Tuesday, July 06, 2021 Got up before 5 am and packed up to move to Ashigan or Ensign. Much cooler today. 45 - 65. Made tea/coffee and had breakfast bars. Paddled across Ima with a fairly strong NE wind. No whitecaps like the day before, but a little rough. Went back through Jordan narrows and slowed down to take pictures and look for the pictographs this time. We only saw what looked like rust on the rocks. There were a lot of groups mostly coming in as we were going the other way. Dan met a guy that went to his high school in Dallas a few years after he was there. Small world. There was a group of scouts coming through on the 110R portage coming from Ashigan to Gibson. The lady with them said she was carrying the 90 lb food pack. She made it, but looked like her legs were a little rubbery at the end. I had caught her near the end and offered her my hiking pole to get through the rocks, but she said she could make it. She did a good job getting through. I've started using a hiking pole with the packs after a nearly disabling bruise from a fall on my shin. It adds stability so i can move faster and I didn't fall once this time. We got to Ashigan and scoped out the far campsite it looked closed in. The middle one was taken and the one by the Gibson portage is fully visible from the portage. The campsite near the Ensign portage had good reviews and has an open rock face. After the mosquito problem at the last site we decided that was a good feature. For being that close to a portage we didn't see many people. I guess most people come through early. There is a big hill on 2 sides that gives a lot of protection from anything but a SW or W wind. It's very well worn. Someone has managed to break the firegrate, and the sitting logs are pretty bad, but the rocks in front make up for it. We did all the cooking on the large flat rock there. The latrine is a long 160 steps down a winding trail in the woods and the latrine itself seems to be deteriorating, but it was usable.
Set up camp and had egg, cheese, bacon sandwiches for lunch and went fishing. There is a grass bed under the water between the site and the island. We were getting nibbles, but the kept getting off my line. One was a beautiful smallie with bright green and black stripes and a red splotch on it's cheek. Breeding colors? I finally noticed my hook was bent outward, probably due to getting hung up on a tree. Dan was having problems with his line twisting up, then his line getting caught on stuff, the anchor getting stuck when he was trying to pull over to his line, and finally pulling up a big stinky mass of old fishing line that got stuck on the anchor. Another fun day of fishing. We got some firewood from the shore and fished back to camp. Dan finally caught a small 6 inch pike and I caught a 4 inch smallie. We let them go and decided to make tuna cakes with the last packet of tuna. They were really good. I'll put the recipe on the food forum. They were pretty fast to put together too. Had with instant mashed potatoes and FD green beans. it had finally cooled off enough to enjoy hot chocolate that night. We drank it while we watched the sunset sitting on the point watching a beaver swim by several times. It was a good last evening.
Ima 13R Jordan 44R Cattyman 27R Gibson 111R Ashigan 6.8 miles total 5 miles paddling 1.8 miles portaging