CAMPING Long Canadian winter trek is worth the effort

Sometimes the best way to go is the simplest.
By SAM COOK
DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE
IN THE BOUNDARY WATERS CANOE AREA WILDERNESS, Ontario, Canada -- As soon as Kelly Murphy's 13-dog team left camp Wednesday morning, we could see it was going to be a long day. The new snow hit the top of our mukluks, and it had been drifted by the wind. No trace remained of the trail we had made coming in for a couple of days of camping on Little Knife Lake. We were 18 miles from our landing at Moose Lake, near Ely, and we were scheduled to come out of the woods that day. Our sled was loaded with camping gear. The dogs were fresh, but they plodded to a halt just 200 yards from camp. Panting hard, they looked over their shoulders as if to say, "We're giving it our best, boss. Try something else."
Understood the dogs
Murphy knew what that meant.
"Maybe we won't make it home tonight," he said.
Going into any winter camping trip you know that conditions could modify your travel plans and possibly your exit date. You try to be ready for adversity, then just make the best of things. Murphy has seen all kinds of weather in his 17 years as a mushing guide. "Last Tuesday, on our way to Ottertrack (Lake), it was 15 below zero with a 30 mph wind," Murphy said this past week. "We traveled the whole distance in a ground blizzard.
"There are times in the spring when it's 50 above zero and raining. All the snow melts, and the lake fills up with water. The dog dishes float off to another bay."
On Wednesday, Murphy stopped the team within a mile.
"Time to dig out the snowshoes," he said.
We would spend the next 15 miles trading off, snowshoeing ahead of the team to break open a trail. It's been done before. The snowshoer shuffles ahead. The musher holds the dogs at rest, letting them go ahead when there's about a quarter-mile of trail broken.
Breaking trail on this 15-degree day was warm work. You'd heat up, peel a layer, shuck a cap. It felt good. Back on the sled, you'd cool down fast and try not to freeze until you could begin snowshoeing again.
Path veered off
Morning slipped away. We worked down the long sweep of Knife Lake. We saw a couple of campers on Vera, but they'd come in the day before us, and their trail was drifted in, too. We thought we had caught a break on Ensign Lake when we hit the trail of other winter campers. But within a quarter-mile, their path veered off for a different lake. Dusk caught us later on Ensign. If we were going to spend another night out, we'd need to camp by about 4 p.m. to allow time for making firewood. We stopped at a possible camp, but Murphy had a different idea.
"What would you think of going on in?" he asked.
We both felt good. We were well-fed. We had plenty of water. We decided to keep moving, to snowshoe into the night.
Part of the reason I love traveling in remote country is that you regain a true perspective on where you fit in the universe. It takes a lot to stymie a team of strong dogs with big hearts, but this snow had done it. Now, we were relying on one of the most primitive yet effective modes of locomotion to get out of the woods -- a few pieces of white ash lashed with rawhide.
Found the trail
It worked beautifully. We found a trail on Moose Lake, and little Star, a 45-pound racing dog, led us toward the landing. He wasn't the only star out. Constellations spangled the sky, which seemed to hang just over the tallest pines. The temperature had dropped below zero, and the dogs ran beneath a fog of their own breath.
We sledded under the arc of the Milky Way right to the landing.
Home.