Intro
I'd been planning the Frost/Louse River trip for over a year when I decided just a week before we left that it may make more sense if we'd do the trip in reverse. This would allow us to take advantage of the river currents and go downhill on the beaver dams. Unfortunately, this would also put us at risk to run into a strong western headwind for a large chunk of our trip (if the wind didn't play nice), but worth m the gamble if the dams were bad on the river this year. I discussed this change with Zach who'd be joining me on our annual trip again this year. As with everything BW related Zach was optimistic with this change. Also joining us on this year’s adventure would be BW 1st timers Art and his wife Tazi and Brian (our science teacher of the trip).
Going into this trip, I knew it would be more demanding than anything we had previously faced in the BW, so I was a little nervous about taking three new 1st timers into such a remote area of the wilderness. I knew Zach, Brian, and I were up to any challenge that we could get ourselves into, however, I’d only known Art and Tazi for just over a month leading up to the trip, but they certainly seemed optimistic for the challenge. After exchanging a lot of emails in the weeks leading up to the trip, we finally were as ready as we could be for our 10 days in the BW.
Day 1 - Thursday, July 21st, 2016
Brian met me at my house at 6AM, we threw our bags/food in the truck and loaded the canoe in the back and headed out from Mazomanie, WI. Around Wisconsin Dells we ran into a storm with a lot of rain and some wind and didn't think much of it until we got to Duluth a few hours later. The whole north side of the city was ravaged by the same storm we had driven through several hours earlier. Downed power lines, trees, branches, and debris were scattered for miles with chainsaw crews helping where ever needed. As we headed north along the scenic superior highway it was clearly apparent that the storm had only knocked down trees in certain areas. I remember thinking to myself, "I hope that our area of the BWCA hadn't been hit too hard". We decided to stop in Tofte at the Blue Fin Restaurant to meet up with Zach (who travelled up from the Twin Cities) while we waited for Art and Tazi (coming from Madison). A Surly Furious went well with a bacon cheeseburger as my last meal before hitting the canoe for 10 days. I stopped and picked up some leeches at the gas station for bait, and Zach bought some overpriced Nalgene's to replace the ones he left at his house.
Before long we pushed on to Sawbill Outfitters where we made some last minute decisions on what to bring, got rid of any duplicate items, organized all of our food, and picked up our final 2 permits. Twenty minutes later Art and Tazi arrived, we watched the protecting the BWCA video as a group, and before we knew it we were paddling across Sawbill Lake starting our journey. Within an hour we were at the northern end of the lake looking for our campsite for our first night. I had a few campsites picked out as favorites based on some research I had done on paddleplanner.com. We had two hammocks and two tents in our group so I knew finding a good site would be important for some of the bigger lakes on our trip. The first one was a bit overgrown, the next one was occupied, and the last one tucked in the northeastern corner of the lake looked to be perfect.
We arrived at camp at 6:45 PM. As everyone started setting up camp, I immediately threw out a slip bobber with a leech (I had read there was good walleye fishing off the shoreline from this campsite). Before long we had 3 walleyes, a small northern, and several smallmouth all caught off of shore. Damn it was good to be back in the BWCA!! We filleted up the walleyes for dinner and started cooking as the sun went down. The mosquitos came out soon after dark (which would be a trend for this entire trip), so we quickly finished our dinner and cleaned up camp for the night. Even with the mosquitos, we sat up for a while, passed the bottle, watched the stars, and counted asteroids. It sure felt good to be back in the north woods and at the start of our trip.
Day 2 - Friday, July 22nd, 2016
The morning started with coffee and oatmeal before we started cleaning up camp. We were planning to push to Cherokee Lake today which would take us through three 80 rod portages and finish up with a 100+ before heading into Cherokee. As with both of our previous trips we would take two trips on each portage trail which would slow us down. We got on the water by 8:30AM and were already making our way through the 1st 80 by 9AM. Soon we found ourselves heading down Ada Creek, which leads to the next portage and into Ada Lake, however, we followed some forum notes and decided to stay on the creek and skip the second portage. It was narrow and shallow in some areas and we did have to cross one beaver dam, however, we were able to get to Ada Lake skipping the entire 2nd portage.
Ada Lake was a short paddle and soon we were heading down the next 80 rod portage into Skoop Lake. Another short paddle across Skoop and we were onto our final and longest portage of the day. The last portage took us into Cherokee creek which eventually led to Cherokee Lake. I remember there being a real nice tail wind along with the current which made this little creek a very nice paddle. After travelling about a mile and across one more beaver dam, we found ourselves at Cherokee Lake.
There was a strong western wind hitting us from the side as we entered Cherokee Lake. After travelling about 1/2 of the lake along the south eastern shore, we found a nice island site with a sand beach that we decided to make our home for the night. It was about 2PM when we started unpacking our gear and setting up camp. We all had a nice swim before heading out fishing for some dinner. The wind was still gusting pretty hard so we decided to attach a bunch of ropes from the end of our canoe to a big tree on our island site. This would give us an anchor while getting out a bit deeper without the need to fight the wind and eventually paddle back against it. The rope worked well; however, the fish didn't cooperate. After some dehydrated meals for dinner, we cleaned up dishes and camp. We took care of the bear bag and when we got back the mosquitoes were out in full force. Zach and I stayed up around the fire with Art and Tazi (inside their tent) watching asteroids, passing the bottle, and talking stupid. I'm pretty sure we were successful at all three.
Day 3 - Saturday, July 23rd, 2016
Morning came a little slower for me and Zach, but overall it was a good day to be hungover. Today would be a short day of paddling/portaging as Frost Lake was our destination. We started the day off with some pancakes and coffee. We cleaned up camp, packed our canoes, and got on the water just shy of 10AM. We had about 1.5 miles to get to the north end of Cherokee and luckily we had a nice southern wind that aided us on our journey up to Gordon Lake. A short portage from Cherokee into Gordon and we found ourselves travelling the narrow channels of Gordon looking for the 130+ portage from Gordon into Frost Lake.
As we travelled along the north shore of Frost Lake we went by the first site which was a bit overgrown and came upon the second site. This site was rocky, but had a beautiful view of a sand beach to the north, and a small rock island to the west for screaming shitters to perch on. There was also a nice stack of wood that had already been cut and stacked for our convenience which sealed the deal. It was only 12:30PM, there was some cloud cover and a chance at rain, so we set up our tents with the rain flies for the first time and ate a quick lunch. We knew this would be one of our last chances at a lake trout meal so we hit Frost Lake's deeper holes early in the afternoon and started fishing for some trout.
There was a fairly decent wind on Frost so I pulled out the drift sock to help slow our approach across the deep holes to help get our lines deeper. As a lightweight anchor on windy days, this will be one of those fishing items I never travel without again in a canoe. After a couple passes over the deep hole to the Southeast we headed Northwest across the lake towards the other deep hole and on the way Brian caught a small northern pike. We tried a few passes over the NW hole with no luck so started heading back into the wind. Tazi and Art agreed to cook up some tuna and dried Shitake mushrooms with rice as long as we cooked up some potatoes to go with them (YUM!). It was an early dinner so Zach, Art, and I decided to head back out fishing afterwards to see if the fish would bite closer to dark. This trip was a success. Art and I each caught a Laker. We cooked them up that night for a second dinner and enjoyed our first and only lake trout meal of the entire trip. That night we had a little bit of rain, Tazi heard some animals outside of her tent, and Art slept through it all.
Day 4 - Sunday, July 24th, 2016
We packed up our soggy camp, had a quick breakfast, and hit the water just after 9AM on day four. I had prepared everyone that this would be a day of constant ins and outs in the canoe and it would probably take us most of the day to arrive at our destination of Hub Lake. The first 110+ portage (also the longest of the day) proved to be our first real challenge of the trip. Within the first 20 rods of the portage we were greeted with a large tree down in the middle of our trail. With no good way around we'd have to pull out the saws and cut a path through the wall of branches. We got through the tree and 50 yards down the path we ran into another tree. Apparently we found an area in which the recent storm had left some damage. After counting 17 trees down on this one portage (5 of which we had to cut through), we realized firsthand how essential park rangers are in areas like the BWCA.
On top of us dealing with downed trees little did we know in the beginning of the portage Zach was chased off Frost Lake by a swarm of insects and he was bit or stung in the lower neck near the spine. Zach got a canoe to one end of the trail by himself and we didn’t see him again until we all arrived at the end. When we arrived 5 minutes later, his face was completely swollen twice the size of normal, and his body was starting to itch with hives. He had immediately recognized the allergic symptoms and popped some Benadryl, and luckily within 30 minutes it did its magic and started to reduce the swelling as expected. It was nearly 10:45 AM when we finally left the first portage trail and continued on in the canoe. Unfortunately, the next few portages would treat us with more down trees and Zach was pretty much out of commission for the next few hours.
After several portages like this we were quickly forced to come up with a whole new technique of portaging. Two of us (usually Brian and I) would go ahead of everyone else with backpacks and saws and clear trees for our first trip across the portage trail while everyone else would start taking gear back and forth as far as they could get until they ran into a tree we hadn't cleared. It turned our already slow process of double trips into an even slower process of 3 or 4 trips for some (depending on how many trees were blocking the trail). We pushed on and had a trail lunch around 1PM on the banks of Chase Lake while Zach napped. We had travelled over 3.5 hours and were only 1/2 way to Afton Lake. As we kept moving we ran into fewer downed trees and more river paddling and beaver dams. By the time we got to Afton Lake it was 5:45PM and we knew there wasn't a chance we could push on to Fente and Hub. Today we had travelled through 10 portages, countless tress, countless beaver dams, through some thick lily pads all without one of our members helping out.
Today our group had earned the official badge of courage. There was only one site on Afton and we knew it shouldn't be taken with everything we had just been through. It was severely overgrown, had a downed tree across the landing area, mosquitos were thick, but we didn't care. We were just happy to have a home for the night at this point. We cooked up some dehydrated dinners, had little to clean up, and all of us were in our beds as the sun went down. Today had been a rough day and I imagined we'd all sleep well that evening.
Day 5 - Monday, July 25th, 2016
In the middle of the night we had some high winds come through the area and one of my strings on my hammock rain fly snapped. I woke up to my rain fly flapping in the wind in the pitch dark. I got out on the side of the hill, made some repairs as quickly as possible with the mosquitos attacking, and got back to bed (so much for my nice night of sleep). When we woke up the mosquitos hadn't gone anywhere and were still waiting for us. Zach had several hundred sitting on the bottom of his hammock alone just waiting for him to open the zipper. I had some blueberry and granola cereal (from Mountain House) for breakfast and it was delicious. As a group we discussed some modifications to our route to make things a bit easier on ourselves. We'd make today a short day and travel to Mesaba with only one large portage, and then tomorrow head straight west over to Trail Lake through Dent Lake vs travelling further south to Wine Lake before heading west. Luckily Zach was feeling better this morning, his face was no longer swollen, and his hives had started clearing up.
We cleaned up camp and got in the canoe around 9:30AM. Today would be a short day, but we also had one of the longest portages 280+ of the trip from Fente to Hub. We also had a fun little portage between Alton and Fente first thing this morning (which would test our skills portaging up and down a sheer rock wall). I remember reading the portage comments mentioning you better be part Billy goat for that portage, and they were 100% correct. This is a good reason why you should never judge a portage based solely on distance. Slow and steady got us over the Billy goat portage and soon we were on our way down the 280+. We took bets on how many trees we'd run into on this portage, and Tazi won the grand prize with her guess of 10. Luckily only 3 of the 10 needed to be lumber jacked for us to get through. We had one more 100+ portage before heading into Mesaba which would be our destination lake for the day.
On the north side of the lake we found a nice campsite on the point which had a wonderful breeze hitting us from the west. Art, Tazi, and Zach wanted to check out the other sites on this lake before we made this one our home. As they went around the point to the southern end of the lake they immediately saw tarps and tents in one of the campsites. This was the first group of people we had seen since day 2 on Cherokee Lake. They came back and we quickly made this camp our home for the night. There were raspberries and blueberries scattered throughout this camp and some nice sets of moose and deer antler sheds that other groups had collected. We did some swimming and fishing before dinner, but had no luck with the fishing (all we ran into was a pair of beavers playing the game of slap tail in the water). As we got back to camp we did some dehydrated meals along with some potatoes for dinner and cleaned up camp prior to it getting dark. The wind died down this evening and although it was a clear night, the mosquitos were relentless as always.
Day 6 - Tuesday, July 26, 2016
We woke up to Tazi telling everyone to get up and put the rainflies on our tents. It was early morning and there was thunder in the distance. We got the rainflies up about 5 minutes before the rain came. We all slept in a bit longer this morning due to the rain. We dried everything out and got on the trail around 11AM. Today would be another long day of portaging.
We had a short little portage between Mesaba and Chaser Lake. A quick paddle across Chaser Lake and we found ourselves looking for the trail to Dent Lake. It took a while to figure out, but the portage is actually two portages separated by a shallow muddy pond. One real short up-hill portage between Chaser and the pond. It was a short paddle across the 75 yards of shallow muddy water, and then the longer part of the portage into Dent Lake (which was also very hilly and wet). Onthis portages I slipped on a log with the canoe on my back and hit the ground. The canoe yoke came right down on my forehead which didn't feel too well, but luckily it wasn't too bad of a gash. Art quickly patched me up and I was good to go.Dent Lake looked like a nice lake for camp; however, we were looking to push on. The portage between Dent and Bug Lake was a set of rapids which looked passable, as long as we walked the canoe down the rapids vs paddling them. This saved us some time and energy of loading and unloading the canoe and gave everyone else a nice little break as they watched us attempt to get the canoes down the rapid river. As we got into Bug Lake I remember telling Brian that contrary of every other lake we had been on so far, Bug Lake was actually not very buggy. From Bug Lake we entered the Louse River and had several portages before we hit Trail Lake. On one of these portages wepassed a beehivejust offthe trail and the bees weren't too impressed with us. Between the5 of us we got stung 5 times (2 for me, 2 for Brian, and 1 for Art).
Trail Lake had two sites on it and to our amazement the first site was taken by a group of 3 guys in one canoe. We pushed on further up the lake to the second site which was a bit overgrown and had a unique fireplace setup. With no other sites within a few miles of this lake, this would be our new home for the night. There was a nice rock ledge overlooking the lake which would be a great spot for fishing and swimming.
Zach and I took a fishing trip around the lake, I caught a nice 20 inch smallmouth, and we travelled down by our other campers sharing the lake with us. I needed to hear firsthand which way they came in from to see if they ran into any obstacles (similar to us) along the way. They were on day 4 of a 7-day trip and like us didn't expect to see anyone out on Trail Lake. They were heading out tomorrow the same way they came in which was the same direction we were also heading. This was a good sign since we knew the trails would at least have to be passable for them to get through. We headed back to camp and cooked up some dinner. From shore, Art caught a small walleye on a leech, and I caught a couple more bass including a 21" just before dark.
Day 7 - Wednesday, July 27th, 2016
We headed out around 9:15AM on Wednesday morning with Koma Lake being our destination. By the time we took off the three guys on the other campsite had already left, so we had the trail all to ourselves again today. The Louse River had a very similar feeling to the Frost River without the down trees. It would be our last stretch of remote area we'd be in before hitting the more popular lady chain area. Before long we were heading through Boze and Frond Lakes and playing rock hopper while we slowly and carefully took our canoes through several sets of rapids before hitting Malberg Lake.
As we headed into the opening of Malberg, there were 5 separate groups of canoes that we spotted on the east end of the lake alone. Talk about a change of scenery! This looked to be the end of our 7 days of mostly seclusion in the BW. From Malberg we pushed on to Koma which had even more boats on it. Each canoe took a side of the lake and looked for possible sites, but after travelling most of the lake everything looked to be taken. We decided to push on to Polly Lake which would require a few more portages; however, also had a bunch of sites on the northern end of the lake. So we continued to head upstream on the Kawishiwi River.
We got to Polly just after 4PM. We did some shore fishing; we caught a small perch and a couple small walleyes, but nothing worth eating. Once again we had some dehydrated meals for dinner. It was shaping up for a nice night for viewing stars and as always we had a whole lot of mosquitoes waiting to suck our blood.
Day 8 - Thursday, July 28th, 2016
We woke up to the smell of pancakes and coffee thanks to Brian. A nice warm breakfast would be the perfect start to the day. Today, from Polly, we would head to Phoebe Lake. We packed up camp and were on our way by 9:45 AM. Today we'd be heading up the Phoebe River. As we got about 1/2 way across Phoebe Lake, I caught a small northern which completed my Grand Slam for the trip. I now had bragging rights over the others. The Phoebe River would lead us to Hazel Lake, Knight Lake, and eventually Phoebe.
We travelled to the south end of the lake looking for the best site; however, a family of 4 beat us to the main smaller island site on the point that we were hoping for. We decided to take a different island site just to the west of the one with the family. There was a ton of roots, but it had two nice pads which worked perfectly for our small tents. We guessed this site hadn't been used in a while since the blueberries at this campsite were everywhere.
Zach, Art, and I went on a fishing trip around the large island to the north to check out the site on this island. It was much smaller than ours, rockier, but had a very nice little quite bay all to itself. We stopped here for a snack and then continued fishing. We caught one nice walleye on our trip back home which I'd cook up for my dinner that evening. The stars were out in full display this evening, Zach and Brian got up to check it out.
Day 9 - Friday, July 29th, 2016
Our last full day in the BW was a sobering thought as we woke up and started packing our gear. Luckily for us Brian and Art woke up early in the morning and started cooking blueberry pancakes and coffee for the rest of us. I also picked a cup of blueberries on my own and decided to spruce up my cereal this morning.
We had a few small portages before heading into Grace Lake and then the 285+ portage which would be the longest of our trip between Grace and Beth Lake. As we got into Grace there were 4 canoes already halfway across the lake coming right at us, another 4 canoes just leaving the shoreline as we got closer to the portage, and yet another 4 canoes arrived just at the end of the portage trail as we hit the shoreline. Apparently this was going to be a busy portage. This portage was long, narrow, and had lots of small ups and downs but overall wasn't too bad. I lost count of the people we passed on the trail, but had at least 4 people ask me how close they were to the end. You know when they stop asking you this question that you are over the halfway point of the portageJ.
Upon finishing we talked to some of the people just entering the portage trail on Beth and found that all the people we had seen on the trail were part of one very large group of over 30 people. Apparently they were all camping along Phoebe and Grace Lake for the night. Luckily we didn't plan our trip one day later as we may not have got our blueberry site on Phoebe with all of these groups in the area. Tazi realized that she was missing one of her water bottles so Art and Brian agreed to go back on the long portage for one more trip to make sure they didn't leave it on the other end. Zach and I headed into Beth to check out the sites to see if any were available or see if we'd need to push on to Alton Lake yet tonight. There was only one site available on the west end of the lake so Zach and I pulled in and setup our hammocks while we waited for the others to come around the corner looking for us. There were lots of trees down on this site, but definitely enough area for us to setup our tents and hammocks.
The other half of our group came around the corner and it didn't take them much time to decide that this was where they wanted to stay. Zach, Art, and I went on a late afternoon fishing trip and caught a few small bass (and had our first double-header) and had some fun with snags on this shallow lake. For dinner we had the last of our dehydrated meals, some ramen, and whatever else we could scrounge together. That night we played a game called Werewolves for a Night which was entertaining. Once again it was a starry night, the Milky Way was visible, and satellites could be seen all across the sky.
Day 10 - Saturday, July 30th, 2016
On our final day on the trail we only had two portages and three lakes to paddle through. It was another busy morning with canoers coming into the lady chain, and it was a nice feeling that we were heading in the other direction. Afton Lake was a beautiful lake with the clearest water we had seen on the entire trip. It was speckled with islands and I was sad we didn't spend a night here instead. The portage between Afton and Sawbill was just about wide enough to fit a car down the path. There was a large group day tripping into Afton and I remember being a little jealous of their cooler of beer some lady was wheeling down the middle of the path. If only we had the luxury of living close enough to day trip in this pristine wilderness.
As we got closer to Sawbill Outfitters the entry point was like a madhouse. People everywhere packing up and unloading gear and getting ready for their trips. We each bought a cold soda for our trip before taking off and meeting back in Tofte back at the Blue Fin Restaurant for another burger and Surly Furious. For some reason this one even tasted better than the first one 10 days earlier. We said our goodbyes in the parking lot and our trip had come to an end before we even realized and we all went our separate ways.
As a team we won’t be forgetting this trip anytime soon. We made some new friends, hit some tough terrain,and everyone survived without serious injury. Overall this was a successful trip in my book.
Totals for the Trip:
Lakes – 27 (Sawbill, Ada, Skoop, Cherokee, Gordon, Frost, Chase, Pencil, Afton, Fente, Hub, Mesaba, Chaser, Dent, Bug, Trail, Bose, Frond, Malberg, Koma, Polly, Hazel, Knight, Phoebe, Grace, Beth, Afton)
Portages – 50
Miles – 69.35 miles (travel only) or 90.99 miles (travel w/fishing) some inaccuracies on travel miles due to me forgetting to turn the GPS on each day
Beaver Dams - 23
