BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
January 08 2025
Entry Point 39 - Moose/Portage River (North of Echo Trail)
Number of Permits per Day: 5
Elevation: 1348 feet
Latitude: 48.1230
Longitude: -92.0991
Summary: A 5-day loop from Baker up the Temperance lakes to Cherokee, and back through Sawbill and Smoke lakes back to Baker. A fairly difficult trip.
Day 0: We drove up from Stillwater in the morning and camped at one of the 5 walk-in campsites at Baker Lake, and it was nice.
Day 1 (Baker to S. Temperance) - A beautiful day, we decided to paddle all the way to South Temperance the first day which was a great paddle with easy portages except for the last one. We picked the campsite on top of a huge rock that was close to the middle of the lake. Tried fishing some but no luck
Day 2 (Rest) - In the night, we encountered the worst storm of the entire season. While we were there 19 people had to be rescued from the BWCA. We had about 50mph straightline winds, and I'm still surprised that the huge tent we had stood up to it. We slept in and took a rest day because of the intense winds. Amazingly beautiful sunset.
Day 3 (S. Temperance to Cherokee) - We left as early as we could to beat the heat, but it was no good. The lengthy, hilly portages were challenging and by the last portage we were pretty beat. We overpacked and single portaged which led us to speedier exhaustion. Still amazing weather. North Temperance was a beaut- I wish we had stayed there instead of South. We took the southeasterly facing campsite on Cherokee on the southeastern skinny island. Neat little site.
Day 4 (Cherokee to Sawbill) - Left a little later in the day but it was ok. We took our time going down the river letting out of the southwest part of Cherokee and it was a great area. BEWARE: The area between Ada and Skoop Lakes appears to be floatable, but a dam built recently has made the portion impossible to float. Be prepared for a long portage through muck and water. A guy that we saw there said he had been going to the BWCA for 40 years at least once per year and it was the worst portage he had ever seen. By the time we got to Sawbill it was pretty hot. We paddled all the way down to the site next to the portage onto Smoke.
Day 5 (Sawbill to Baker) - Cooler, cloudier weather for the first time on the trip. We were pretty hungry (I underpacked food a little and I felt really bad) and we were taunting each other with vivid descriptions of the burgers we were going to eat ASAP after getting out. We paddled back to Baker and returned our gear to Sawtooth outfitters.
Overall great route.
Snowbank W/ Disappointment Backpack
Entry Date:
May 12, 2023
Entry Point:
Snowbank Lake
Number of Days:
3
Group Size:
2
Day 1: we started from the hiking parking lot and hiked to a campsite on the SE side of disappointment lake. Beautiful large site, a lot of space to sit out and watch the sunset. A few looks hung out right by the camp all night. This first section of the hike was fairly easy, not a lot of trees over the trail.
Day 2: hiked to campsite on NE end of snowbank. Very sunny and hot, a lot of trees over the trail. Some moose sign on the trail and a few bear prints! The burned out section on the north end of the lake was very cool to hike through, trail was hard to follow in sections. A lot of loons again, campsite was very high above water, which is fine except for the extremely tired legs walking up and down for water. Very cool spot.
Day 3: hike out, a lot of trees over the trail again.
Other notes: pulled roughly 200-300 ticks off myself over the weekend. Record was 15 off one leg after about 10 minutes of hiking. Overall highly recommend this trail, it really wasn’t that hard of a hike but I got extremely sunburnt because I was not prepared for the sun. All the campsites we passed were beautiful. Very cool beaver dams to cross, very cool bridge.[paragraph break]
