Pristine view of Lake Pend Oreille from Schweitzer Mountain Resort.
To our surprise, the morning of Day 3 was calm and sunny
ized we had stumbled upon an ab- solutely perfect primitive campsite. The tree spacing was excellent, the campfire ring was well built and there was even a fire poker left be - hind by another camper. As if things couldn’t get any better, we had un- broken views of a line of tower- ing, craggy peaks along the eastern shoreline of the lake. After a somewhat restless night of sleep, we woke just before the sun peeked over the top of the tow- ering peaks to the east. We trudged through our morning routine, break- ing down camp and playing the dai- ly game of stuffing gear in the correct combinations into the various sized and colored drybags that only fit in the boats a specific way. >> Day 2: 16 miles There was a slight breeze that
would eventually calm down as the day progressed; however we watched the weather like a hawk. There was a severe storm forecast to hit late in the afternoon and was predicted to bring 60 to 70 mph winds, heavy rain and even snow. It was initially fore- casted to last through the following day, which could easily put our trip in jeopardy. As we paddled south we hugged the shoreline, dodged hundreds of tree stumps and had too many incredi- ble conversations to remember. One of the many amazing features of the lake are the many long fingers that are actually smaller rivers that feed the main reservoir. During the first three days we were able to paddle up all of these inlets along the west- ern shore. Several of them stretched more than 2 miles into deep canyons culminating in stunning waterfalls.
In fact, that is where we ended day two. Half way down the lake af- ter another 16-mile day. Our last 5 miles or so was spent hurriedly, or determinedly, paddling into the inlet to beat the approaching storm. The wind gusts began almost immediate- ly, but fortunately for us, the torren- tial rain didn’t begin until after we had settled into camp and jumped into the 40-50 degree water below a massive waterfall that poured into the lake next to camp. We needed the rest and recovery, as day 3 was planned to be our longest of the trip; planned at about 23 miles. Little did we know that the day would end be- ing even longer. >> Day 3: 27 miles To our surprise, we woke the fol- lowing morning to fresh snow in the mountains above us. However, the
20 NSPIREMAGAZINE.COM
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online