In August 2020 I had the absolute pleasure of going on a 6-day 5-night canoe excursion with one of my best friends Will. We explored the border waters of Northern Minnesota and Ontario, exploring the far eastern side of the BWCA. Let’s zoom in a bit.
Day 1
We put in at Little John Lake, marked with an orange waypoint on the map. We proceeded downstream in the Royal River and through a series of portages and rapids until we reached North Fowl Lake. Oddly enough it’s a lake in the BWCA with cabins, and motorboats are allowed as long as they are under 10 HP. It was unexpected to see civilization—even a little bit—here in the Boundary Waters, something very unassociated with this place in my mind.
It was threatening rain all day, and just as we were passing the cabins we got dumped on. Even though we were absolutely soaked and had to stop on shore to bail out the canoe, we were in good spirits setting out again!
Another portage to Moose Lake, and we were about played out. We made our camp there on the west side of the lake. (Night “1” on the map)
Day 2
It’s pretty much accepted that one wakes up early and gets a jump start on the day while canoe camping, and we didn’t want to go against tradition. We were up and in the boat before 6am, and headed towards Mountain Lake. We had a series of demoralizing portages in front of us: 3 portages separated by exceedingly small bodies of water. Loading all of your gear into the canoe just to cross a pond and unload 6 minutes later can be exhausting. We were single-minded, and single portaging, and rushed headfirst into the challenge. All told, we had reached Mountain Lake much earlier than expected, around 8:30am! Because we were so ahead of schedule we decided to break and enjoy the beautiful scenery before us:
We remained at the end of the portage trail for over an hour just admiring Mountain Lake and its crystal clear waters with a deep blue hue. Snacking and swimming as well.
We continued on, traversing most of Mountain Lake, scoping out campsites, until we found the perfect one!
We immediately know we wanted to spend the night here, and pretty quickly agreed to spend our layover day here, since we were enjoying Mountain Lake so much!
Day 3
We awoke to a serene day on the lake, and the clouds had finally lifted! As soon as the sun came out we realized we were sharing our campsite with another family:
There were three garter snakes living in the massive white pine at our campsite. We would share this space with them for the next 2 days, often seeing them suntanning on the shore nearby. At first they were very skiddish, and would flee immediatly, but after they realized we were not after them they chilled out, and even let us pet them and hold them.
The day’s main adventure was cliff jumping! We had seen a few potential spots, and decided to check them out in a day excursion. We packed a lunch and set off! Our first spot that we check was a bust, but the second time we struck gold! A great cliff about ~10 feet out of the water
We stayed for hours cliff jumping and enjoying a picnic lunch.
Our last night with the snake family and some beautiful night swimming on Mountain Lake.
Day 4
The next day we made our way westward and southward to Clearwater Lake. The portage trail we took crossed the Border Route Trail, so after we’d moved all the gear over we took a little hike. Straight uphill about 10 minutes later opened up to a gorgeous view of Mountain Lake and Canadian wilderness beyond it. Clearwater Lake was nice, but more civilized, with buildings and lodges on it, we zipped through as quickly as we could. With some route confusion on the portage, we finally emerged in Caribou Lake. Once we found our spot for the night we proceeded to explode our gear and chow down for lunch!
We had a couple great hammock spots on the water, and we could hear the gurgling creek leading to Johnson Falls all night. A serene evening to be sure!
Day 5
Our penultimate day, we portaged in and out of Little Caribou, which is definitely a site I want to visit in the future! We stopped and did a little hike to Johnson Falls before we paddled into Pine Lake. It’s always nice to have an excuse to stretch your legs on a canoe trip!
We paddled to one of only two sites on the southern shore of Pine Lake. Here we had a bit of a fiasco with a dead pine tree that collapsed on us, and in fact blocked our route to and from the landing spot. We knew it had to be removed so we could leave the campsite the next morning. So we ended up giving the tree a proper burial at sea!
On this day, we brought my red canoe ashore, and when the sun popped out, the brilliant red shone strongly, and began to attract many butterflies to the scene. There were monarchs, viceroys, and many others that I couldn’t identify. It was a beautiful sigt, and I’m disappointed I didn’t get a photo of it, however it is burned in my memory. And it’s one reason the canoe eventually got to be named Monarch Canoe.
We had a relaxing rest of the day, savoring our last moments on this lake and in this wilderness.
Day 6
We paddled east through Pine Lake early in the morning. Through the miniscule rapids into McFarland. Cabins started popping up, letting us back gently into civilization. We made it back to the same put-in point where we began the experience 6 days prior.
All was wrapped up nice and neatly… Until we got a flat tire on the route back!
Things were a bit dicey for a moment, but luckily a shop in Grand Marais had a spare Volvo tire laying around, just by chance. We got very lucky.
We wrapped up out trip with some fried fish in Grand Marais, as is tradition.