Canoeing the Mississippi

My friend Jay brings up a very good point when he asks “what does a portage look like?”

This is one of those questions that I wish I would have seen before I decided to stop for the winter, as I don’t really know if I got any really good footage of what a portage consists of.  Usually when I would hit a portage it would be on top of the days paddling, and as it took one hour on average, although sometimes two, to complete a portage, I was just trying to hurry to get it over with.  I had thought it would be fun, albeit a bit time consuming to film one.  What I actually did was just film the dam and the path that I had to portage over afterward.  So I’ll try to explain what one consists of while we get the rest of the footage edited.  Hopefully the video footage will give everyone an appreciation of what one consists of.

There are 11 dams between lake Itasca and Saint Cloud that must be portaged, and a total of 12 between lake Itasca and Minneapolis.  These portages all take place in Minnesota, before the navigational part of the Mississippi river.  Beginning at the upper St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis the lock and dam system administered by the Army Corps of Engineers can be locked through, so no portage is required.  These portages vary in size from 50 yards to a whopping 300 yards.  Most of the dams are hydroelectric dams, although there are some for large paper mills.  The 42 mile section of river from Little Falls to Saint Cloud is the worst, with 4 long portages of 300 yards.

The dams are marked on the maps, so you know they are coming.  The MN DNR maps will also tell you what side of the dam to look for the portage, such as “Portage left 300 yards”.  So you paddle up to this very imposing dam, with all of these warning signs alerting you to the danger ahead.  Eventually you will see a sign with an upside down outline of a canoe in yellow and the word “portage” in or around it.  Now it’s time to beach the canoe and tie it to a tree before walking the portage to see how bad it is.  After sighing dejectedly a few times, it’s time to accept your fate and unload everything from the canoe.  Then, using all of the beavers you have cursed in the past as your inspiration, it’s time to get down to hard work and carry the canoe first, while you are strongest, down the path to the other side of the dam.  This is quite tiring with a 90 pound canoe.  In all honesty, from all of the paddling I had whittled down to 150 pounds of body mass, so lifting a 90 pound canoe was beyond my capability.  So I would carry one end while dragging the other.  Then I would go and carry everything to the other side, usually in 5 or 6 loads.  Finally, go and lie in the grass for a while as you congratulate yourself for completing another portage.  Now load the canoe and continue on.

As I mentioned before, this would take an hour on average on the shorter portages, and two hours for the longer ones.  I have to admit here that on 5 occassions I did not have to do the portage alone.  There were the 2 dams, Pokegama and the Blandin Paper Company dams where Minnesota Power and Light provided the free portage around.  On 3 other occasions kind people helped me out.  At Knutson dam on Cass lake Myron, a member of the Leech Lake tribe helped me while telling me about the area.  He told me that there used to be rail tracks and an electric rail car where one would paddle up to and just use these straps to lift your canoe out of the water while still fully loaded and move it to the other side of the dam.  He said it was dismantled a while ago.  At the Little Falls dam, a 300 yard portage, a construction worker helped me move the canoe after he got off of work.  He shook my hand and left quickly so I never got his name.  Last but certainly not least was the extremely kind Thon family, Mark, Kim and their daughter Jessie.  I will elaborate further on the Thons when I finish my notes on the last part of the trip.  However, to be brief, I had met them at Lindbergh State Park, and they so kindly came back from their home after they left their campsite and got me, the canoe and all my gear, drove me past the Blanchard dam, let me spend the night at their house while feeding me wonderful food and sharing the kindness and warmth of their lives.  It was a truly memorable experience meeting them and their kindness will never be forgotten.  As they live on the Mississippi river I left the next day from their backyard.

I hope that this gives you a good idea of what a portage consists of.  What I learned from all of this is that if you are smart and a good planner, like Robert Youens, you will bring a partner along for the non-navigational part of the Mississippi river so you won’t have to do all of the portages alone.  Or at the least, take a light canoe and then switch to a heavier one at Minneapolis if you want.  However, in hind sight, I would recommend a partner to be honest.  Someone to help you make decisions, shoulder burdens and to share the incredible beauty with.

A very difficult decision but one that I feel is the right one to make.  An end to Part One, the first 421 miles of the Mississippi river from Lake Itasca to Saint Cloud, MN.  Part Two will begin next summer.

As I write this post from my girlfriend Erin’s house in Minneapolis, I am looking out on my canoe, lovingly nicknamed “the Beast” for its sturdy 90 pound girth, and she is covered in a light coating of snow as she rests in the backyard.  I made the incredibly difficult decision about two weeks ago up in Saint Cloud to halt the journey for the winter.  I apologize for how long it has taken me to update you on this decision, resting my tired muscles a bit too long while adjusting to a world again that isn’t just focused on the next twenty miles of river.  If you’ll indulge me for a few minutes I’ll let you know how my decision came about.

For the last two weeks of the journey it had been slowly seeping into my brain that I was running out of warm weather and daylight in order to continue this trip the way that I wanted to do it.  Believe me, when you often don’t see other people all day, your brain has plenty of time for things to seep into it.  Most mornings I was waking up to 30-35 degree lows and a blanket of frost.  As a result I was starting to try and canoe faster in order to move along further south towards warmer air.  There were beautiful state parks that I wanted to spend another day in, and towns that I wanted to video while meeting residents, yet felt that I needed to paddle on if I were to have any chance of completing the trip this year.  There was also the waning sunlight, and by the time I got off the river and set up camp darkness would be descending.  After several days and nights of restless soul searching I asked myself what this trip was all about.  The answer was that I wanted to see what the river was like, from its source to the sea, and video it for all who cared to come along for the ride.  Hurrying or making good videos, as well as enjoying the river, were mutually exclusive.  The last two weeks that I rushed to make good distance the quality and quantity of video footage really suffered.  This I realized was the last thing that I wanted to happen.  Making good videos has always been Tom and my number one goal.

As I pulled into Saint Cloud, MN armed with the knowledge I had learned earlier that the low that evening was projected at 25 degrees, with rain forecast for the next two days, I walked to a motel and the promise of a hot shower.  I knew in my heart that it was time to stop.  I realized, like many adventurers before me, that it was time to winter over and resume the journey in warmer weather.  When the days will be long once again, the weather warm, the time more abundant to relax and enjoy the ride.

This is also a good spot to break up the trip, as it is roughly where the river divides between the non-navigational and the navigational part of the Mississippi river.  This is loosely described as a guaranteed minimum depth of eight feet and no dams that can’t be locked through, insuring that larger boats can travel unimpeded.

What this means for this website and anyone who has enjoyed it so far is that I hope you keep coming back.  During the next week or so I will be writing posts to finish the narrative to my temporary stopping point in Saint Cloud.  Tom, my extraordinary partner and project video editor will be finishing further episodes in the next few months of all the footage that I have shot up till now, bringing the video side of the project up to date.  For my friends in Saint Louis, I will be coming home on November 17th, and I hope that you’ll want to meet for a drink to help me celebrate completing the first 421 miles of the river.  Stay tuned, there’s more to come!