BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
January 07 2025
Entry Point 39 - Baker Lake
Number of Permits per Day: 2
Elevation: 1497 feet
Latitude: 47.8452
Longitude: -90.8169
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.
Sawbill to Smoke
Entry Date:
June 07, 2018
Entry Point:
Sawbill Lake
Number of Days:
4
Group Size:
4
Paddled to the short portage on the edge of Sawbill leading into Smoke hoping to find a base campsite. If no campsites were available we planned to portage over to Burnt. This portage was a bit difficult to find as it is tucked far into the bay, not visible from the main lake. The portage was also very busy with two groups heading out as we were heading in. It was fairly flat and simple which we managed to single portage. We entered Smoke with low expectations of finding a campsite given all the traffic we've seen. To our surprise we checked three campsites which were all open. We picked a campsite on the east shore for our base-camp.
Fishing was OK, I've had better and I've had worse. We kept 5 walleyes Thurs for a meal. Friday the fish were not biting and only managed one small throwback. After the rain Saturday we managed to get out fishing and bagged a few more eater walleyes. We also caught a mixed bag of bass and northern which were all released.
We had great weather Thurs and Friday, rain Saturday morning until about 1-2pm. We saw a lot of traffic, fishing and canoeing (searching for campsites). Overall it was a great trip with a lot of laughs (as usual). Given the amount of traffic we encountered, it is highly unlikely we'll be using this EP in the future.