we awoke to a pink sunrise bouncing off of the dark clouds passing slowly over the ever so still lake. energized by our good fortune the day before and our dinner of chicken and ribs we elected to skip breakfast and make fast for the cabin, determined we could reach it for a late breakfast or early lunch...
we flew across the lake and hit the first of two portages that would need to be tackled before reaching the cabin. the portage was narrow, with many twists and turns and hills that brought us high above the lakes and down low into the frozen marshes surrounding them. our energy was waning when we hit KRUGER LAKE and we stopped to stuff down as many snacks as we could. the snow on the large open lake was wind swept and hard packed which made for slow going as our sleds would tip on the uneven terrain, slowing down our progress considerably. it seemed that every time i looked across the lake towards the bay that hid our final portage, it was no closer than the last time i looked. time seemed to speed up and my empty stomach began to loath the decision to skip breakfast.
the final portage took some time to find as the snowmobile tracks had been difficult to follow on the windswept lake. but finally, we found the portage and we ate the rest of the snacks that were easily accessible in our pockets, not wanting to take the time to unpack our sleds to eat a real lunch. we decided that it would be worth the short term suffering to eat our lunch, which was quickly turning into dinner, in the warmth and comfort of the cabin. once we reached it...
the portage into ROBERTSON BAY on FORBES LAKE was even more of a challenge than the KRUGER LAKE portage. more hills, more twists and turns, and really deep snow. the snowshoes were needed which slows things down even more, notably when you need to right the sled after it ends up on its side or pull it back onto your trail after it wanders into a buried stump or slides into a snowdrift. i was so fed up with having to dodge the sled from coming down on top of me as i would race it down the hills that once, i just sat on the sled and rode it down one of the hills when it caught up to me as i attempted to outrun it with a pair of four foot long snowshoes strapped to my boots. the sleds were winning today, and soon they would join forces with the elements...
as we were struggling over the portage, the dark clouds that had been sporadic in the early morning were now covering the sky, and as we looked towards ROBERTSON BAY and FORBES LAKE, the darker the clouds became. as we were staring up at the clouds, making our out-loud observation, the clouds began to unload. rain. it had started to rain. the temperature on ELI'S watch read in at nearly 34 degrees. we prayed the temperature would drop but it held steady, and the rain continued to fall.
a word on the snowshoes that we were using: we were both using twin pairs of alaskan style snowshoes. these are nearly a foot wide and over four and a half feet long. the frames are made of formed ash with rawhide webbing for the deck. the rawhide and ash are then coated in a marine spar varnish to give the snowshoes protection from wet, snowy and frozen conditions. these long, narrow snowshoes were worn by the Athapaskan first nations people on dry powder in the northwestern reaches of CANADA and interior ALASKA. with the narrow design they are built for speed and the ability to quickly break trail, primarily for a dog sled team, following closely behind. in our case however, instead of a dog sled team, ELI and i were the dogs, breaking trail for our sleds. so after all of that being said about how good the snowshoes we were using were and why we chose them, this all goes out the window when the snow is no longer powder and it begins to rain. eventually, any place that the varnish had begun to break down or wear off became saturated with water. and as the water began to wick itself into the entire deck and frame of the snowshoes, the once lightweight shoes became heavy behemoths...
we literally plowed our sleds across ROBERTSON BAY, the wet mess of snow sticking to everything and adding seemingly pounds of weight when we wanted and needed none. absolutely spent, and famished the cabin was finally in our sights. noon, that is what we had thought. now it was nearly five o'clock in the evening, but we were standing on the front porch of the cabin. we stared for a moment at the boarded up structure, our knees weak and sore, bodies utterly exhausted and yet we were mentally ecstatic. we pulled the boards off of the door and stepped inside...