Day 6

Somewhere something is burning. We awoke today to a brown, smog like haze covering our sky, casting orange light onto everything. Slowly realized that a smoky haze such as this could only be the result of a forest fire. After all, the wind had changed direction the night before, it could have blown it all in from somewhere (we guessed Manitoba) judging by wind direction. It may have also explained the blood red sun the night before. All day the sun has been weak, though there were barely any clouds. We loaded our boats on the sand spit, rigged our sail and set off. The wind picked up, stronger and stronger as we sailed out onto the open space of Ozhiski lake, and soon we were tearing across the lake. We covered 7k sailing. A native man and his wife came up to see what the orange tarp speeding across the lake was all about. They pulled up in a crash boat and talked with us for awhile. We kept paddling and covered the rest of our 30k in whitewater. Some sets were continuous for 4 km, impressive. We cut over to another sand beach and are enjoying our surroundings. The beach was bare when we arrived, save for 2 sets of wolf tracks and some bear tracks. Beautiful. As the sun began it’s perpetual descent we wrestled in the sand, played golf and cricket, and Bill hit rocks with sticks: baseball style. We contemplated possible routes for the north/south Channels of the Attawapiskat. The north channel is safer but longer with lake navigation. Considering the low water we’ve had, and the precedent of all the rapid ratings on the map being a class higher than reality, we think the continuous III’s and IV’s may be downgraded to runnable levels on the South Channel. Also the route saves 20k. . . We all immediately dropped what we were doing and had the most silent waking moment of our trip as we watched a curious beaver pull a wake across the glassy orange water. He came and did a few loops in our little bay to check out the sticks bill threw into the water. Tomorrow is a lake day, so time to get some rest.