Friday, October 12, 2018 Got up to Cooold, clouds and a light snow. Chota boots frozen solid again. I have no way to dry them and even though I kept them in the tent they still froze. I decided to get a fire going to thaw them and dry my glove out. I would gather twigs and use my Firebox Nano for the fire. So i went off and gathered as many dead dry twigs as I could find. found a couple of good sticks for my gloves and leaned then over the fire. After about an hour I had both pairs of glove dry and warm and my Chotas were thawed. So I packed up, ate a good lunch and hit the water about noon. My feet still froze 20 minutes of getting on Alice, but my hands were toasty warm and dry. There was a good stiff wind from the W/SW across Alice but the waves at this point really didn't seem to concern me today. I bent to the paddle and made it up the 20 and 70r portages into Kawishiwi river. My feet started to feel a lot warmer then. At this point I was determined to get as far as I could today and adopted the mantra "heat to the feet". Did the next 20r portage and I was on River Lake. Heat to the Feet! Remembering when I was through here 4 months ago and how warm it and I started to warm a bit. It is an awesome area that I had hoped to spend several day in at the end of this trip, but instead I was blasting through a quick as possible to keep warm. I paddled to the 67r portage to Malberg. The flooded area was frozen over with ice that broke easily as I waded through. At the end of that I saw huge moose prints in the fresh snow and followed them all the way to the shore of Malberg where they went up a rocky rise to the left and disappeared. I didn't get to see him. I ate some trail mix and drank some water at the landing and pushed on. Looking at the temp on my watch I saw the warmest reading of the day, 30.8'. So I flew down Malberg, past the golden groves of mature birch trees on the south end and to 24r portage to Koma lake. I saw fresh boot tracks in the snow from at least a few people on this portage. My first sign I was getting closer to my exit. Paddled Koma and hit the 127, 48 and 19r portages which were all decent and went by in a blur, and I was on Polly lake. I heard wood being cut and voice, and I saw the first people since VCO, hunters at a camp. I paddle to the south end to get close to the next portage south. The site on the west side of Polly closest to the portage was also taken so I took the one on the east side. It took 6hrs of moving to get there and there wasn't enough daylight to keep going as it was 6pm, so I set up camp and got warm. As the sun faded to dark reds and purples the sky cleared and the stars started to come out. The next thing I know there wasn't a cloud anywhere. It was the first time the entire trip I had total clear skies and as I ate supper I watched to sky turn dark. But as it got dark it got cold and by 8:30 it was 18'. I retreated to my tent for the last time I hoped.