A last shot in 2024 at getting through the canal

Dwight Peck's personal website

Summer 2024

A photographic record of whatever leapt out at us

You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings and can't let go.

A last shot in 2024 at getting through the canal

The canal between our lake and the larger lake nearby was built, evidently in the early or mid-1890s, with a view to floating logs from the other lake to the lumber sawmill on ours. It's said to have been seldom used for that purpose, because it turned out that they'd got the relative lake levels wrong, and for log-floating purposes it was a one-way canal.

In any case, this photo is said to have dated from 1919, and it shows an attractive and not-small boat playing about on the mid-lake between the two lengths of the canal.

And this is a photo of the sawmill, reportedly located just south of the public beach on the west side of the lake, about where the houses listed in the 80s are seen on the map below. We've been told that the sawmill ceased operations in about 1915, when the Northwoods ran out of trees, but the boat appears to date the picture somewhat later. There are few or no signs of the mill operations nowadays.

There was also a railway spur line to move logs up to the mill from about where the highway bridge is now, where it joined the main train line (now defunct) that came up through northern Wisconsin from Wausau and points south. The line was built for the then-lucrative lumbering boom, but continued in use for passengers to Minocqua until 1956; service even to Wausau was discontinued in 1970.

The canal has deteriorated severely over the past 1¼ centuries, but one recalls that in the 1990s it was still possible to bring a rowboat with an outboard motor through the length of it and winch it over the spillway at the far end.

There have always been various obstacles in the canal, mainly trees or treelimbs that have fallen partly or wholly into it, lying across it or lurking submerged, and there are some stretches where invidious vegetation presents challenges. But significant maintenance seems to have continued for a long while, and since then, year by year we've generally been able to keep it minimally clear, sometimes with the help of a small saw. Last year, however, we discovered a few smallish trees lying across it bank to bank about halfway along in the second tranche, and what with one thing and another, in a difficult summer for Cousin Rob, we never got round clearing that out.

Since then we've just been reduced to looking for basking turtles around the mid-lake and going home again.

But today we're decided to, at the very least, go along to learn whether some other good soul might have seen to a little sawing on their own. At this point, concentrating on avoiding complexities lying in wait along the bottom, we'd be praying for saw-wielders if we thought it would help.

The entire canal from our Tomahawk Bay to the mid-lake to the farther lake extends about 720m (2,362 ft, ca. half a mile). The first leg of it runs for about 180m (ca. 590 ft), with lots of impedimenta strewn about under the water, but no serious blockades.

The mid-lake is about 150m long (500 ft) and 70m wide, and the second tranche covers a bit more than 400m (1330 ft), and that's where the worst of the frustrating experiences take place.

Avoiding fouling the propeller is fairly easy when the sun's behind us, but coming back out when the sun's in the west, the water is opaque.

Canoes and kayaks generally have a much easier time of it, skimming along the surface with a grin, but the hydrobike propellers reach down about 17 inches below the surface when fully operational. They can be hoisted up to get over observed obstacles, but it's very easy for underwater vegetation to wrap round the blades and stop the machine on the spot.

The original canal looks so clean and orderly in the photo above, but now it's dominated mostly by an enormous tangle of roots, as well as fallen trees and the remains of earlier efforts to clear out the big ones.

The weather's work on the canal banks makes slow progress at pushing the soil back and exposing whatever refuses to be moved.

We're nearly at the mid-lake and running into more underwater weediness today than we expected. Perhaps the water level's down by a few inches.

Now, propeller up for the lilypads and weeds adorning the opening onto the mid-lake.

And unfortunately, at this point, we've failed to get through all the voracious vegetation, our propeller is thoroughly fouled, and we have no means of moving in any direction.

The last time this total incapacity occurred, nearly right in this spot in fact, Cousin Rob was able to come alongside and clear off our propeller with a long stick that he kept tied up on his bike, for all events.

We're hoping to talk the bike into shimmering along over towards some solid ground, so that we can get off and clear the prop. One cannot contemplate stepping off into the water, as the mud and primordial dead leaf muck is of unknown depth, but very deep!

One trick that sometimes works is backpedaling, frontpedaling, and backpedaling vigorously and fast. In this case it served just enough to get us to an overhanging branch to rip off a stick long enough to reach down to the propeller, digging enough of the tangled grasses off to get a little momentum. So before too long we've got across the lake to the other part of the canal, which, of course . . .

. . . has its own collection of things to be avoided.

But at least we can step off here and clear it all out properly. This is the nominal southern beginning of the Pottawattomie Colony 'Canal Trail', at the bench presented with the Northwoods Land Trust, which now cares for this whole area as a forest reserve.

Into the connector channel, which is also much more obstaclized than last year. Including some sizable rocks.

How such obstacles could have snuck in to line the bottom under the culvert is a matter for reflection. But they did.

Now we need to start focusing.

Some ancient tree stumps on their sides

Here's one of the trees that we failed to clear last year -- one of them has successfully been pulled over to the side, and this one has indeed been sawn through.

Unfortunately, there's still that grim survivor, from that one or another tree, blocking the whole enterprise, and we can't get close enough to the banks to commandeer a stick of something to push it out of our way.

But, just when it was most needed, our aging brain has volunteered an idea, one which should have been obvious. Our propeller's semi-fouled again, but if we can get up enough momentum we can keep ramming the loose tree-piece until it's backed off enough let us slip through.

So we're potentially over the worst of it, and on our way again. (The thing had slid back to blocking the passage again when we returned, but the same trick worked in the other direction.)

It's not difficult to imagine that in a few years, there may not be enough left here to be any fun at all. Maybe the new lake association could take it on as a (probably expensive) project.

At least we can see daylight at the end.

The propeller is seriously balking now, with still a ways to go.

Oh, yuck.

We persist. Stamping on the pedals aggressively. Back-pedaling twice and then leaping up to crash down on the pedals forcefully. Not elegant, but necessary.

That pond scum can sometimes hide hurtful things.

Almost there

This is the spillway to the farther lake. On the right is the remains of the winching system for getting boats over -- we were there for that in the late '90s, with Kristin, Alison, and Marlowe, but we personally hadn't been back here until 2010, and by then it was all changed, changed utterly.

There's a great mass of surface crap that's apparently flowed down here, but . . .

. . . where has all that rubbish come from, blocking up the sluice boards.

The detritus is unlikely to have washed up here -- perhaps someone has piled it all up there for some unfathomable purpose.

-- Wait there.

Those are some of the homes of residents on this much larger lake, though the shoreline population density seems to be much lower down here at its southern expanses.

That far shore is about 2½ miles across.

Time to start back, if possible

A little bit anachronistic -- no more than a few kayakers come through here from time to time, and fewer and fewer hydrobikers, and no one at all would show up with a boat trailer.

We're still trying to get properly turned round.

But now we're off. -- 'Yak, wait! Back to the right.'

This is the time of day, looking into the sun, when it's virtually impossible to see anything awaiting you under the surface. It's a bit of a slow-motion trial and error, rather.

These are so strange. It seems to be reaching out to grab a pontoon and drag us under.

Nearly back out at last, we can seriously clear the propeller there at the sandy shore outside the canal entrance.

Fairly choppy seas pedaling back north on the main lake, with rather a blustery head wind, but it's all in good fun. As long as you don't let the larger waves turn the bike broadside.

The Dawn Patrol

In quite a few years of playing about on the lake, we've never ventured out in the early morning. But today will be the day, at last.

Except that there's early, and there's our preferred sort of 'early', and by now the amazing mist lifting off the water under the sun, when we first looked out the window, is evanescing.

The early morning lake does seem to be preternaturally calm far more often than otherwise, before the afternoon winds seem to burst in from all directions.

Looking down the eastern side of the main lake

And back along Mussent Point leading down the western side of the North Bay

Adjidaumo Island, in the centre of the main upper lake

The Mussent Point context, and then . . .

. . . a closer look in the morning sunlight.

Kristin's cottage, with its elegant new windows on the back porch

We have some arboreal casualities of our own.

Back to the little hydrobike harbor alongside the venerable boathouse, and it's time now for some breakfast. Or perhaps an early lunch.

The Lake in the Wisconsin Northwoods

Mussent Point is at no. 12.

Next up: A late-season turtle patrol, and the Minocqua Brewing Company