Springing into the Boundary Waters

BWCAW #75

After purchasing a canoe and getting re-acquainted with the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) last summer, we were excited to, “get our feet wet” this spring.  In order to paddle in the BWCAW, one must obtain a government permit, and as there are only so many available per entry point per day, I started looking to find both the place and the date we wanted.  Knowing that we didn’t have a lot of time, we didn’t want to get too far north, or too far into the BW, as it would take too long to paddle out.  After looking at the map and realizing that choices for Memorial Day weekend were sparse, I decided to book us a permit for Entry Point #75, the Little Isabella River.  This point sounded good as there was only one permit issued here a day and we were told that it was a prime location for viewing wildlife, especially moose.  We also had several route options with this entry depending on how much we wanted to travel vs. relax.

Wednesday night, May 20th, took me, my husband Dustin, and our two small terriers, Elvis and Clancy, up to the S.Kawishiwi State Park Campground to spend the night and re-group with our gear.  To our luck, the rain starts to come as soon as we get the tent out of the car.  We did bring the ridiculously huge REI Hobitat 4 tent that we own, which proved to be awesome for re-packing gear!  It was tall enough to stand up in, and spread everything out in without feeling cramped.  If you are luxury car-camping, or family camping where you don’t have to carry anything, this tent is great!  After finally settling down, we awake early to a gentle rain.  Not being early birds, we lay there for a little bit longer hoping the rain will go away.  Lucky for us, it does, and we pack up camp to pick up our permit.  We did have to backtrack to Ely to pick the permit up at Piragis, which wasted quite a bit of time, but we were able to purchase a few other things and talk to the outfitter.  If you haven’t been to the Piragis store in Ely, MN, I’d highly recommend it.  The store is great, and they offer free consultations from their friendly outfitting staff.  After confirming that we had chosen a good route, we finally set off on our trip!

We set off from our entry point paddling North on the Little Isabella River.  This to us was a typical BWCAW entry river, shallow, winding and in some places, full of river grass.  When the river met up with the Isabella River, we paddled East into Quadga Lake.  The campsite I had picked, was a really short paddle from the portage into the lake.  It was a great little campsite, and on the edge of a little bay.   I heard from some other paddlers that the bay proved to be a great fishing spot.   If your party had wanted to spend some time hiking, the campsite directly across the lake hooked up to the Tomahawk Hiking Trail.  This lake was beautiful, and not busy, so it was very relaxing.  We ended up staying here for two nights.  The giant boulders were such that the chef was able to stand in a ditch anduse the stove at about waist height.  This was a great change from sitting on the ground and cooking! 

On Saturday, we decided to leave our campsite and paddle on.  At this point, we had become less ambitious, and decided to skip some of the lakes we had hoped to hit.  We figured that we would paddle the river, paddle through Bald Eagle lake and find a campsite in Gabbro or Little Gabbro lake.  As usual, the day we choose to leave, the weather is chilly and windy and we eat breakfast with gloves on.  Like the rest of the days, however, the sun eventually peeks thru and we have a beautiful day.  Good thing, as we paddled ALL DAY!  The river paddle with beautiful.  The scenery was spectacular, and very different than other BWCAW landscape.  we were paddling with the current, so we moved along at a great clip.  Once again, traffic was light, and we didn’t encounter too many other paddlers, that is, until we reached the other lakes.  Happy that the wind had died down, we paddled across Bald Eagle Lake and into Gabbro.  Much to our dismay, the the lake was very busy and we couldn’t find a campsite.  Not discouraged, we paddled on to Little Gabbro wehre the lake was also full.  We had never enountered a lake where ALL of the campsites were taken.  Apparently, this was the place to be if you wanted to fish.  Feeling a little frustrated and a lot tired, we decided to paddle back to Bald Eagle.  The first several campsites we passed were full, and just as we were beginning to get discouraged, I spotted what I thought to be a site!  We paddled closer, and little Elvis and I jumped out to check it out, and it was indeed a campsite.  Unfortunately, I was able to spot it as the last campers had left a rope tied to a tree.  Not only that, they had left tons of garbage in the fire pit.  It was really dissappointing, as this was not in the spirit of  Leave No Trace camping and not what one wanted to find upon arrival.  It’s kind of like arriving to a hotel room that someone had already used.  As it was quite late (8ish), Dustin set up the camp kitchen and started dinner, and I set up the tent.  After eating, the weather was still nice, and we sat outside of our tent in our sleeping bags.  The sky was so clear, and from our campsite on top of the boulder, we had a great, unobstructed view.  We retired to the tent when we could feel the night time moisture start to collect on us.

After a good night’s sleep, we got up the next morning to beautiful weather, and decided to day paddle back to Gabbro lake.  We packed up some snacks, the dogs and the fishing equipment.  It was fun to paddle from Bald Eagle into Gabbro, as there was a little rapids to navigate.  We swiftly paddle thru there and into a great litte cove we spotted the afternoon before.  Unfortunately, trying to fish with the dogs in the canoe proves slightly difficult, and we didn’t catch anything.  As there was a rapids passing into the lake where it drops, we have to paddle back up to get into Bald Eagle Lake.  This little pass thru was fun as well, and it had a nice, flat rock to stop on.  There was also a little waterfall here, which provided about a good 30 minutes of entertainment with our swimming dog!  Upon returning to camp, we discuss staying or finding a campsite closer to the mouth of the river.  As we are tired,  and kind of baked from the sun, we decide to just relax.  It turned out to be a good call, as when we paddled the next day, it would have only put us 40 minutes closer to the river.  ALthough this sounds like a significant amount of time, if you added up the amount of time it would take to break down camp, paddle, and set it up again, it was a time saver.  We enjoy our last dinner at our campsite and retire to our tent pretty early.

We are efficient and set off pretty early the next day.  As it is alway great not to retrace your path, and upon a suggestion from the outfitter, we decided to paddle out through entry #84, Snake River.  Little did we know, the two short portages would connect to the last long portage to be the longest portage ever.  Either we missed a path, or due to river conditions, the portages had all been connected together to form one extremely long portage.  After walking almost all the way to the end, Dustin has to leave the canoe.  We make it to the end together, and he goes back to get the canoe, and I walk the two miles on the forest service road to get the car.  Although my new water shoes were great, I’m not really sure they were made to hike 5 miles on trails.

All in all, the trip was fantastic, and we couldn’t have asked for better weather in May.  I once again took my camera, with the Macro lens that Tyler lent me.  I had fun using it, and on my  first portage, I spotted a fungus that looked like a brain.  Super excited, I pulled out the camera.  Unfortunately, the the photo didn’t turn out so great, but I was happy to find a use for it!  I also think that I have found the pack to carry the camera in.  We look forward to paddling again, and already have our permit booked!  Here are a few other shots that I wanted to share.  I will link to my Mac gallery when we get them posted!

Tags: Boundary Waters, BWCAW, Canoeing, Paddling, pets

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 10:04 PM and is filed under Camping, Minnesota, Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.