Michael Janke

Minnesota is home to a million-acre tract of undeveloped, protected wilderness area called the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It’s located along 150 miles of the US-Canada border, adjacent to the even more-remote Quetico wilderness area in Canada. Travel is by canoe, portaging between lakes & camping in designated lakeside campsites. The BWCA is a good place to get away from people and roads, canoe and portage across uncountable lakes and spend nights listening to loons calling and wolves howling.

I’ve canoed the BWCA a few times in the 1980’s, and 1990’s, but not since. Hence the motivation for a friend and former colleague of mine to spend a few nights in canoe country.

You need a permit to enter the BWCA. The permit is for a specific entry point, entry date and party size. I chose Seagull Lake at the end of the Gunflint Trail. My dad and uncle fished Seagull Lake nearly every year from the 1970’s through the 1990’s, and I’d fished Seagull and used it as an entry point a couple of times, so I know it fairly well. I chose early September – fewer bugs, more permits available, fewer canoeists. The upside to Seagull and similar large lakes is that you have more canoeing and less portages. The downside is that you can get caught in the wind on open water.

More on that later.

I figured that since I still had most of the gear from my 1990’s trips, I’d be able to dig it out, organize it and go. It turns out though, that the urethane coatings on 30-year-old tents and tarps no longer keep out water, that 60+year olds like me aren’t going to be happy with inch-thick sleeping pads, that 30-, 40- and 70-year-old gasoline stoves are heavy and cantankerous compared to modern butane stoves, that you can’t get replacement filters for first-generation MSR water filters, etc…, etc… .

I was able to re-use my 1990’s vintage REI down sleeping bags, my Sealine dry packs, Bending Branches bentwood canoe paddles, & a bunch of other gear though, so all was not lost. Nothing that a credit card and a handful of trips to REI can’t solve.😎

I ended up purchasing a new tent (cheap REI Trailmate 1), cook stove (Jetboil Minimo), sleeping pad (Big Agnes Boundary Deluxe), water filter (MSR Hyperflow), tarp (LiteOutdoors Synylon 8 x 10), and to keep the home-front from stressing out, a Garmin inReach Messenger.

We rented the canoe.

Because you only have to carry all your crap on your back when portaging, one can get away with heavier gear, more gear, and even a few luxuries (camp chairs!) that you wouldn’t tolerate if backpacking. You can get by with cheaper, heavier gear too – a $160 tent instead of a $500 one, for example. You have to carry your canoe on your shoulders though. Thank goodness for Kevlar.

Most of the portages are short enough that you can use multiple trips to haul your gear. I took the canoe through the portages on the first trip and a 40-lb pack and some of the random small stuff on the second. My canoeing buddy took the other pack, paddles and the rest of the crap through in either one or two trips. If you are in an area with long portages, you’ll want to make it through on a single trip. In those cases, weight matters.

With a Kevlar canoe, you’ll end up getting wet feet at the portages. No way around it. The outfitters are not fond of having their rental canoes bashed up by running them up onto shore. Dry ‘camp shoes’ are a necessity.

It’s black bear country, so the typical bear-country rules apply. Either use bear bins/sacks or hang your food pack, and under no circumstances should you have any food or scented products in your tent. It’s also moose and wolf country. On a prior trip I had a moose tromp into camp in the middle of the night. I made such a racket trying to get the heck out of my tent that I scared it away.

This time though, the only in-camp wildlife were a few angry chipmunks, one of whom chewed the end off of my silicone spoon. No bears. No wolves. No moose.

The trip went OK – we started out in the Labor Day heat wave, caught brutal crosswinds the first two days on Seagull Lake, and had rain and damp weather all but one afternoon. We got wet. Temps were in the 50’s most of the time. My tent got humid & my down bag got damp. I was glad I had merino wool long johns. It got a bit colder at night and was a bit warmer and partly sunny one afternoon.

I had expected to cross Seagull (7 miles) the first day. But when beating in to and diagonal to the wind we burned twice as much energy and made it only half as far. There were times when it took 100% of my strength just to keep the canoe from getting spun around in the wind. We had to duck behind islands and rest a few times, and once got totally spun around when trying to get out from behind an island. Once we were tail-to-the-wind there was no way that I could turn the front of the canoe back into the wind.

“Scotty! we need more power!”

“Captain, I’m givin ‘er all we got!”

We had to paddle backwards to put us on the leeward side of the island and catch our breath before trying again. Bet Kirk never thought of that trick.

On an earlier BWCA trip I crossed Seagull in strong winds and a late spring snow squall. I was thirty years younger then. Makes a difference. Perhaps next time I’ll pick a spot with smaller lakes and more portages. 🤣

I was caught in the wind another time in the BWCA when we went with a colleague of my wife’s and her husband. The four of us were on a day trip on Brule Lake in his homemade cedar strip canoe when the wind came up. He was a strong paddler, and his homemade canoe ran the waves quite well.

I managed to light a campfire with wet wood and homemade fire starter (cardboard egg carton cups, sawdust and candle wax). We kept it going for a few hours. That helped to partially dry our gear. I also managed to light a campfire using only a single dry leaf, a handful off dry pine needles, some magnesium shavings and a flint sparker – a first for me.

The trip back to the entry point was really nice. We finally hit a couple days without wind. Paddling between islands in perfect calm and overcast sky was wonderful.

File this under hashtag #notvanlife.