BWCA Mid June 2018 Basecamp help Boundary Waters Trip Planning Forum
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kernst
  
03/28/2018 09:16PM   (Thread Older Than 3 Years)
I am starting to plan my 2nd trip to the BWCA. I will be bringing first timers, but all experienced paddlers. I am looking for great base camp options for a 4-5 day stay in mid June. Our priorities would be fishing, solitude, and scenery in that order. We would not be opposed to a hard first day paddle to get to a great place. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated. We are coming from Michigan so where we enter isn't overly important. Previously we entered by and used Seagull Outfitters.

Thanks!
 
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thlipsis29
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03/29/2018 05:06AM  
In some ways your options will be limited by permit availability, and things start to pick up in mid-June since school is over so solitude might be harder to come by. Maybe the best thing to do is start on recreation.gov and figure out what permits are available and then plan from that entry point. The problem will be the the more permits per entry point, the busier it will likely be. Avoid staying on the numbered lakes, but may be push on to Insula or Alice. Or maybe enter via Snowbank and head up to Ima or someplace like that where you have multiple lake options to set up camp. I don't spend much time on the east side of the BWCA so I have no idea what your options would be on that side. Hope you find something that works.
saltdog
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03/29/2018 08:52AM  
If you could secure a Snowbank permit, you could get to Sagus in one long day. Walleye fishing is pretty good and when we were there, we only saw one other group in the week we were there. You can also day trip to Raven to fish for Lake Trout.
04/02/2018 03:50PM  
We had an outstanding time on Crab lake last year over Fathers Day weekend.

Fishing - If you like SMB - it's hard to beat
Solitude - the 420+ portage scares away a lot of folks
Scenery - you're not going to get palisades or anything really really cool, but its typical BWCA, and beautiful.
04/03/2018 01:29PM  
I have travelled to Adams from Snowbank over Memorial day and saw no-one except us after Sagus Lake. Traveling reasonably light with a dawn start, your experienced paddlers could at least least reach Thomas and many of your objectives would be realized. A late June trip would give you even more time to leave even earlier.

Getting there will be the easy part: Getting out in one day will be much more difficult due to last day packing and variables such as wind or rain. To plan to spend the night around Ely or break up your return paddle by camping one overnight on your return may be a good option depending on home schedules which must be accounted for. Whatever you do, be sure to account for your time to reach your exit point and the ride home
TuscaroraBorealis
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04/04/2018 07:51PM  
It's in the Pagami burn area (which admittedly has a different kind of scenery ) but, we had absolute solitude and great fishing - on a 4the of July weekend no less!
this trip report
razorrt5
  
04/05/2018 02:14PM  
Seagull / seagull outfitters is a great entry point. where did you explore last time? I’d suggest the same entry point and set up basecamp on red rocks, we set up basecamp on alpine lake last year in early June and it was nice, portage over and fished red rock, seagull, rog and jasper lakes. had a great time hauling in smallies and pike along the shorelines on red rock.... and plenty of solitude if you go to the north end of the lake.

If you just plain want to try something different I’d suggest the entry points up by ely, I haven’t entered through there but ely is a very cool town. And once your trip is done you don’t need to drive another hour to civilization like on seagull lake (that could be a good or bad thing I suppose)

Just my .02 cents
 
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