Thursday, August 24, 2017 I woke up to the sounds of my friend violently retching. He had not eaten anything since two days ago, and he was only able to keep water down for a short time. He was throwing up pure stomach bile; a watery, dark brown liquid. He is diabetic and his glucose level was around 400. We decided we had to get him out. After some deliberation about the best way to handle things, we decided to finish our route and exit at Ham. We were closer to Brule but getting there would include much longer portages, while our friend was barely ambulatory. I also didn't know much about the roads which serviced the Brule entry point, and they seemed to be further away from major services. We figured that going back to the Gunflint trail would leave us more able to get to Grand Marais quickly once we got out of the wilderness, and our truck was parked at the outfitters. So began a very long day of hard work. Since our friend couldn't paddle, we towed the canoe he was in behind another canoe containing our best paddlers. Myself and another friend were in the lead canoe navigating and scouting ahead. We made it to Long Island lake fairly quickly, and from there went on to Karl and Lower George. Once we reached Rib lake I was confident that the rest of my friends could navigate the way to Ham, so my canoe broke off and sped ahead to make sure help was waiting. We were much faster than the rest of the group. Once we finally got to the Cross River entry point we flagged down a passing car and asked them for a ride back to our truck and the outfitters. They were eager to help and sped us back to Gunflint Northwoods. At Gunflint Lodge I decided to call 911 so we could have paramedics ready to assess our friend as soon as the rest of the party got off the water. We met the paramedics back at the entry point, and they told us to lead them back the way we came so we could reach our ailing party member. We hopped back in our canoes and started back in. Thankfully, by this time, the rest of our group had made it to the end of Cross Bay lake. We had them wait at the portage there and after a few minutes the paramedics arrived. They took our friend in their canoe and we all headed back out to the entry point. My friend was driven by ambulance to the hospital in Grand Marais, where the doctors revealed that he was in the early stages of diabetic DKA and was soon to lapse into a coma. Fortunately, they were able to stabilize him. The rest of us were put up for the night by a very generous Gunflint Lodge. The next day we picked up our friend from the hospital, and drove to Duluth for a day of rest before we started the long drive home.~Gordon Lake, Long Island Lake, Karl Lake, Lower George Lake, Rib Lake, Cross Bay Lake, Ham Lake

Lakes Traveled:   Gordon Lake, Long Island Lake, Karl Lake, Lower George Lake, Rib Lake, Cross Bay Lake, Ham Lake,