We were supposed to leave Sunday morning and do Cache->Pardee-->Big Porc-->Little Island-->Cache but if they wont sell permits before Saturday evening we will be going to Killarney where they are actually issuing permits.

Lofty wrote:

But Killarney is first come first serve - so I have a good chance of getting sites I like and hitting the la cloche trail and hiking it in 3 days ( again )

The entire La cloche in 3 days!! Holy cats--you are some kind of backpacker! I remember planning this for like 10 days way back in my youth. Of course I knew nothing about backpacking at the time and was taking way too much stuff. Suffice to say I lasted one day then turned around. Of course since then they've made huge improvements in gear weight and I realize ultralighters can accomplish much greater distances than the average joe. Enjoy!

My plans are simply to push my date back by 1 week. It's going to make preparation for my 10-day solo trip (starting the 14th) a bit more rushed and far less smooth, but there's little I can do about that. The fishing weekend is happening!

I re-booked the exact same trip, just starting on May 9th instead of Feb. 29th. As I've somehow failed to ever start a trip at the Shall Lake access point (!) it's mostly about sticking pins in my wall map. I have Jeff's Algonquin wall map in my office at work, and there's a pin stuck in every lake I've ever camped on. Not paddled through mind you, but actually camped on.

So after this trip I'll be sticking pins in Booth, Shirley and McKaskill. I'm spending two nights on McKaskill so I can do a day trip into Alsever, and if I'm really feeling energetic I might return via Creepy and Vireo, which means taking a portage marked as one of the steepest in Algonquin. Since most of my gear will be back on McKaskill, that seems like the way to do it!