| Still More Travels From Access Point 14 - Part 3 of 1, 2 and 3. by: Michael Cowley Day One: Dagger and Minky Lakes My daughter and I took the logging road just to the east of the Access Point 14 landing on Livingstone Lake (marked L below). Should you wish to directly access Livingston Lake, check with the owner of Livingstone Lake Lodge, to use the driveway, docks and landing. Your car will be more secure at the parking lot there, rather than at the nearby public access point which has very limited parking and a rough lauch area. I've had one bad experience there, so I encourage using the lodge facilities instead. Also, the lodge carries some snacks and goodies, should you need a last minute boost before hitting the water. We traveled the 8 kms alongside and criss-crossing Hinterland Creek. We stopped to look at the footbridge crossing the narrows of Sward Lake and came to the place marked / as Dagger Lake Portage on the map below.
For two reasons we came to a stop there and put in to Dagger Lake. The first is that our two-wheel-drive van would not go any further up the rough road, and second because we sighted a pull-off and portage to Dagger Lake, just where the road becomes unmanagable. One would need a good 4X4 to go farther along that road toward Butter Lake. I met a couple camping on Rockaway Lake who showed me on my map their route to Rockaway by 4x4 along this road to just south of Butter Lake and pointed out a portage to Rockaway over an unmarked trail at X below:
Photo: You can see the ease with which I hoist it off my van to carry it to the water. What a featherweight ... the canoe, not me! Then on to Dagger Lake we go. The Lake is beautiful, and as the name sugests, shaped like a dagger ... long and narrow. We portaged to Minky Lake and pulled over at the 970m portage that comes up from Rockaway. |
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 Having heard that the viewing of some of the best of the big pines was to be had along this portage, we gave it a look-see. It was a nice little hike, but not as grand as I expected. We only walked about half of the portage, up to the top of the hill and the turned around. I bet all the big trees are on the Rockaway side of the trail!
Perhaps we would have had more energy for the whole portage had the Minky side of this portage offered other than a foot of mud to sink into for twenty feet before solid portage is achieved. It was the muddest landing I have ever used. But the lake sure is pretty. Photo: Here's my daughter checking things out from the perch of a large fallen tree near the portage back to Dagger Lake. |
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Day Two:
This time, with the help of a second paddler, I got to the portage at Kimball Lake much sooner. Here I tried my new invention: a rigid backpack with upward protruding posts (bolts) set to be inserted into holes I had drilled in the hollow metal mid-thwart of my "Sportspal." So, up the killer portage I went with the canoe resting on the frame of my back-pack and stopped almost at the top of the Golden Staircase. Photo: As a picture is worth a thousand words, here I am lifting the thwart up a bit to show the hole (lower-left insert) and the bolt that slides into it. It's a wonderful way to portage, and only cost me $10 at Cash Converters to pick up a second-hand rigid-frame backpack to which I drilled and added the 2 inch bolts for posts. In order that the posts don't poke holes in anything (like the side of my canoe) when loaded in, I made the posts able to be hand loosened so as to be retracted to a safe, non protruding, position. Photos: The following pictures show the way the rig carries.
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This device was really great. It perches the canoe up high enough to allow a really good view of the scenery, which is fairly blocked with normal shoulder portages. It also distributes the weight of the canoe on the hips and shoulders which is much easier than a 100% shoulder carry. After I found the exact place of comfortable balance, I tied a loop in the painter and then looped it to the bottom of the backpack framing. This not only allowed both hands free for holding things such as a walking stick, but relieved me of my greatest complaint in portaging ... the constant strain of holding both arms up to grip the gunwales of the canoe in order to keep the thing from sliding off your back. I've since discovered a commercial outfit, Knudsen Enterprises at www.knupac.com/index.html which sells an "integrated portaging system" starting at $128 US (holiday sale price until the end of the year for just the frame). Their web site does a good job explaining exactly what my device does, except I use inserted posts instead of cradles to hold the canoe thwart onto the backpack frame. Arriving at the top of the Golden Staircase portage was a wonderful accomplishment for me, after looking forward so long to doing it. We entered Rockaway Lake where the portage is shown on the first map's top-right corner, at the bottom of the narrow channel. This was a mistake. Half way up the channel there is a beaver dam across it. This meant I had to get in the water and pull the canoe over the dam. The second map is incorrect in showing the portage careening away from the creek. However, it is correct in showing the best place to enter and exit Rockaway Lake! We discovered upon returning that this portage landing is easy to find, though not marked with the usual yellow portage sign. Some nice person had however tied a number of plastic bags to tree limbs to make it visible on approach.
So, the portage actually forks at the arrow below and continues as I have indicated by the added thicker red line, leading you to the open wider part of the channel, avoiding the beaver dam.
Photo: This is a shot looking northward up Rockaway Lake from the other side of the small island near the portage. Well, so much for my 2001 efforts to get into Algonquin Park via Access Point 14. I did get into Dividing Lake Provincial Preserve, which I believe will soon be redesignated as a Provincial Park as well.
Reference map and info at ... I'll just have to wait till 2002 to make the whole way in. Reporting from Access point 14. Michael and Kara
"Aren't we at the top YET?" Return to Part 1 or to Part 2. |
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I wanted to give my "new" lightweight "Sportspal" its first try here, before I tried the next day to carry it over the Golden Staircase.
The next day we took off from Livingstone Lake, south through Bear and north west through Kimball, as I had done and reported before in my earlier posts.
