BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
January 05 2025
Entry Point 23 - Mudro Lake
Number of Permits per Day: 5
Elevation: 1166 feet
Latitude: 48.0356
Longitude: -91.8301
On the Water- Monday July 20th-
On the water late considering how far we need to go today. Up the Horse river to the falls by 6pm. Started raining and NO campsites available. Mudrow-Alruss-Tin can Mike-Horse Lake-Horse River-Basswood. 13 miles by water. (not counting portages)
Tuesday July 21st-
Rain all night, all morning and all day. Went north by petroglyphs, table rock and the the Crocked Lake Narrows across Thursday bay to campsite. Basswood-Crooked Lake-Wednesday Bay-Thursday Bay. 11 miles in the rain.
Wednesday July 22nd-
Up early and calm winds to take advantage of, considering the big water we have to cross. Found beaver dam to lift over and did a portage from hell between Pandos lake and Chippewa Lake. VERY steep and slippery after rain. Many mud holes. Then the mile portage after Wagosh Lake to Gun Lake. Never saw another soul in a canoe or campsite the entire day! Thursday bay-Friday Bay-Pandos Lake-Chippewa Lake-Wagosh lake-Gun Lake. 11 miles by water.
Thursday July 23rd-
Finally had a dry night. got everything dry!!! A few portages today to Fourtown Lake campsite. Easy day by comparison. Gun Lake-Fairy Lake-Boot Lake-Fourtown Lake. 6 miles. Put the long miles at the first of the week for a buffer for contingencies!
Friday July 24th-
Last day. Stormed last night bad. A few portages today with one bad one between Fourtown Lake and Mudrow lake. To entry point by 1pm. Ready for a hot shower! 4 miles
Total-
45 miles by water
13 miles by portage (3 trips each)
58 miles total.
Crooked Loop
Entry Date:
June 13, 2015
Entry Point:
Mudro Lake
Number of Days:
8
Group Size:
2
Dave and I left Duluth at 5:00 headed for Ely. We got held up outside of Duluth due to a forgotten camera, and in Two Harbors as the McDonald's there doesn't open until 6:00. We had picked up our permit on Friday at Frost River, so only needed a quick stop at TGO for leeches and we were feet wet by 8:30 at Mudro. I was quickly reminded why I would rather be in the Quetico...every portage looked like a yard sale until we got to Tin Can Mike. We leap frogged the portages with a nice couple from the twin cities all the way to LBF. I don't normally visit with other groups, but I think we were all glad to have just a bit of company. Horse River was a pretty neat paddle, but I wouldn't want to do it in dry weather. We took a rock to the bow about half way down that I am still repairing as I type this. We made LBF at 3:00, and took our time admiring the falls. We continued north on the river and took the site just east of Frolic Lake, north of the Pictographs. We were so impressed with the picto's, that we went back for another look after dinner. Beautiful travel day![paragraph break][paragraph break] 
Mudro Lake, Sandpit Lake, Tin Can Mike Lake, Horse Lake, Crooked Lake
[paragraph break] We ended up taking the site NW of Friday Bay, site 1881 on the BWCA.com map. This was plenty big for us, and would give us good access to Argo, Friday, and Saturday Bays. We cooked a late lunch of bacon wrapped walleye, and hunkered down for the first thunder storm of the trip.[paragraph break] 
Up early and off to explore Argo! We opted to take the 213 rod portage into the SE corner of Argo because it was a much shorter trip from our campsite, even though we were warned against it. The portage starts with a relatively easy 30 rod hike ending in a huge beaver damn which covers the trail. The beaver pond is about 1/4 to 1/3 of a mile long, and must be paddled, no going around it. It is a mess of hummocks and dead, fallen trees. The portage continues at the far north end, but you must paddle around the east side. The west side is a dead end. (It took an hour to figure this out) The last 120 rods or so is overgrown, brush, and buggy, but not TOO bad. We were greeted with high winds on Argo, which kept us in the SE corner of the lake. We trolled around for a couple of hours and caught 6 or so trout. Lots of smallmouth close to shore. We cooked a great shore lunch on the island just north of the 213 rod portage, and caught several more trout from shore.[paragraph break] 
[paragraph break] We had great walleye action on the Canadian side of Crooked trolling our way way back to camp. Little did we know the fishing on the Canadian side would only get better. Back at camp, we walked up on a turtle laying eggs in front of my hammock. This would continue for the rest of our stay. We also had an eagle follow us all the way from the Argo portage, and grabbed our fish guts from about 10 feet away. We would see him off and on for the rest of our stay on Crooked. We cooked one more meal of bacon wrapped walleyes for dinner, and spent the evening fishing from shore.[paragraph break] 
Today seemed like a good day to explore Crooked a bit more, and we headed over to Saturday bay. Did well on walleyes all day, mostly trolling. My #7 Perch Taildancer was once again proving to be the hot lure. We had a shore lunch on a cool little pine island in the central area of the bay. It was all pine with a duff floor and no underbrush. It was a great place to get out of the sun for a while. We spent the rest of the day poking around the islands between Friday and Saturday Bays on the Canadian side. A great day of exploring! [paragraph break] 
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Lots of rain and T-storms overnight. Packed up everything wet, and back to civilization. Until next time...