BWCA Portage 930 (South Fowl)

What a superbly miserable place to portage! At least it's pretty. The portage starts on a beach at the base of the huge Canadian palisade before climbing a steep ridge. Make sure to make the turnoff or you'll find yourself climbing said geologic feature. The portage has over 50 down trees on it now as well as impressive overgrown encroaching on either side and from the top of the trail. If you happen to be less than 5 feet tall and have a 12-foot canoe, this is your portage! If not, well you'll be bashing and crashing and occasionally completing some multi-point turns to clear small corners.

Pretty easy to find from the South Fowl landing. You can see a large palisade to the North of the landing and the damn (where the American portage is located) is South. The landing was swamped with lake derbies when I was there, making getting close to shore a bit of a chore. As mentioned, the first 1/3 is a bit of a climb. There were a number of blow downs, but significantly less than what had apparently been down before. The mud was significant at times. I wouldn't plan on dry footing through this in the Spring. It gets tight in spots for a tandem canoe, but is definitely doable. The Pigeon River makes it worth doing this portage. 3/5

I didn't try to find the other marked portage coming from South Fowl Lake, and I didn't regret it. At the advice of someone with experience, I made for the Canadian Fowl Portage, which is pretty straightforward. Basically, it is uphill for the first third, there are a bunch of downed trees to step over in the second third (though not significant enough to slow you down much), and the last third has a lot of mud potential under wet conditions. There is a spur on the left at the top of the first hill. I didn't explore this, but I've heard it leads to an overlook over South Fowl.