Carol and Glenn have certainly had their fair share of challenges and obstacles on Lake Winnipeg! I (Carol’s daughter) have not heard from them in about 2 weeks! But I knew everything was OK based on their daily SPOT check-ins and Progress Reports that Glenn’s Uncle John has been creating!
First of all, Tuesday, August 14th was their 100th day on this adventure from Vancouver, British Columbia to Ottawa, Ontario! And they are still having a blast and smiling everyday! Congratulations!!
Lake Winnipeg is the 6th largest freshwater lake in Canada, exceeding Lake Ontario in size! It is a very shallow lake with unpredictable winds that create high waves. One of the biggest obstacles they have had are these waves. And they actually capsized about a week ago! They are OK but had quite the scare and quite the amount of items to dry out!
Fortunately, they did not lose any items but they did lose time from drying! The capsize happened day 5 on Lake Winnipeg. After a long day of paddling, around an extremely large point called Long Point, Carol and Glenn were unable to find a campsite. They were tired but had to keep going, the winds picked up and flipped them right over! This area of Lake Winnipeg is completely remote, no people, no cell service, no roads, no towns, no boats just the wild!
Along with capsizing Carol and Glenn have had their fair share of animal obstacles! A few days ago they came across a really nice campsite (which are hard to come by) but it was already taken by a pack of wolves! They decided to let the wolves have their own campsite and continued on! This put them at a record of 11 hours in one day in a canoe!
Also, the next day, while Glenn was doing the supper dishes on a beach,he was startled by Carol as he saw her shadow and thought she was a bear!. They both had a chuckle and Glenn continued to rinse the dishes only to see a bear approaching for real. With a spatula in hand he started yelling at the bear. The bear took notice. Only after banging their limited pots and pans together the bear left.
Maybe Carol was wearing this as she approached Glenn and scared him! (These are really 2 waterproof Skully Bags. One has all their clothes for 3 seasons. The other has sleeping gear).
The below picture is a portion of Lake Winnipeg that Glenn’s Uncle John has created to show how they are by-passing coves to save time! When the weather is good Carol and Glenn take advantage of crossing wider more open spaces of water! The largest hop was 25 kilometers with a few small rocky islands in between.
Some very helpful locals at Grand Rapids ( where they started on Lake Winnipeg ) said if there is a north east wind, find a deep cove and be prepared to spend 2 days or more there as the lake is too dangerous for anyone to be on.
As of Aug. 27th they have spent 7 days on land and 9 paddling. Carol and Glenn spend almost as much time on land waiting for winds to end as they do in the water! Thankfully there are nice beaches that they find along the way that that they totally enjoy exploring.
Keep up the amazing paddling!!!!!!
