Tuesday, August 13, 2019

We made the decision to sleep in today, then just travel to Iris. This puts us a day behind, but we are really enjoying the PMA and didn't want to skip Iris Lake. It rained on and off through the night but was kind enough to pause around midnight so I could take a pee break. I hate having to pee in the rain and dark. I had weird dreams this night...borderline hallucinations: owl stealing a shiny bracelet, Stew calling to the owl so he could retrieve the bracelet..trees and rocks morphing into strange formations. Maybe that's what I get for putting kale in the chicken soup.

Turns out Stew had actually been calling to an owl during the pre-dawn hours. Both Joey and I independently asked Stew the same question, "Was I dreaming? Or were you calling to an owl?"

After a leisurely morning, Stew and Joey went ahead to scout a bushwhack route while Jose and I loaded ALL the gear in the 2nd canoe. They found a way through to the puddle that is SW of Ell and NW of Iris. It was a pretty easy, short, and fairly open trek through the woods. Very short paddle over to the stream into Iris. Joey loves little creeks so he and I carried some lighter stuff down the creek bed but the footing was way too slippery to think about carrying the canoes that way. We found a tight route through the woods to carry the canoes, but it was a lot of squeezing through and tipping the canoes sideways. The ground was very slanted most of the way and after last night's rain, the footing was very slick. Note that we stayed on the west side of the stream so we did not end up at the cliff described by others.

Even with our late start, we reached Iris by 2pm but figured we deserved an early stop. We explored Iris a lot...beautiful lake. We fished a little...came up empty. Joey and I scouted tomorrow's route to Fetter's a bit.

Total time: 3 hours (2 bushwhacking, 1 paddling)

~Ell Lake, Iris Lake