Over the past few years I've had a couple discussions with folks about fishing Mayhew Lake on the Gunflint Trail -- specifically regarding the viability of launching a small boat. The last two trips we've just been too busy or exhausted to do much exploring, but this year we carved out some time to scout this access and take a few pictures. I concluded that this is best suited to paddlers or folks with a car-top 12-14 foot rowboat or similar. The road is narrow and very rough, with large potholes all the way through. There is a wide enough area near the access to park one vehicle, otherwise you'd have to park back toward the GFT about .25 mile. The launch itself is narrow, rocky and uneven. I didn't feel good about trying to launch my small 14-footer from a trailer here. Launching I thought would be easy enough -- detach trailer from car, grab the tongue and manually back the trailer in just far enough to push the boat off. But getting the boat back on the trailer, and getting the trailer up the steep little bank, just didn't seem like fun. YMMV. Thought these photos might help.

I've never been down that road in the summer but have been there multiple times in the winter and I always wonder if people actually get boats down in there. Looks like more trouble than is worth if you ask me.

That's what we decided. Would love to paddle it though.

I got my 16' Lund backed in there. It was 2 parts rock and roll and one part experimental jazz improv. Nothing broken though. When I loaded back up, I got the boat like one third of the way on to the trailer before it bottomed out and I couldn't get it winched any further. So I accessed my inner engineer and ended up pulling up on to the road with with twothirds of the boat cantilevered out the back of the trailer. Then I winched it on the rest of the way on level ground. Pretty fun and memorable.
Caught nothing, but lots of locals swear by that lake. It's beautiful by the way.

lundojam: "I got my 16' Lund backed in there. It was 2 parts rock and roll and one part experimental jazz improv. Nothing broken though. When I loaded back up, I got the boat like one third of the way on to the trailer before it bottomed out and I couldn't get it winched any further. So I accessed my inner engineer and ended up pulling up on to the road with with twothirds of the boat cantilevered out the back of the trailer. Then I winched it on the rest of the way on level ground. Pretty fun and memorable.
Caught nothing, but lots of locals swear by that lake. It's beautiful by the way."

I remembered you saying I could get my 14 footer in there. I definitely *could* in theory, just wasn't feeling lucky. My trailer is a really uninspiring piece of metal. I need it to get us all the way home so I'm probably being conservative with it. I almost think taking my outboard off and manually lifting the boat from the trailer with two guys would be the least horrible way to do my boat. Gotta get my 13yo kid to beef up in the off-season this year :)

That doesn't look too bad at all given what we did to get a 16' boat w/ no outboard into a lake a few weeks back in MN. :)

Go slow, have 4WD, and you'll be good. Wear waders or go on a warm day and plan on getting wet for the loading/unloading part.