Day 9. Thu. July 21 (57°07’36” N, 76°04’17” W)

On which the route slaps our protagonist around.

10:30 PM 57°08’49” N, 75°48’19” W

I am so utterly bone-tired. Paddled 19km and earned every meter of it.

Got on the water at 8:20 AM, still traveling upstream, and immediately negotiated all three rapids I saw on the map. The first one, which I saw from the campsite last evening, was easy to line on the right. The next one I lined again, harder than the first but not as tough as yesterday’s. The last was an easy 75m portage. Negotiating these took till 11:30 AM.

By then the east wind had really picked up, and I had 16km to go in whitecapping headwinds on bigger water than I’ve seen so far. The most recent portage put me on Lake Tikirartuuq, which is wider than the smaller ponds I’ve been in and has a lot of fetch in many places. The wind was relentless. It felt like paddling through oatmeal. I didn’t arrive at camp till 7PM, meaning I only managed about 2km per hour.

The last hour or so I turned northward, making it a bit easier in terms of wind, but toward the end the water got shallow enough in several spots that I had to get out and drag the boat, which wore on me.

I am trying hard to push mentally past my exhaustion to appreciate how beautiful it is out here: The whole route today was ruggedly gorgeous. Only my awareness of how bitterly cold it gets here most of the year reminds me I wouldn’t want to live here if I could. One hill had such a stunning, unmistakably unique shape that I kept noticing it from different directions as I moved. At one point I paddled along a tall hill’s steep stone face that came right down to the water and plunged into the depths. Now I’m camped in a shallow bay with some lovely islands nearby and majestic headlands off to the west.

My route ahead will be a kilometer-long portage to the east up a rock garden of a trickling stream. My bet is that I will be carrying, not lining. I’ll need rest for that. The forecast for tomorrow is calling for a windstorm even worse than today’s, but right now it’s calm. Hope I’m ready.