Overland Hadley
05-30-2010, 02:39 PM
Just returned from 7 days in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Canoed from the eastern edge of the wilderness up to Canada and across to the west on the border lakes, returning in the wilderness forming a loop.
We had planned this trip to be an early spring trip, but as our spring has come about a month early it felt like a summer trip. A few of the days were very hot and humid, but the lakes were warm enough to swim in. The bugs were out in force: ticks, black flies, misquotes....(Is that a rain cloud? No it is a cloud of misquotes!) But with a little planning we managed to stay sane.
I carried the large format camera equipment, the "expedition" canoe handled the extra weight just fine, but the camera gear meant another trip across each of the portages. Most of the portages were in good condition, although we had a few in Canada that went through swamps of "loon sh t."
I usually like to do canoe trips in the autumn, the bugs and people are gone, and the boreal forest is starting to show some fall color. But this trip was a nice change, swimming in the lakes made putting up with the bugs not as bad. And while we did see other people, we did not talk to anybody else for the first six days. (We then came across a wilderness ranger I know from town and had a nice chat about the weather etc.)
Photos from the point and shoot to follow.
We had planned this trip to be an early spring trip, but as our spring has come about a month early it felt like a summer trip. A few of the days were very hot and humid, but the lakes were warm enough to swim in. The bugs were out in force: ticks, black flies, misquotes....(Is that a rain cloud? No it is a cloud of misquotes!) But with a little planning we managed to stay sane.
I carried the large format camera equipment, the "expedition" canoe handled the extra weight just fine, but the camera gear meant another trip across each of the portages. Most of the portages were in good condition, although we had a few in Canada that went through swamps of "loon sh t."
I usually like to do canoe trips in the autumn, the bugs and people are gone, and the boreal forest is starting to show some fall color. But this trip was a nice change, swimming in the lakes made putting up with the bugs not as bad. And while we did see other people, we did not talk to anybody else for the first six days. (We then came across a wilderness ranger I know from town and had a nice chat about the weather etc.)
Photos from the point and shoot to follow.