gain a new respect for the fine art of cursing when canoeing with Paul.

After about 90 minutes, just as Paul was taking his vocabulary to new heights, we saw the beautiful sight of Parent Lake, and the stream widened, and the beaver dams were behind us. What a great feeling of freedom! We had seen new country. We outsmarted the ice.

The ice didn’t seem so bad once it wasn’t hindering us. We canoed alongside it for the rest of the day. It made a light, tinkling sound as it moved, like a thousand tiny birds all singing at the same time.

This was a new experience for us, watching the ice go out. We were literally the first ones into this part of canoe country in the spring of 1996. We were a few strokes ahead of the open water and a few hours ahead the many other paddlers who would follow, looking for whatever they might find.

What we found was some beautiful new country. Like Ashub Lake. It’s just a little dot on the map, but one of the most beautiful lakes you could imagine. It is a designated trout lake. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has stocked it with brook trout. We didn’t catch any, but we sure caught the charm of the lake. With Disappointment Mountain in the background, the lake made you feel like you were in Glacier National Park, the water was that cold and pure.

We found a tremendous thunder and lightning storm on Friday night, May 17. Actually, it found us… maybe you too. But there’s something about a thunderstorm when you are camping that gives you new respect for Mother Nature.

It hit in the middle of the night. What a wonder to watch from a sleeping bag. Even through the top of the tent it hurt our eyes. It stayed over us like a bowl, roaring and pouring and making us think of our tiny, vulnerable lives.

Except for Paul. He slept through it. He was about as vulnerable as a grizzly bear in hibernation, and sounded like one too with his snoring. He was still trying to recover from the portage up the beaver dams, which he would make reference to every so often, when the right mood hit him.

Curses, foiled again... checking out that reel.

The one thing we didn’t find was fish. Maybe we were too early, or too unlucky. More likely, we didn’t know what the heck we were doing. We tried everything, every day. All our minnows and worms. All our lures. Even my Slug-Go. Nothing. Dave lost a big one when he couldn’t get his drag to work and it pulled his 10 pound test line tight and snapped it. That was as close as we would come to fish for supper.

But you can’t define a canoe trip entirely by the fishing. Jim did find other things to talk about. Like that dam portage.

And it was sure nice to return home. I’m always so happy to see my wife and kids. They seem equally happy. The canoe trip makes me appreciate them as much as the great outdoors. Even more.