Powell River Canoe Route - Day 2 South Dodd Lake to Nth Nanton Lake

Day 2 Wednesday

So I actually felt pretty safe that night.  Our food was hung using the pulley system that each campsite had, we had set up the tent in a pretty flat spot so I didn't have some giant roots digging into my chest and we weren't on a slant like the previous night.  The problem started around 5am. Rain!!!!!  

Taking shelter while we waited out the rain

It's amazing how you appreciate the small things like shelter!

By 6:30am it was really starting to come down. Of course Ryan had left his shoes and shirt outside so they were soaked but we were actually able to get all our gear packed up without anything getting totally soaked.  I had wanted to pick up some ponchos at the Dollar Store in P.R. but that didn't actually materialize so we had 1 rain jacket and a garbage bag between the 4 of us.  Luckily each of the campsites had a shelter and this particular campsite had a fairly large one so we were able to keep all of our stuff dry (except the tent of course), eat our breakfast, and wait for a break in the weather.  

The lake was like glass with steam rising off of it.  About an hour later we had the break we were waiting for.  We put on our bathing suits and life jackets and heading across Dodd to the beginning of the portage.  Just at the moment I was saying "Thank you Jesus"' the rain started up again.  We got across the lake and decided that we might as well just keep going as we were soaked and if we stopped we would just get cold.  This began a very long and miserable portage and I have to say that the kids did amazing!  They did not complain once!  We made our way to Ireland Lake which was only a 1 km paddle.  The rain continued on and off and the next portage was our longest portage yet!  It was hard but we managed to push ourselves and get to the top of Nanton Lake which was our goal for that day.  By the time we arrived the rain had stopped and we were able to dry out our tent and all our gear, wash up a bit in the creek and sit down to our Dollar store chicken teriyaki boil in the bag meal.  We ended up in our tent at 7pm exhausted, played some cards and fell asleep thankful that our hardest day was over and it looked like tomorrow was going to be clear skies!