Saturday, August 09, 2025 Mother of all storms ran through just before dawn. High winds and continuous lightning and thunder for at least an hour. During the height of it, the top 12 feet of the birch tree behind our tent snapped off and fell on the guy lines securing the vestibule. Jesse held that side of the tent up until the wind slacked a little, then went out with a flashlight and had to cut one of the lines and refasten it...then the storm started up again. Eventually it quit, as they always do, and I realized it was getting light.

It's good thing that I always tie both ends of the canoe down. It's just one of those things I got in the habit of years ago. The wind had picked it up and turned it over and filled it with about 6 inches of rain. Everything is SO wet. Anything not tied down got blown into the woods.....which for us was just our chairs. No damage done, fortunately...our only loss was the piece of paracord that Jesse had to cut. The tree landed about 10 feet from our heads.

It looks like the lightning started a fire on the other side of the lake....at first I thought it could be mist in the bay, but it got more localized and then was clearly smoke. Been watching it for a bit while we had breakfast and it's slowly diminishing. We decided to head out....see if we find another campsite on the way where we can dry out, and if not we'll be done.

Got as far as Tin Can Mike....it's hot as heck, almost noon, and I can't quite face the thought of that portage into Mudro in this heat. The campsite closest to the portage is open...it's very sloped but we managed to find a spot to fit the tent that is actually comfortable and flatish. The latrine trail has some access issues.....a very steep, sloped, slippery rock face that I actually had to sit down and slide to the bottom to traverse. We found an older trail that had fallen into disuse for some reason- helped it be more obvious and blocked off the rockslide one. Eventually we had almost everything dry again...that will be nice when we get home.

Got sunny so I went swimming again. After dinner we went up on the long high ridge behind camp to get some pictures- you can see in all directions, it's very cool but also very full of biting flies. Sat on the shore in camp watching dusk descend....saw beavers and a huge snapping turtle eating fishes right where I was swimming earlier. Then off to bed...tomorrow is an early start. ~Horse Lake, Tin Can Mike Lake