7-Day Wilderness Camping Adventure: Untamed River to Rugged Coast of Lake Superior

I'm not exactly sure the reason why but often times I find myself with the desire to explore the unexplored. To walk where very few people have set foot and to find myself in a place that is truly remote or as close as I can get to that in modern day. It just so happens that my good friend Tosh shares that exact same way of thinking so when our canoe shuttle was only able to make it so far down an old ATV trail and we realized that we were in for a three kilometer bushwhack with all of our gear just to get to the starting point of our trip we weren't disappointed. In fact we were pretty stoked. A few months back when Tosh and I were searching for canoe trip ideas we stumbled upon this Jimmy Cash River. It runs from its headwaters up at Jimmy Cash Lake down into the more well-known Dog River just above the famous Denison Falls and then eventually it dumps out into Lake Superior. We were barely able to find any info online about Jimmy Cash Lake or the river itself and that just made it even more enticing for us. At that moment we knew we found exactly what we were looking for. Any sign of a trail Tosh? Yeah it's right here. Holy crap. Pretty much face planted right here. Oh did you? Oh you're on one knee. Yeah. Oh what the? You alright? Yeah. I tripped over a root and fell flat on my face. Oh nice. This has been such a long day but we can see water. It's a little bit more bushwhacking here. It feels so nice to finally be at this lake. I think that was every bit of seven or eight hours that we were portaging but you really can't even call that portaging. We were just like dragging through branches and trees. Tosh is just up ahead. He's scouting out the creek that we have to get down and that's going to dictate where we camp tonight whether it's this lake or the next lake or the lake that we actually want to get to. Yeah I'm not sure if you can tell but I am floating on water right now. I'm going to have to put some fire underneath that. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Alright I am eating my greens. I have a big pile of asparagus right here. It's not just meat, potatoes, and bacon. They're actually pretty good. So same thing just happened that happened on the Spanish River. We're sitting here eating dinner there's a big splash so I tied a lure on and uh it's too bad we've already eaten because oh my goodness not a small pike. That's what I'm talking about. Alright so there are fish in here. We're just taking it nice and slow soaking in the sun this morning. Both of us are pretty beat up from this vlog yesterday. So we have one last little obstacle getting through this creek in order to get to the lake system and then I think we're just going to spend the day fishing and relaxing on the water. Much deserved and much needed. I'm really stoked to be wearing this dry suit on this trip. It's a level six emperor. They hooked me up with it for these trips. None of this would be possible without a dry suit. It is still May as beautiful as it is. It's May and the water is freezing and this is basically my lifeline out here. Things do go wrong and I flip the canoe and I'm in icy cold water. It's still going to be pretty uncomfortable but it's going to take away a lot of that life-threatening aspect of it. Yeah it's nice I've got gaskets here on my neck and on my wrist so it actually is a watertight seal so you can be completely submerged in water and you stay dry so really really sweet. So this is the section yesterday where we decided to call it quits and set up camp a little further back that way but this looks pretty nasty in here. The creek kind of dwindles down to about two feet wide and about six inches deep and it's through all these thick alders and kind of marshland but I think it's only about 500 meters five or six hundred and then we're exactly where we need to be on a lake and then it's downriver from there. Really slow moving through these sections. Tosh give me a wave give me a wave like I can barely see you. That is thick. Yeah I think the creek kind of honestly I'm just guessing. It's starting to get wider and wider you can almost smell the lake. There it is Jimmy Cash Lake we made it. So for dinner tonight I've got a homemade chicken curry and rice. It's got a few things in it I can't remember but it's nice I dehydrated it and now I'm going to rehydrate it. I've never tried this before so see how it goes. This meal was pretty good I could have used a bit more flavor but the texture was there and all I really needed was the calories. After dinner I decided to head out for a paddle and take some time to myself to do some fishing. It was here where things really started to set in for me. I thought about how difficult it had been to get to this point and how hard we had pushed ourselves only to get to what is essentially the starting point of this trip. Maybe I was feeling a little small in a wilderness so vast. Tomorrow would be day three and we hadn't even seen the river yet. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't extremely nervous about what lies ahead but there was no use in worrying there's only one way out of here and that's down river. Okay so there's this tiny little outflow from the beaver dam and while I was out catching one tiny little pike Tosh was in here slaying them and so I came back and I caught four fish and four casts. This is number five for cast. Let's see if I can do it again. Yep missed it the first time. We're back on the water and with any luck at all we'll have a bit of a tailwind today pushing us to the spot we need to get to. Got the dry suit on and even a toque because it's just that cold. Someone in the comments tell me what the heck this thing is. What is this thing? Oh lily are these lily pads? Is what lily pads grow out of? Is this what moose eat? There's just this small set of swifts we have to get through and that's where it looks like there's a bunch of trees down over the river. Oh one big tree here that's blocking the entrance of the river so we're gonna have to take it down. Tosh is just sawing it right now. That thick river right here is good. Wow this is a really cool section. Yeah as we slowly worked our way along the river it presented what seemed like a never-ending series of obstacles and as treacherous as it was we had lots of fun with it. We lined in portage for the better part of the day and then decided to call it early when we pulled up to this gorgeous campsite. A nice wide open rock face with the river cutting a trench right through the middle of it. As soon as we had our tents set up we both knocked out for a good two hours before dinner and even with a solid nap that late in the day I thankfully slept like a baby that night which was much needed for the challenges that the next day would hold. Not a whole lot of river here. We'd soon come to realize that this little river was absolutely chocked full of epic waterfalls. It was almost as if every set of falls that we passed was even more stunning than the last one. Some of them were easier to get around and some of them were just flat out dangerous. Before we knew it the Jimmy Cash river had come to an end and we found ourselves meeting up with the iconic Dog River. The craziest part about all this is that at this point we hadn't even seen the most spectacular set of waterfalls of them all. So the portage around Denison Falls wasn't even the hardest portage I've ever done. It was the hardest thing ever that I've ever done. We've both exerted ourselves beyond our capacity and finally we're slowly drifting out here and the trees just seem to have ended. We'd float just a few more kilometers down the Dog River to make it to an even more iconic body of water. The largest freshwater lake by surface area in the entire world, Lake Superior. I have no words to describe the feeling of finally being here. Such an incredible place. There were multiple moments on that river where we didn't think we'd even make it. Okay I just walked over to the mouth of the river and I'm gonna throw a line in see if I can't catch dinner. My heart is freaking pounding right now. I am so excited to throw a line in here. A river this big flowing into a lake this big. The opportunities of what I could catch here are endless. I'm hoping for a big brook trout though. I even saw a fish jump as we were paddling out right in front of me. We got this gold little cleo. Here goes nothing. Yes! Let's go! Oh my goodness. Oh I think this is a salmon. This is either a salmon or a rainbow trout. Maybe a steelhead. Oh my goodness. I do know one thing about it. It is dinner. Look at that beauty. Look at that. You're not gonna find that in a grocery store. Roasted garlic and red pepper seasoning on this half and then the other one is gonna be dusted with like a fish crisp. Oh that is so good. Help yourself. I want to give a big thank you to my friend Derek over at Paddle.ca. He hooked me up with whitewater outfitting for my boat. He gave me airbags, thigh straps, knee pads, everything I need to make it down some of those gnarly rapids. Derek is an awesome dude. I had the pleasure of spending the weekend with him a couple months ago and he talks about how he's in the business of putting smiles on people's faces. Every canoe he sells, everyone shows up and they've got a big ear-to-ear grin all excited to paddle their canoe. I'm so stoked to finally have an outfitted boat that's capable of tackling this kind of whitewater and yeah go check out Paddle.ca. It's a really cool company and Derek's just an all-around great guy. So crazy to be paddling on a water body this big. It doesn't even feel real. It really does feel like you're paddling on an ocean. On one side of me I've got huge rock faces and trees for as far as the eye can see and then on the other side I've got nothing but water and sky. There's nothing like it on these long distance paddles. Jelly ranchers are your best friend. Doing chili again tonight. Oh actually I'm gonna do beef chili. So I'm gonna put my beef in first and make sure the beef is completely rehydrated because I find it uh it's a lot slower than the chili itself. This is my last portion of chili which I've decided is my favorite meal on this trip so far. I've got my very last portion of cheese which has held out pretty well in this entire trip. It's uh it's been pretty cold the whole time. So good. Such a hearty meal and the sun's out just in time for me to enjoy it. This has been one of the most incredible trips in my lifetime so far. I hope to continue seeing more newer crazier things. I've never been on a that felt so remote, so seldom traveled. We barely saw any sign of human whatsoever and if it weren't for one or two trees that looked like they had been sawed over you'd think that no one had been there. And then to come out here to Lake Superior, the largest lake in the world by surface area. Don't get that confused. This has also been one of the most challenging trips I've been on by far. Not even one of. This is the most challenging trip I've ever been on. My body is so beat up but again I don't regret a thing. I'm so so happy we've done this. What a special place. Got a real early start this morning. We uh are trying to complete this last leg of the journey and we want to beat the wind. It's uh gonna be quite the paddle and it's actually starting to rain now. Notice that? Probably not going to do much filming. We just want to hustle and make it to town. I'll check in when we're there. We made some really good progress this morning and for the first time in just over a week we're seeing the first signs of civilization. We're about a kilometer or two away from our cars and uh yeah my arms feel like they're gonna fall off but it's uh yeah I guess the trip's coming to an end soon. Very bittersweet feeling. So pretty much the entire time I've been paddling the coast of Superior I've had a line in the water fishing, trolling the entire time. Over 30 kilometers stretch and 50 yards off the shore I finally hooked into... I could not be happier. What a way to end the trip. Make sure you go watch Tosh's video for a more in-depth view of what we went through. He covered the trip a lot better than I did. I had so much good footage but unfortunately I dropped my hard drive and lost a bunch of it. Nonetheless it's just super special that I was able to experience it in person and glad that I was able to save some of it to show you guys. As always thank you so much for watching and I'll catch you in the next one. No I can't drop this fish man. Yes! Rainbow? It's a laker. Oh yeah.