THE BOUNDARY WATERS— A long day of paddling from our put-in at the Mudro entry point left our small party in a good position to complete a four-day loop that took us up to the border and across most of Crooked Lake. With one minor exception, it was Route 23 from Bob Beymer’s classic book on routes on the western BWCA, written before Congress had added the “W” to the canoe country’s title.
Beymer’s books had sat untouched in one of our bookcases for years, but after our close friend Victoria won an outfitted trip from Spirit of the Wilderness for finishing first on the women’s side in last year’s full Ely canoe portage marathon (and setting a new women’s record in the process), I started looking up reasonable four-day routes. Victoria had never done an overnight trip into the Boundary Waters so Jodi and I came along as unofficial guides to make sure she, and her 15-year-old son Jack, didn’t wind up marooned somewhere in Canada.
Beymer had described Route 23 as “Challenging,” which I figured would be manageable for the four of us. Back in my college days, I refused to do any route in the BW that wasn’t on Beymer’s “Rugged” list, but given that I’ll be signing up for Medicare next month, I figured I could compromise. I guess you could say I’ve mellowed with age.
Even so, the route called for plenty of travel. This wasn’t a half-day jaunt to a base camp kind of trip. In our four days, we were traveling 50 miles, visiting 14 lakes, a river, and two creeks, all connected by 19 portages, the longest stretching a mile. Since it was the first time for Victoria and Jack, we decided to see some country. In the Boundary Waters, of course, you have to work for that privilege.
To be fully accurate, Jack didn’t sign up for seeing some country. He was told he was coming and didn’t have much input into the route. He had tried to convince his mom that his aunt Melinda would make an outstanding canoe partner (he offered to stay home and take care of the dog), but Victoria wasn’t persuaded.
“Will there be signal?” was Jack’s primary concern.
I had figured a strong start was the key to a more leisurely pace the remaining three days of the trip. This was supposed to be a vacation, of course, so we opted against a crack-o’-dawn start and hit the water a bit after nine the first morning. We had a restricted permit for Mudro, which meant we couldn’t camp on Horse Lake, which was fine since we wanted to make it to Lower Basswood Falls the first day anyway.
Nine portages, four lakes, a winding, rocky river, and a couple lifts over beaver dams later, we made it to the falls and took the portage (located on the Canadian side) around the drop, as the sun was starting to slip toward the horizon. We were all tired by then and took the first open campsite we found, which was in sight and earshot of the falls, which helped lull us to sleep later that evening.
There was clearly something missing along the portages and at the campsite, although we were all reluctant to say anything for fear the mere mention of the complete lack of mosquitoes and deer flies would somehow send a swarm our way. It’s not unusual for the bugs to have mellowed by late August, but a late hatch of mosquitoes at home had left our front yard in Vermilion Lake Township a no-go zone come evening. Here, you had to hunt to find a single skeeter, a relief we enjoyed throughout the trip.
After our productive first day, we lounged around the campsite until about 9:30 a.m. And unlike the first day, we had no portages to worry about, since we would be paddling on the long and meandering Crooked Lake, with the relatively leisurely goal of making it to Friday Bay before looking for a camp. I’ve always liked the alignment of bays on Crooked Lake, starting with Wednesday Bay in the far southeast, followed by Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday bays as you head north and west.
A day of just paddling brought out more of the occasional friendly sparring between Victoria and Jack we had seen the first day. Neither of them had steered a canoe before and it was apparent my brief demonstration hadn’t taken. As they zig-zagged along our route, they grew impatient at times with the others’ efforts. Jack, who had been in the front, convinced his mom to switch at one point, assuming he could do better, but soon found it wasn’t as easy as he had thought. He happily took up the bow again at the first opportunity, where he stayed the rest of the trip.
The highlight of this day came early, as we explored the Indian pictographs arrayed along the remarkable rock face a couple miles north of Lower Basswood Falls. The pictographs are worth a look but it’s the enormous, multi-colored rock face that is truly captivating. I wanted to explore the huge outcrop, which extended at least 100 feet above us and stretched for a quarter mile, but it was early in the day and everyone else wanted to put a few miles on before we stopped.
While we had enjoyed a tailwind on our first day, as we headed to the northwest along Crooked Lake, a west wind kept building. While Crooked Lake is enormous, it’s a maze of islands and points, which we were able to use to keep the winds at bay. By the time we reached Friday Bay in mid-afternoon, however, the wind was kicking up white caps on the eastern side, so rather than fight them, we settled into a protected campsite on a small island at the entrance to the bay.
This proved to be a convenient location, with a nice white pine with a huge branch that was perfect for hanging our food pack. This had required a MacGyver-esque solution involving multiple ropes and fancy knots to meet the requirements the night before, so having an easy hang on our second night was welcome.
Day three would prove to be our most challenging, and not only because it included a 320-rod portage. While I had assumed the wind would have died down overnight, allowing us to make our way down Friday Bay without the excitement of whitecaps, that was not the case. So, we adjusted our route and worked our way along a series of islands that provided relative protection until we got to the western shore of the bay, where we were able to cruise to the south in relative calm.
At the south end of the bay, we took the portage to Papoose Creek, and followed that through a series of small, connected lakes, including Papoose, Chippewa, and Niki, and short portages to Wagosh Lake. As was the case seemingly throughout our trip, each of these small lakes had their resident pair of trumpeter swans, evidence of the degree to which this once extirpated species in Minnesota has recovered.
At Wagosh, we took the 320-rod portage into Gun Lake. As we found throughout the trip, the longer portages tended to be in better condition, and this was no exception. It was long, but a huge fallen aspen about two-thirds of the way down the trail, that was too high to crawl over and too low to crawl under with a canoe, provided an unavoidable, but welcome, rest stop for Victoria and I, who did all the canoe portaging.
The portage comes out at the tip of Gun Lake’s barrel, which points to the northeast, yet the surrounding terrain somehow funneled the west wind into our faces at high velocity. It was the toughest paddling of the trip and it was a struggle to get to the main body of the lake, where the wind seemed to relent only a bit.
The high winds were heralding a series of rain squalls, which we hadn’t expected. And with the wind and waves, we weren’t about to open up packs to grab our rain gear. Jodi and I were in the lead and we reached the protection of the western shore just before the heavy rain hit so we were able to get out our rain gear before getting soaked. Victoria and Jack, who’d been zig-zagging their way, weren’t so lucky and by the time they reached us, they were soaked through. Down the shore a bit, we found a spot to land where they got changed and pulled out their rain gear as we dodged showers for a couple more hours. I knew this wasn’t Jack’s idea of a good time, but he kept a smile on his face and never complained.
After a couple more hours of paddling and two short portages, we made it to Boot Lake, where we found a nice campsite and opted to work on drying things out. It was our last night out and Vic started cooking up a grab bag full of things from their food pack and fed Jack an eclectic, five-course dinner over the course of an hour. While there were just two of them, the outfitters had packed enough food for twice as many people, so she just started feeding Jack until he couldn’t eat any more.
Jack was up and raring to go the next morning, mostly because he was eager to be done with his trip to the wilderness. My guess is the experience will linger with him and his opinion of the journey will age for the better.
We hit the portage to Fourtown Lake a little after eight in the morning and worked our way down that beastly series of goat trails that took us back to Mudro. As we paddled in silence the final mile or so, I thought Bob Beymer had this route just about right. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t rugged. For me, it was just what the doctor ordered.
While the arrival at the Mudro parking lot should have been uneventful, as we got the last canoe strapped in place, an immature merlin, a small falcon, that was clearly getting used to its wings, suddenly flew over our heads and landed on top of the canoe, not more than three feet from us. As he sat and stared at us, I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and caught a fun image as the young bird finally decided to look for a quieter spot to land.
We were ready to move on ourselves.