Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, MN – Part 2 of 3 by Doug

What we saw, did and experienced while on the trip

Fauna (animals)
I have read that Minnesota has the largest population of bald eagles in the lower 48. Our sightings would certainly confirm that fact. We saw eagles everyday and most days we saw multiples. There were an abundance loons, beaver and otter. The campsites were so well established that each had a resident population of red squirrels, chipmunks and mice. I expected to see grey jays, a.k.a. camp robbers, but they only made a couple of appearances and they didn’t steal any of our food.

Trumpeter Swan

While we were camped on an island, a black bear paid our site a visit. It was the middle of the day and Phyliss was the only one there. She did a good job scaring the bear away, but she got a canoe ready to put in the water in case she needed to make a fast getaway. We had hoped to see a moose and hear wolves; we saw scat and track of both, but no sightings. One night Jan and I heard a faint howling, but it sounded like coyotes to us. The one bird we saw that I had not expected was a trumpeter swan. I was able to take enough pictures of it to make a good identification once I got home.

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Flora (plants)
 I took great interest in the forest. There were so many similarities with the Adirondacks that it could be difficult to see the differences, but there were many of those also. Those readers that don’t have a forestry background please bear with me. Soils have so much to do with tree growth, there were many rocks, there didn’t appear to be much glacial outwash, but there was an abundance of glacial till. All that may not mean much to some of you reading this, but it means a lot to the trees.

Jack Pine

The majority of hardwoods appeared to be either yellow birch or aspens, both big tooth and quaking aspen. Despite the abundance of aspens, there was not a large corresponding population of white birch. In the Adirondacks our only “super dominant” tree (taller than the other trees) is the Eastern White Pine. There were tall white pines in the Boundary Waters, but only a few that seemed as old and misshapen as ours, additionally, on the ridges bigtooth aspen tower above the surrounding canopy. Even though it was early September, the yellow birch and sugar maples had turned color and their leaves were falling. The aspen were still green. There were only a few red maples or oak, so there was not the display of colors we see in the Northeast.
 
On the softwood side, I did not see any hemlocks, but there were many jack pines on the poor soil sites and some of the largest red pines I have ever seen. In addition to red spruce there were also many white spruce and of course black spruce in the wet sites.
It was evident that fires have had an impact on the forest. We saw burnt over areas and could smell smoke on occasion. For a couple of days we watched planes and helicopters carrying water drops to a nearby fire.

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Rocky campsites were a challenge

Land and Water
With all the rock we saw there was no doubt that we were truly on the Canadian Shield, a vast geological shield covering over half of Canada. This rock makes the area both  beautiful and rugged. Even on large campsites; level, rock free tent sites were hard to find. The maximum camping party size in the BW is nine, but on most sites even our party of six had a difficult time finding three areas to pitch our tents. Jan and I had the smallest tent and usually settled for a place that the other tents would not fit on.

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Jan on the portage trail

The rocks also made portages more difficult than they tend to be in the Adirondacks. The beavers added further difficulty to the portages by damming up small ponds and streams and inundating the trail, forcing us to reload the canoes so we could float across the flooded areas in the middle of the path.

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A walleye for the frying pan

There were a lot less campsites per lake or pond than we tend to have in the Adirondacks. A BW lake the size of Middle Saranac would only have about 6 sites on it. We learned to scout sites early to finds places
that worked for us. In 14 nights, we only used 8 campsites, meaning that we had many layover days. Jan and I had hoped to get a lot of fishing in, but didn’t get as much as we were looking for. Fishing from a canoe on windy lakes is not easy, but when we did get out at good times of the day for fishing, we were pleased with the results. Both Jan and I like to fish for bass and walleye and there seemed to be plenty of those. We only kept and ate walleye, they are the best.

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Ed reading his Kindle and napping

I found layover days when we could not fish to be boring. Everyone spent a great amount of time reading and most were please to have so much relaxation time. I on the other hand wanted other things from the trip. We spent so much time getting to Minnesota and the area is so vast that I wanted to see more of it and experience a greater sense of adventure. Most in our group found the portages to be extremely difficult. They were tougher than Adirondack carries, but in general our group was not in good physical condition and we had too much stuff, so that just compounded the difficulty.

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We found pictographs on rock faces at the edge of two different lakes. That always adds a sense of mystery for me. What do they mean, who put them there, how old are they? In many cases, no one knows.

Pictographs on Rocky Lake

Pictographs on Lac La Croix

The August blue moon

In the Sky
We  started camping the day before the blue moon in August. It is always nice to be out during a full moon when the nights are clear and the weather is warm enough to sit out and enjoy it. We had many campsites with good sunset views and some where we could watch both, sunrise and sunset. Some nights we watched the sunset and sat out on the rocks watching planets and stars appear. 

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Blisters dice game

At total darkness the stars were amazing and the Milky Way was very bright. We saw shooting stars and plenty of satellites. I found it hard to leave the open rocks on clear nights. We often played a dice game called “Blisters”at night, so that would usually drag me away from star gazing. Most of our campsites faced south or west, but one night we saw a nice display of the Northern Lights before the moon got too bright.

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After 3 days of rain

Weather 
Weather during the first week could not have been better. We comfortably swam the first 6 days; sometimes even while we were on the move.
Then the weather started to change and it cooled down. For a few days in the middle of the trip we had some rain which accompanied the cooler temperatures. We were wind bound at various times and were stuck hanging out waiting for it to
be safe enough to paddle. On one such day we watched as 3 canoes came into view out on the dangerously rough lake. They were all aluminum boats, which perform well in big water. The first boat made it past us OK and stopped to wait for the other two boats. Those paddlers weren’t so lucky, both canoes took on a lot of water, but somehow managed to stay upright. With our encouragement they navigated to the sheltered bay behind our site where we were able to grab them and help empty the boats that were full of water and wet gear. Once they recovered they made the short crossing to join their friends. Surprisingly, they did not wear their PFDs even after the incident. They were nice guys that were on a fishing trip, but we had to wonder why they weren’t wearing their vests. Some people just don’t get that part.

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Many nice sunsets

Next blog
In the final installment of this blog series I will write about some of the other people we encountered and what we liked and learned while we were in the wilderness. Join me for that chapter of this story. Please share this with anyone that may be interested.

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To see part one of this series CLICK HERE
To see part three of this series CLICK  HERE
Additional photos are available on our PHOTO GALLERY