Boundary Waters Passage Part Four: Risky Decision
The group tends to Crosby’s injured foot. (Photo by Aaron Lavinsky)
The ankle-deep mud on Lesser Cherry Portage foretold a change. We’d awakened in our beautiful campsite on Mountain Lake, where even the biffy was memorable, located in a spruce glade, dappled with sunlight. We fried “doughnuts” — all of our morning pastries were variations on a theme of flour and fat — over the fire and devoured hash browns and powdered eggs. Today, June 14, was going to be a long paddle, and we donned extra layers against the morning’s gray chill and light rain. It was day four for our group of five.
Five miles across Mountain, we disembarked for the first of a series of three portages (Lesser Cherry, Vaseux and Greater Cherry) and two lakes (Fan and Vaseux), neither of which was much more than a beaver pond. My son Aidan, 14, carried a canoe for the first time, taking the 55-pound, three-person Wenonah onto his shoulders for a 90-rod portage, or about a third of a mile.
“Way harder than a portage pack,” he told me when I asked how it went. Nevertheless, he continued to impress me with his fortitude.