Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness

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Behold, I add a story to all of the posted pictures.  (Before the month's even up!)

So...  Ali and I had been hoping for a trip up to the Boundary Waters while we're in the Midwest.  And it is beautiful up there.  Another pair of our grad school friends came with, and while we were all familiar with being outside, Ali was the only one with any canoe tripping experience.  (Apparently river trips don't count, since there isn't extensive portaging - ahem, portaahshing - involved.)  We had an 8-day trip, with six of those days on water.  The first night out of Madison we spent at a Superior National Forest campground just outside of Ely, MN (one of two major entry points, rhymes with really).  The entire campground was really, really well-maintained, and our lake-accessible site was stellar.  It was by far the best Forest campground I've seen thus far.  We had an ok dinner in Ely, a good night's sleep (at least for me), and both a flat tire and a delectable diner breakfast in the morning.  I'm starting to think that adventuring up north just does not mix well with me and cars. Once our tire was patched in town, we got out to Canadian Border Outfitters, who rented us kevlar canoes/paddles/pfds and a SPOT GPS tracker.  While there are probably a lot of good companies up there, CBO was an excellent choice.  We got a motor-tow (think aluminum fishing boat + motor + canoe roof-rack) out to Ensign Lake - point B on the map - from the outfitter - point A on Moose Lake.  And that got us out of the highly trafficked area pretty nicely.  The remaining points were our nightly campsites and the take-out on Lake One (as sent by the SPOT).

I'll add more specifics to each of the days' posts, but there are a couple more general observations.
(1) I've definitely underestimated canoe camping.  I'm sure our trip's timing helped (post-prelim B for Ali and me, post-mosquito season for the lakes, and post-school-starting-back for crowd control), but the lakes were wonderfully serene, and I can't remember being many other places that have such stark beauty.  Yes, there were some tough bits with the long portages (which Ali did without complaint), the rain, and some sore shoulders.  However, the pace was completely up to us, and it was incredibly easy to fall into the longish trip mentality where all you have to worry about is eating, sleeping, and doing something that's pretty awesome - in this case, paddling.
(2) Portaging isn't half as bad as I thought it might be.  The trails were really pretty and well-maintained, and having a canoe that only weighed 42 lbs didn't hurt either.  There was only one super-uncomfy portage for me, and it turned out that neither Ali nor I had checked the orientation of the yoke - bad idea.  Another bad idea - having an unbalanced canoe with big chunks of padding that weren't well placed.  Thankfully, a nalgene and a bunch of tweaking made the canoe much easier to carry by the end of the week.  *You should probably completely disregard my opinion of portaging, since my share of the portages maxed out with one around 100 rods and a weight around 55-60 lbs.  Ali carried our boat the entire first half of the week (heavier packs then - and yes, we would carry our pack and the canoe at the same time), and her long portages more than doubled the length of my long portage. The other couple also had their own canoe-carrying, and they were fighting off colds.
(3) The BWCA and the sister Quetico Provencial Park have a ton of options that are accessible as you want them to be.  There were a ton of people within a day's paddle of the entry points, even though school's back in session.  Just past that day's paddle, we might have seen one other canoe per day.  We definitely didn't camp near anyone or have any issues with campsites until the last two nights.  I had been hoping for a longer, 60-mile route with lots of small lakes, but even after we abandoned that plan on the second day out, we still had a quality backcountry experience.  The further out you get, the more of a wilderness experience you can have, and rumor has it that both Quetico and the specially-permitted areas of the BWCAW are awesomely wilderness-y.  Our campsites and portages were pretty obvious/nicely kept, but you can find some absolute bushwhacking.
(4) As far as maps go, there are two popular series for the Boundary Waters:  Fischer and Mackinzie.  I think for our originally-planned trip, we would have had to get something like 6-7 maps + even more for the just-in-case route that we ended up taking.  Instead, we went for 2 National Geographic maps.  We got lost twice.  Once we couldn't find a portage (which could have just been our uncertainty on the first day out), so we took an alternate portage (+ a lot of unnecessary paddling).  The second time, there were way more campsites than marked on the map, which confused our way to the take-out (this could be due to some post-fire reconstruction); we ended up caravan-ing with a bunch of canoeists who knew where they were going.  Both happened on large lakes near entry points.  Thankfully, the small lakes further out were very easy to navigate.  I think I might still be reasonably happy with our (2! waterproof!) maps, but I'm also glad all the confusion happened where there were other people and other routes.
(5)  The SPOT was kinda a cool thing to send stuff to our families and to have in case of emergency.  As an actual adventure tool, it's added weight that doesn't even tell you where you are.  It was nice for this kind of trip, but I don't see myself ever buying one.

Three, Two, One... Take-out!

View Day 6 - The End in a larger map

Morning Wind

The last day had more fair weather in store, but this time it came with some rather pushy wind.  We were up with some more oatmeal and fruit and got on our way as quickly as possible (i.e. slightly before 10).  Lake Two was easy enough to get through; we were in a bit of a caravan with a really fast canoe and a couple of older women.  When we were getting a little confused, they pulled into the portage beach.

We had two pretty brief portages, and then it was on to Lake One, another incredibly bewildering place (especially considering our map didn't show half the campsites we saw).  We found ourselves in another canoe caravan - this time with a bunch of men from the Twin Cities.  They come up just about every year from the sounds of it, and they led us all the way to the take out.  There were some pretty narrow twists and turns, but we made it to the takeout just after noon.

Into Lake Two

We set the SPOT off to get an earlier-than-planned pick up, but we still had about an hour and a half of snacking before the outfitters had time to come get us.  There were 2-3 other groups getting off water and a couple handfuls of people just stopping by to look around.

I'm always a little bummed the last day of the trip, but the scenery was still nice (perhaps not as nice as the lakes that escaped the burns) and the trip had been awesome.  There were free beverages at the outfitters, but we still managed to get into the car more quickly than we ever made it out of camp.  A few hours down the road, and we were back in civilization.

Scrapy Portage Beach

Looking from one portage on to the next

View from the portage - the nalgene's how we balanced our boat.

Last Portage

Lake One

Getting Lost (and finding a snake friend)

Following the other canoeists

Insula to Lake Three (or Two)

View Day 5 - and the weather gods smiled in a larger map

Portage out of Lake Insula

Day 5 made up for day 4.  The sun was up, the skies were blue, and there were only light breezes.  That being said, I think the trek from Insula to Lake Three was one of the tougher ones for me (physically).  My arms and shoulders were pretty tired, and I still had to paddle on the left (facing the sun - bleagh).

Down from the Portage

There was more canoe traffic and more burned land, but even with my complaints, it was an awesome day.  We started off with the most awesome blueberry pancakes ever (complete with maple syrup) and headed into the byzantine channels of Lake Insula.  We had to go straight out from the campsite, paralleling a bunch of islands, and then turn into one of several  possible inlets.  I decided at some point that we should be turning right to get to the right spot, and we (luckily) ended up going straight into the right place.  There was a tiny little rocky channel for us, and then it was smooth sailing to get to the first portage of the day.  Sort of.  We were in the right place, but finding the right way past this island thing was a little tricky.  We made it though, and there were a couple of canoes coming to and from the trail to help us out.

This being the second half of the week, my food pack was finally light enough  for me to start taking the canoe on some of the portages.  Thus, all the portages were mine (insert evil laugh here).  The first one was arguably the prettiest portage we did.  (One of the first two portages of the trip was also kinda cool - bunches of red/orange flowers and a slender snake.)  There were lots of purple wild flowers all along the path.  There was some elevation gain and loss, but the width of the path and the rockiness helped out a little.

At the end of that walk, there was another longer-than-expected lake in a burned area.  I picked an inlet too soon again, and we turned it into lunch (tuna/crackers/cheese/trail mix again).  The lunch spot looked like it was in a recently burned block, and there were some crazy-looking bugs around.

Post-lunch, we hit the water, and within 10 minutes, we were at the actual portage.  This one was quite short (just a path to avoid a bit of a rapid), but Ali and I had the canoe backwards, and the yoke dug into my neck like mad.  Granted, I think the canoe was well-balanced when I was facing the wrong way, but I had to get Ali to come rescue my neck maybe 100ft from the end.

We had a set of small paddles and small portages to get into Lake Four, but all of those went cleanly.  Lake Four was still in a burned area, and I got a little nervous about the prospect of finding a good campsite.  Though Four wasn't really all that good looking, things started getting better after we went through a not-supposed-to-be-a-portage full of mud, algae, mosquito ponds, and other gunk to get to Lake Three (thank you map).

With some rocky outcroppings, deep water, and actual live trees, we were hopeful for our buddy's fishing.  We planned to have fish for dinner one of the nights.  Thankfully, we also had freeze dried veggies, mashed potatoes (garlic and four cheese), and shelf stable bacon as a backup.  Ahem, sides for the fish.  Though there was no fish when we camped at Lake Three, we still ate pretty well.

Burnt area

The campsite at Lake Three might have been my favorite.  We had some nice rock slabs coming up to the fire circle, and there were some prime tent sites.  Between the good weather and some good exposure, we had places to dry all of our soaked gear.  There was also the best bear tree ever near this rocky ledge dropping into the water.  (The ledge would have been prime jumping area if the water had been a little bit warmer.)  We wandered all over our bit of forest, but there were several occupied sites nearby.  The other campers weren't loud, but we could tell that they were there.

We stayed up relatively late for the last night of our trip.  The stars (and the sunset) were great; it was slightly more clear than any other night of our trip.  We thought about doing some night canoeing just out from our site, but our sleepiness got the best of us.  The patch on Ali's sleeping mat finally held, and we had a good last night.

Rocky Ledge near Evening Camp

Area around Camp

Lounging after setting up tents and such

The other camera:

Morning chores at Lake Insula

Paddling through the Lake Insula islands

We found the right channel!!

Heading toward the first portage of the day

This is proper canoeing form :-)

The rapid we had to avoid with the second portage of the day

Almost to Lake Four

Portage to Lake 4

Camp on Lake Three - drying our gear