July 28th to August 5th
After spending another delightful time with the Langevin family, Pascal headed off again on Rainy Lake towards the boundary waters of Voyageur Park and Quetico Provincial Park. He supplemented his diet with fresh fish he caught while paddling. He tried to connect again with the warden Janice Matichuk in Quetico but missed her by an hour. However he did meet up with a group of about 30 girls with their guides that had just spent over 30 days paddling in Quetico Provincial Park :- ) Overall these past 9 days were quite uneventful with one exception.
Pascal had difficulty with the access to the west-end portage at Saganaga Falls and got distracted when he lifted his boat out of the water. His InReach satellite tracker fell off the canoe but he didn’t notice right away. When he realized that he had dropped it, he looked for it for over an hour but to no avail. So all day it looked like he had spent the day at the falls. Luckily when he got to Granite Lake he met up with the group of girls he had met at the ranger station in Quetico. They were very generous and lent him their satellite phone so he could phone home to explain what had happened.
The next day he high-tailed it to Gunflint Lodge where a few boxes of supplies were waiting for him. There he had an opportunity to patch a few deep scratches on his boat. He also got to meet up with some of the guys who he had befriended on his first time there, in particular Brandon and Joe. Since his knee was still bothering him from his first trip over Grand Portage, he decided he would try to get a ride to the town of Grand Portage to avoid that section all together. Fortunately for him, Brandon and Joe were very generous with their time and vehicle and drove him there Sunday night.
While he was at Gunflint Lodge, a miracle happened. Someone found his InReach and texted Pascal’s parents to say they had found it and would deliver it to Gunflint! Amazing! It couldn’t have worked out any better than that. Pascal still had his lucky star with him. However, he never got to meet the person who found it so couldn’t thank them for their good deed. THANK-YOU SO MUCH whoever you are.
The next day he met up again with Brandon from the Grand Portage National Monument. Brandon had previously helped him on the Pigeon River when the water level was too high for him to paddle upstream in June. He was invited to participate in the Rendez-vous Days, an historical re-enactment of Voyageur times. Pascal was really tempted to stay but the event didn’t start until five days later so he decided to paddle on after spending the day hanging out with Brandon.
Quetico Provincial Park and the boundary waters have been some of Pascal’s favourite places to date on his adventure.
La remontée des sources 