I'm Back From Quetico!

• Posted on August 19, 2008 at 8:43 AM
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Filming team: Kip Spidell, Andy Baxter and Scott Adams get ready to capture a segment titled "Kevin deals with yet another beaver dam in Quetico Park."

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I just got back from 18 days in Quetico. Wow, what a fantastic place to paddle. I doubt I could go through a season without at least one canoe trip here. This is a park where the average portage is 350 meters, bald eagle sightings are so common I began tagging them "rats of the sky" and crowds en route disperse after the first couple of days.

The reason for the trip was to finish up the film I'm helping to create for the Friends of Quetico to celebrate the park's 100th. birthday next year. It will be a one hour documentary made looking at past conservationists who found inspiration here (Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olson, Eric Morse, Bill Mason, Obherholtzer,...), present day paddlers (who we interviewed along the way) and their reasons to paddle Quetico, and some silly stuff with me on trip (i.e. falling in mud up to my waste on the portage, loosing a fish, being chased off the campsite by a red squirrel,...). Basically, it's a film about wilderness values...but with funny gags so the youth will actually watch it. It's going to be a hit for sure.

The producer, Kip Spidell, and I shot 21 hours of film in total and paddled 22 days during the last couple of years. Our last trip was a 12 day paddle, with the first half being with Andy Baxter and Scott Adams. The route took us from Paire Portage to Shan Walshe Lake, then over to Sarah and McIntryre (we filmed a segment on the McIntryre message cairn). Andy and Scott then left us and Kip and I continued north, through Burt-Marj-Joyce (fantasitic series of remote lakes) and then through the international canoe race route of Kahshahpiwi-Keefer-Sark-Carin. Then we followed the Magilne River to Sturgeon and up to Pickerel Lake.

See more photos of the trip in my photo album. I'll keep everyone informed of the film's development. We're hoping the fund raising and editing will be complete before the spring of 2009.