BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
September 17 2025
Entry Point 33 - Little Gabbro Lake
Number of Permits per Day: 1.5
Elevation: 1235 feet
Latitude: 47.8481
Longitude: -91.6357
Little Gabbro Lake - 33
First winter experience
Entry Date:
February 22, 2008
Entry Point:
Lake One
Number of Days:
4
Group Size:
2
As we left this area of the Kawishiwi River and went through our first 20 rod portage we came up to more open water, which wasn't what we had wanted to see. It was directly in our way to getting to the next portage and we were in somewhat of a spot. Around the corner came a man with his 2 daughters and after some friendly greetings, we told him where we were intending to go, he let us know that the only way to get to Lake One was to take a trail he and one of his friends had made to Lake One, which was just a couple hundred yards away. The trail was heavily covered with brush and trees and small hills, but we managed to get through in about 35 minutes. If you look on map 18 on the McKenzie Maps, you'll see an area that is shown in white, just south of the 20 rod portage. That is where we traveled through to Lake One.
Once through, we moved south to the first, what looked to be island and made for the point where we set up camp. I had sweat so much through the portage and pull to where we camped that I was a bit nervous,(I had sweat through all my layers and my outer jacket) so I basically undressed, got dry and put dry clothes on. We set up our tent and made a fire to warm up by and ate some snack food for dinner that night as neither wanted to get all the cooking gear organized and out. The temp. started to drop and at 10:30 when we crawled into our tents, the temp read -10 below. Neither of us had slept in mummy bags before, so it was rather humorous watching eachother try to get the zipper all the way up and velcro the top. Needless to say, it was a very cold night.
We came back to our site and decided to take a rest and just hang out for awhile. There were some cute birds that were our constant companions, especially if we had a few peanuts to share. In the picture of me reading my book, look closely at my leg...there is one of my friends eating a snack!
We ended up napping in our lounge chairs for over an hour and actually got a smidgen of a sunburn! Today, the temp. would eventually reach 60 degrees F on the lake with all the suns energy being reflected off the white white snow!
As fun as it is running around with out my shirt on because of the warmer temps., I had a funny feeling that our 1/2 igloo may not fair so well...and when we got back from another slushy snowshoe walk, we came up to see 1/2 of the igloo had fallen. As things happen, all we could do was wait out the rest of the day for cooler temps to arrive and replace the wall with new bricks. At this point, we had become fairly able and quick with forming bricks so the task took only about an hour. We placed our bedding inside and waited yet again for the snow to harden up with cooler temps still on the way. We needed to put our tarp on top and secure it with bungee's and large tent stakes. 
During some of our wait times, Eric tried his luck with fishing and didn't get a bite. Honestly, we didn't put the time into it that maybe could have produced something, but at least he tried...if he had caught one, he would have had bragging rights for the rest of our stay, not to mention for awhile afterwards!
Our night ended with chili and cream of wild rice and ham soup with hot coffee and more chocolate for dessert. Another fine, warming meal. We had also been to our wood stash and had ourselves a wonderful last night bonfire. Our last night in our shelter proved to be the most comfortable and we both slept deeper and harder than the two previous nights. I've always known that the longer I'm in, the more restful my sleep can be. Another blessing brought to us! 
The difficult trail that we took in also had to be taken out and thanks to our initial pass, the warmer temps and subsequent cooler temps, our path was basically formed for our sleds and it made things so much easier! I taped the whole portage with my video camera and watched it last night...what a gas! We saw wolf scat on the way out and lots of prints. We came across many wolf tracks and again, felt blessed for the chance to just witness these awesome creature's tell tail signs...well, it was just a thrill!
We walked for a bit and came across a quinzee which we had seen on the way in which was pretty cool. We finally reached our destination, and made it back to my truck and spent some time saying goodbye to this place. Each trip I have ever been on is etched into my mind and soul forever. This trip and experience, although short, was one of my best! 
This picture is of the 'hidden' trail that we were shown. This is looking at the trail leaving Lake One. 