Quetico Portage 5557 (Sarah to Side)

We used the long land portage on the way in and the creek on the way out. The land portage would be brutal on the way out, since it has no level areas and has much longer elevation change on the Sarah end. The creek, if it has enough water in it was fairly pleasant with 3 small portages, and some lift overs in shallow areas. I feel like there was a large tree down at the beginning of the middle portage that we had to drop all the gear over before starting, but my memory may be a little hazy there. The last portage (15 to 20 R) is pretty rough. It starts at a beaver dam, has a lot of ankle twisting rocks going through overlapping shoulder high bushes right next to the creek. The landing at the end was ok. We took this portage going West to East coming out of Sarah to Side

I have used both routes, and much prefer the northern one through the stream. Coming from Side to Sarah on high water situations, you can paddle up the stream for 75M or so to the first portage. If the water is low, you can portage around the western side. From there, the hike is about 100M to put into the stream again, 175 total if you had to portage the whole bit. You then have roughly a 1/2 mile paddle through the stream. At the end, there are portages left and right, though the northern one is easier to unload into. Both are roughtly 50m to Sarah.

there are apparently 2 portage routes here. The southern route is all on land. The northern route requires navigating through parts of the creek. The route has 2 relatively short portages on either end of the creek, and a pull through at the entrance into Side Lake.