It has long been one of our goals to paddle board camp and we finally made it happen. After our ordeal of a day trying to get to an inland lake, we finally landed at Whitefish Lake. The regular campground was closed, but we found a dispersed site just down the road that was perfect: easy access to a sandy beach, room for the truck and trailer (once we got them in. Whew!), and a quiet site on a lake. We had talked about trying to do a day trip to the Boundary Waters, but our loosey goosey schedule didn’t really allow us to get a permit to camp. We decided to save it for a time when we could bring a canoe up and really do it right. This site offered us a close second – a canoe route that had campsites on it that we could take off on right from our home base.
We had different ideas about the best way to approach the circuit, but finally decided to get the long portages done the first day, leaving longer paddles for the second. We headed off on calm waters, loading all of our dry bags and Mike’s backpack covered in two rain covers. We quickly learned that Mike was a magnet for leeches. He somehow managed to acquire several throughout the day, but got better at checking for them!
We had a short paddle and portage to Elbow Lake, then a couple of long portages and shorter paddles to Lost and then Frear Lakes. We lucked out on the weather. We had a small window between storms. It gets pretty windy in the afternoons here but we had relatively calm waters and a mixture of sun and cloud the whole day.
We didn’t take time to explore the lakes we travelled through, but appreciated the beauty that we were in the middle of. Each lake was a little different, but had a beautiful mixture of rocks and trees on the shore. The portages were pretty variable too. Only on the longest one did we have to make two trips, carrying the bags and boards separately. It was a bit of a long, difficult slog, but very rewarding to get to the end.
We paddled onto Frear Lake under sunny skies, passing the wooded first campsite for the beachy (and more remote second). The whole time we were out, we saw one canoe on Frear and passed a group on Timber and Elbow. It was incredibly quiet, seeming as if even the chipmunks and birds were fewer here. We paddled and sunned a little, enjoying leftover curry (only slightly exploded in the tight packing) for dinner. We went to sleep in our tent looking up at a very starry sky.
We headed out the next day on calm waters once again. I had a little trouble navigating, so we took the scenic route – scoped out one section of the lake only to find (when consulting our map) that the portage was in the next inlet. We had to take the keels off our boards a couple of times to be able to get close enough into or out of portages, but it all went well. Just as we headed toward the portage on Timber Lake, it started to sprinkle and moved into a steady light rain well into Elbow Lake.
We have now added ponchos onto our pack list for boarding, but this time, we paddled through most of it. Luckily, it was pretty warm and not too windy. We dried out as we made it down the long section of Elbow Lake and I, once again, took us on the scenic route, heading us toward the second portage instead of the one back to our home lake. Unfortunately, the wind kicked up as we headed back to the proper portage and we had to fight our way against wind and waves. The weight of our packs seemed to help stabilize us, but it was still a pretty challenging paddle. We made it to land and waited as a big group brought four canoes and all of their gear across. The highlights were seeing grandpa loaded down with more gear than anyone (he figured out how to balance it all out side to side and front to back) and the kid who was just carrying a fishing pole and managed to catch a tree on the trail.
Back on Whitefish Lake, we slowly paddled back to our campsite. We had just enough time to relax a little before cleaning and stowing all of our gear before the heavy rain hit, continuing on and off throughout the night. Even with the rain, it was a great experience and made us want to seek out other canoe routes to try out.