The BWCAW is a unique area located in the northern third of the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota. Approximately 1.3 million acres in size, it extends nearly 150 miles along the International Boundary adjacent to Canada's Quetico Provincial Park and bordered on the west by Voyageurs National Park.
The BWCAW, according to BWCAW.org, contains more than 1,200 miles of canoe routes, 15 hiking trails and approximately 2,000 designated campsites. It offers freedom to those who wish to pursue an experience of expansive solitude, challenge and personal integration with nature.
Even after explaining that my truck camper was staying home and shelter would be my old two-man Eureka tent, with thin sleeping pads between our sore backs and the Precambrian rock, Tim was still on board -- even after mentioning that we would be backpacking everything.
No live bait, no beer, no Mountain Dew and no Big Macs. He remained enthusiastic.
After assembling everything I thought I would need on such a trip, the majority of packing time was spent determining what not to bring. For example, condensing my full-sized walleye tackle box into a couple of small containers was almost painful.
Second-guessing was part of the process, as I'd find myself wondering "Is four pair of underwear for a two-week trip too many or too few?"
Countless hours of Internet searching paid off with such invaluable data as detailed portage descriptions as well as lake survey information and topographical maps.
BWCAW fishing tips were not as forthcoming, and I quickly discovered why. Most Boundary Water paddlers apparently put paddling ahead of fishing. Their objective is to cover as much water as possible, perhaps wetting a line here or there.
Although we intended to cover more than 20 miles via canoe and portage trail before turning around and following the same route back, our ultimate objective was to seek out our main source of entertainment and protein -- walleyes.
Given the lack of fishing pressure and the fact that cooler fall days were upon us, we found ourselves getting cocky and dreaming about daily fish fries.
The bulk of our food pack was filled with ramen noodles, instant potatoes and oatmeal -- low in weight and high in carbs. However, the heaviest portion of the food pack included four packages of dried batter and two bottles of canola oil -- all based on the assumption that we'd be filling our bellies with fish throughout the trip.
The Superior National Forest was designated in 1909, and within it, in 1926, approximately 1,000 acres was set aside as a primitive roadless area. This was expanded to more than a million acres in the 1930s and made a part of the National Wilderness Preservation System in 1964.
Even with more than 200,000 visitors each year, a permitting system balances the use during the peak summer season. Other than a few large perimeter lakes, outboard motors are not allowed, nor are chainsaws or any other motorized equipment.
Ely -- canoe central for the southern portion of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness -- is about an eight-hour drive from my home in Beaver Dam. In Ely, we picked up our entry permit at the ranger station (reserved permits are required for overnight camping from May 1 through Sept. 30. Self-registration is required the remainder of the year.)
About 10 miles northeast of Ely we found entry point 23 -- known as the Mudro Lake entry point. A small gravel parking lot featured vehicles from Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin.
The standard brown bulletin-board-type sign covering some of the rules and regulations served as a gateway to a trail. We quickly walked the short trail, which at 30 rods, would technically be our first "portage." It led us to a stream that eventually leads to Mudro Lake and beyond.
With sunset approaching we scored a campsite near the entry point where we could sleep in the truck and be up at the crack of dawn -- leaving us a full first day to forge as deep into the wilderness as possible.
Like kids on Christmas Eve, sleep was difficult to come by and we were rustling before dawn. After an hour of final preparations, stowing and packing, as well as a few quick snapshots, I lifted the heavy frame pack onto Tim's back, threw the canoe on my shoulders and ventured in.
The first tough portage couldn't have come any sooner.
A series of portages between Mudro and Fourtown Lakes included a 145-rod jaunt that gave us a real taste of what portaging was all about. In my research, I never learned why the BWCAW community uses the 16.5-foot rod as its unit of measurement for trails and portages.
As a friend of ours with some Boundary Waters experience preached to us the night before we left: "If you don't know what a 'rod' is now, you'll definitely find out."
He couldn't have put it more eloquently. Whenever my arms and shoulders burned as I struggled with the canoe up a steep grade, I would find myself repeating his words and chuckling … or cursing. Lots of things go through the mind during long, grueling physical challenges. Most frequently was the question: "I wonder how much a used Kevlar canoe costs?"
Fourtown Lake, a relatively large body of water for this particular region of the Boundary Waters area and featuring dozens of bays and islands and a wealth of campsites, was mildly tempting as our first stop. However, the day was too young and every portage moved us closer to solitude, so we pushed on across Fourtown to the next portage.
Perspective is everything.
At 35 rods, compared to the 145-rod (half-mile) portage earlier that morning, the portage to Boot Lake was a picnic. At about two miles long and a third of a mile across at its widest point, Boot Lake looked very "fishy," yet small enough for two men in a canoe to survey the fishing for an evening.
First we had to survey a campsite, and we fell in love with the first one we reviewed. Of course, brimming with first-day excitement, every task is fun -- gathering wood, assembling the tent, playing with the new Optimus camp stove, filtering water. The fun, of course, tended to wear off with each passing day, but still beat the heck out of the usual workingman grind awaiting us back home.
We fished Boot Lake until dark to no avail. After being tromped 5-1 in the satellite-searching contest and enjoying an evening of nature's own music -- the howling of nearby wolves -- we hit the sack with hopes of finding fish on the other side of the next portage to Fairy Lake.
Early the next morning, after an easy 15-rod portage, we got our first glimpse of Fairy Lake.
"Looks fishy," Tim said.
So we grabbed one of the two campsites on Fairy Lake. With the other site vacant, this was our lake for the day, and we again fished it hard.
At the end of the day, however, we had only one 13-inch walleye to share for dinner -- and a sizeable northern pike tried to rip it off our stringer.
"Get the net!" Tim screamed as he grabbed the stringer and began playing tug-of-war with the toothy monster. Only when Tim scooped it into our diminutive walleye-sized net for a closer look, did it release our dinner.
With that, Tim quickly released it to one day devour someone else's catch of the day. Not wanting to injure the fish or slime up the canoe, we didn't mess around trying to get a measurement, but it was pushing 40 inches.
Our 13-inch dinner was severely scarred, and hardly worth dirtying a fry pan.
"Why don't we just wrap it tinfoil and cook it over the fire," I suggested.
No, it wasn't quite the same as a golden-brown fillet floating to the surface in a bath of canola oil, but it was a walleye -- our first Boundary Waters fish dinner.
With two weeks at our disposal, had the fishing on Fairy Lake been anything better than poor, we'd have stayed another day … or more. Instead, another quick portage the next morning brought us to Gun Lake, where over the course of two days we actually picked up a few walleyes -- three to be exact.
Black jig heads with black bodies seemed to produce -- if you could call three fish in two days "productive." It would have been helpful if either of us had brought along more than a couple black jigs.
By the way, it is possible to turn a yellow jig into black with a hemostat and a cook stove. It's also possible to completely melt the lead off of the jig and splatter it all over Tim's new cook stove. Whoops.
The next morning -- day five -- with the ever-present winds blowing whitecaps across Gun Lake and making fishing from a canoe impossible, we decided to travel.
The original itinerary would take us all the way to Crooked Lake, a gigantic stretch of bays, islands and peninsulas stretching for miles and miles along the international border. Not only did the border lakes supposedly have the best fishing prospects, but we knew we'd see few people, more wildlife and a view of Canada without the checkpoints.
Getting to Crooked entailed crossing four small lakes and four portages, including the 300-rod portage (about a mile) from Gun Lake to Wagosh, which was one we'd been dreading since day one.
Web reports described this portage wide and flat, with the length being the most difficult aspect. We begged to differ. Sure, it was wide in spots and flat in spots, but like all the others, it had generous amounts of rocks and hills. Unlike the others, it was long. Very long.
As with all our portages, we were double-tripping, hiking each portage three times. Take the canoe and the heaviest pack in first, then walk back empty handed and get the rest of our gear. I personally enjoyed the "walk back" part. I also got to enjoy the trailside scenery for the first time. With a canoe on your shoulders, the only view is of your feet.
But, as we loaded and lashed the packs into the canoe for the umpteenth time, we both agreed, "That wasn't so bad."
After another meal of "dehydrated something," our contributors to our jukebox on Chippewa Lake that night included wood ducks, a barred owl and a tail-slapping beaver. Without a bear or moose, otter or osprey sighting thus far, we took pleasure watching and listening to the smaller players -- the overly friendly gray jays and chipmunks who help keep camp tidy, the red-breasted nuthatches and countless types of warblers, and the occasional bald eagle or loon.
Being the end of September, we were counting on seeing fewer people than during the busy summer season. We nailed that. Traveling about nine lakes and 12 portages north from the Mudro Lake entry point, we saw no more than a couple dozen other canoes over the course of 10 days. During the time we spent on Crooked Lake, along the international boundary, we didn't see anyone else for several days.
It was strange to be adrift in a canoe, with not a soul in sight, casting toward the shore on our left, while over our right shoulder -- only a few hundred feet away -- was the province of Ontario.
According to everything I had read, merely stepping foot onto Canadian property -- other than on shared portages -- was illegal. Of course, being somewhat paranoid about surveillance cameras in the trees and customs agents hiding in camouflaged boats, I quashed any thoughts we may have entertained about grabbing a quick snapshot of each other standing in Canada.
I did, however, take a picture of the pine-covered islands on the Canadian side of the invisible line. They looked just like the islands and trees on our side, which I guess is why those who've seen my trip photos don't seem too excited when I tell them "That's Canada, eh."
Although it offered the greatest solitude and the best scenery of the journey thus far, after two days of fishing around Friday Bay without even seeing a walleye, our restlessness and hunger for fish told us it was time to head back the way we came.
Gun Lake, the only lake where we caught more than one walleye, seemed an obvious repeat destination. We knew the fish were there. We just had to find them.
Besides, once back at Gun Lake, we'd have three of our most difficult portages behind us, and we could probably make the seven-portage, five-lake haul back to the truck in one day. That meant we'd still have at least five days to spend on Gun, or Fairy, Boot, Fourtown or Mudro.
And since the previous night's downpours provided us with four dozen nightcrawlers, we'd have live bait for the first time.
Our last morning on Friday Bay was spent hanging everything to dry, because it seems that even with waterproof packs and a waterproof tent and waterproof boots and quality raingear, eventually everything gets wet or waterlogged. The afternoon involved paddling and portaging back to Wagosh, which left only the 300-rod marathon portage to reach Gun Lake again.
That night, under total darkness, on the only campsite on Wagosh Lake, we finally had a moose encounter. Well, it wasn't technically a "sighting."
Under the glow of a cheap headlamp, I was cracking and snapping inch-thick branches for kindling when about 30 yards away I heard a cow-like "moo." As it slowly encroached on our camp, also cracking inch-thick branches beneath its hooves and in the trees with its antlers, Tim and I both knew exactly what it was. It circled and sniffed around a 20-yard perimeter of our camp for the next 15 minutes.
Unfortunately, a heavy spotlight didn't make the cut when we packed our gear, and the range on our headlamps was a very dim five or ten yards. As badly as we wanted to see a moose, this wasn't what we had in mind. Fortunately, the animal finally determined we were neither a lovesick cow nor a challenging foe and it slowly crashed and crunched further into the darkness.
The next morning, as we started up the portage trail from Wagosh to Gun, we discovered -- perhaps no more than a few hundred yards from camp -- the animal's calling card. It left a fresh single hoof print in the mud, about eight inches long by six inches wide.
Reaching our prized campsite on Gun Lake felt like a homecoming, and the thought of staying put for a few days encouraged us to make camp as cozy and convenient as possible. I gathered a generous supply of wood and we placed our inadequate little rain tarp over the fire grate and "kitchen" area.
As we set up camp, we spotted two people in a canoe -- the first people we'd seen in several days. Then we noticed they weren't paddling. They were drifting. It became obvious they were fishing.
They would drift, then paddle back against the wind and drift the same spot again, and again and again.
"If they weren't catching walleyes, they wouldn't keep fighting the wind to drift that same spot over and over," Tim pointed out.
The theory sounded good to me.
Eventually the fishermen disappeared, so we finished setting up camp and began heading toward their hot spot when we met four friendly older gentlemen who had just arrived on Gun Lake. Their leader had been here before, and they had hoped to score their favorite campsite of the five on the lake. As luck would have it, we'd beat them to it by only a few hours.
The men also conveyed that on the portage from Fairy to Gun they ran into two guys carrying four nice walleyes out of Gun Lake.
"That's nice," we replied nonchalantly, holding back the urge to give each other a "high five," the news confirming our suspicion that the fishermen had indeed located a hot spot -- something we hadn't found in 10 days.
Ironically, while solitude was one of our main goals in the Boundary Waters, we ended up using a common technique for finding fish back in Wisconsin: go where the anglers are.
The hot spot was a windswept hump topping off at 6 feet and dropping quickly to 20 feet or deeper on three sides. Tim lost a couple nice walleyes, and kept a nice eater. I caught two eaters. Tired of fighting the wind and waves, we headed to camp to use up some of the shore lunch and oil we'd been lugging around. It was the best dinner we had on the trip.
At least for a few hours we satiated the hunger pangs which are a constant companion when you're while burning extraordinary amounts of calories on a diet of ramen noodles and oatmeal.
Things were good. We had full bellies, a great campsite, a lake willing to give up a few walleyes and five days left before our two weeks was up.
Moods can change fast, however.
The next day brought us plenty of wind and rain, and zero walleyes. Even the hot spot quit producing. We were getting frustrated from the poor fishing, the oppressive winds, the daily rains and a shift to colder northwest winds. After 10 days in very close quarters, we were also getting a little sick of each other.
When we discussed heading out the next morning, our moods lifted noticeably, although I had mixed feelings about leaving earlier than we really needed to. The thought of leaving this wilderness and terminating a once-in-a-lifetime trip was depressing, but the thought of a shower, a real bed, pizza, beer and a Big Mac was uplifting.
Following the orders of our rumbling stomachs, we paddled and portaged with gusto as we dreamed about chocolate and onion rings and hot showers. The five lakes flew by quickly, and the seven portages were mere obstacles to our now-conditioned legs.
By mid-afternoon I was digging through the glove box in my truck searching for the Twinkies I'd hidden 10 days earlier. By supper, I was sipping a Moosehead and devouring onion rings at an Ely steakhouse.
By bedtime, we were adjusting our own Sleep Number beds in a Duluth hotel room my wife scored for us via the Web. Sprawled out on a cozy bed, surrounded by Mountain Dew and munchies, I realized I'd still rather be lying on a damp sleeping pad and eating ramen noodles. I also realized it might be a long time before I find myself in a place as quiet and solitary.
For me, the solution for that type of depression is to begin planning the next adventure. In fact, the three most common topics of discussion during the drive home tend to be: 1) greatest moments of the just-completed adventure; 2) greatest moments of all previous adventures; 3) plans and discussion regarding the next great adventure.
I wish my wife Stephanie would understand this.
Thankfully she understands that being a self-employed tile-setter pays the bills, but that my lifelong dream is to spend every day in the field as an outdoor writer or a trout fishing guide.
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