trip down the Pukaskwa and paddle back to Wawa with my friend from Rochester.
by Andrew Fergusson

The river had a trickle relative to its raging springtime level. We got up at 6 each day and rolled by 7, worked till noon, took a 40 minute lunch break and then worked till late afternoon and it seemed like we ought to camp. Busting an ankle was our constant concern because our options were always to walk the canoe, rock-hop, or bushcrash. The river chewed up my new pair of non-steel-toe work boots. We had 2 light packs and two heavy packs so two trips were anavoidable when carrying.

It took 7 days (6 full days) to do 65k. The river was almost all rock of some kind and always eye candy.  Huge cliffy hills and lots of falls. Lots of blueberrys too. We arrived at Superior early in the afternoon and camped in the shade of a single bushy birch tree on a vast cobble shoal that protects the Pukaskwa River mouth. Calm beach on the inside and big windy crashing waves on the outside.  I wish I could have hung there for a week. On Superior our drill was 5AM rise and the first day rollers were going our way; then wind picked up; that also went our way.

We covered 40k in 9 hours and could have done 60k in one day easily. The shore is smooth rock (and lots of it) unlike further south and I always felt somehow privileged to be able to view this uninhabited shore during sunny calm weather, when normally the area is blasted by storms or bitter cold or both. It is a wild frontier and unlike anything I had seen before. You could be dropped anywhere and happily make it home for days.

We met no one until about 20k from Wawa. Early one morning we happened upon the one small trawler that plies that area and got a 10lb Lake Trout fresh from the net.