Wilderness Canoeing in Canada

Marchand Lake - Reindeer Lake Via Southend

Distance 18 [273 km]

Woke up to a beautiful still morning. Took us till almost 8am to catch up on last nights jobs of maps and journal etc. On the water by 8.30am, great paddle the 10 km or so into Southend First Nation Community. John made phone calls and left messages for Kendra, Anne and Jim and spoke with Ken. We did our shopping managing to get most things on our list and best of all we got some dips, carrots and cucumbers for lunch, yum fresh vegetables are special.

Out of Southend by mid-day and paddled up a long bay on Reindeer Lake. We will paddle about 120 km up Reindeer Lake over the next week and if the start of our paddle up the lake is anything to go by it is super beautiful, granted helped by today’s magic Saskatchewan skies and calm water. Nothing is guaranteed however, mid afternoon the sky turned black and the wind came up, we decided that discretion was the better part of valour and found an island to camp on. We were out of the canoe and setting up camp by 3pm.

The island was a lovely spot though there was the usual difficulty in finding a suitable spot for out relatively big tent, in this case it was especially problematic as the wind had really got up. Fortunately the storm passed over without rain so I was able to spend several hours repacking the food drums to take all the food bought at Southend. It was also a good opportunity to check on how I was managing our food supplies. We should have plenty to get us to Wollaston which we anticipate will be about 12 days away. Though the ice has only been off the lake for about 10 days and the water is still freezing John took a mighty quick dip. Then we kept up our tradition of hot dogs on the night after we have been to a community with a store, a tradition we both look forward to. Asleep by 9pm.