We stayed the night before at Hungry Jack Outfitters. The place was nice, David (the propietor) was funny and a good spirit and there was a nice fire ring we could hang out at and a dock to have a cigar.

In the morning they took our canoes to our entry point (62 - Clearwater) and we came in another car due to Covid. We parked and headed in. Myself and my friend Ian went in first and as we were a few dozen feet out our companions decided it was a good time to test the water temp and flipped their canoe right at the EP. At least the weather was good.

Our plan was to head up Clearwater and grab campsite 682, since that was right next to the portage for the next day, but that site was already taken and so were the previous ones. Ian and I paddled our hearts out down to the next site while our companions portaged over to Mountain Lake to check if site 678 was open. If it wasn't we were in for some fun times since that meant making the choice of heading east on Mountain or heading west towards Rose and the 2 mile portage. 683, the one we were checking had just been grabbed, so we headed back to the portage and popped on over

I don't remember much of that portage besides it was a good elevation change from Clearwater to Mountain and certainly made me think "is it over yet?"

When we reached Mountain our friends were sitting there. They said that someone had just told them the site was open, but apparently hadn't bothered to pack up to go check themselves *eye roll*. We packed up and headed out.

The site was indeed open and was a pretty nice site for a first night. Easy canoe landing, good open area. Nice view. We made camp.

~Clearwater Lake, Mountain Lake

Now most of my friends are not early risers, but a super long drive home always seems to be the factor that makes people get up early. I got up and ate a few bowls of granola, milk and berries while downing some coffee and watching folks pack up.

The water was calm as we headed out and the portage landing area was really small, and easy to overlook in the fog. It went up, flat and then descended to the water on the other side, a fairly unremarkable portage and nobody got wet :)

The maps we used were McKenzie maps and afterwards I learned from our proprietor that the creator of the maps never visited this region of the BWCA, so his notation of campsites and portages can be off at times. Well, for the next EP/portage it's off, by a good margin.

According to our maps the EP/portage on Bearskin to Hungry Jack is directly south of the point, which is directly south of the portage we just came across. Well, adding to the confusion is a dock and a few spot that look like the portage slightly to the east. However, the true location of the portage is to the west of that point, and it took us a bit to finally go that direction, because I was treating the map as truth. Before doing that we first hit the dock, at which point my friend from the other canoe went to go check and only found a dirt road, so I got out to check myself. Well, I could have chose to run east or west down the road and I chose poorly by running east, because apparently running west 150' would have brought me to the EP parking lot and the obvious portage :(. Well, I ran for a while, saw a fox and finally turned around when I hit a sign for a YMCA camp, Camp Menogyn. This finally led me to the parking lot and then back to my friends to direct them to the real portage.

Once there it was one of those annoyingly short portages and then towards finding the boat landing for our outfitter on Hungry Jack, which was a little harder than it should have been, but with it being a popular lake we had to get pretty close to the landing before finally seeing a sign.

Safe and sound back at our outfitter we packed up, retrieved our car, showered and said our goodbyes. It was a fun trip with perfect weather, low bugs, some challenging work, but nothing I wouldn't do again.

~Duncan Lake, Bearskin Lake, Hungry Jack Lake

The site we got was not the one I wanted on this lake, but it was the one we got. However, after waking this morning I looked across the pond and noticed that the folks across the way were heading out and that was the site I wanted on this lake. So, unhappy as it made my companions I said "let's go check out that site". My canoe buddy jumped on the opportunity but my other two buddies were looking for him to dissuade me and let us go. So, across the way we went. The site had a glorious approach, was awesomely flat and best of all meant that the next morning would be an easy 5 min paddle to the next portage.

So, we paddled back and through glorious smile inducing eye rolls we packed up and went across for a relaxing day of swimming, swimming and relaxing.

Again, another site that wasn't too bad with mosquitoes was flat and had a good amount of pine needles to help start a fire.

Now most of my friends are not early risers, but a super long drive home always seems to be the factor that makes people get up early. I got up and ate a few bowls of granola, milk and berries while downing some coffee and watching folks pack up.

The water was calm as we headed out and the portage landing area was really small, and easy to overlook in the fog. It went up, flat and then descended to the water on the other side, a fairly unremarkable portage and nobody got wet :)

The maps we used were McKenzie maps and afterwards I learned from our proprietor that the creator of the maps never visited this region of the BWCA, so his notation of campsites and portages can be off at times. Well, for the next EP/portage it's off, by a good margin.

According to our maps the EP/portage on Bearskin to Hungry Jack is directly south of the point, which is directly south of the portage we just came across. Well, adding to the confusion is a dock and a few spot that look like the portage slightly to the east. However, the true location of the portage is to the west of that point, and it took us a bit to finally go that direction, because I was treating the map as truth. Before doing that we first hit the dock, at which point my friend from the other canoe went to go check and only found a dirt road, so I got out to check myself. Well, I could have chose to run east or west down the road and I chose poorly by running east, because apparently running west 150' would have brought me to the EP parking lot and the obvious portage :(. Well, I ran for a while, saw a fox and finally turned around when I hit a sign for a YMCA camp, Camp Menogyn. This finally led me to the parking lot and then back to my friends to direct them to the real portage.

Once there it was one of those annoyingly short portages and then towards finding the boat landing for our outfitter on Hungry Jack, which was a little harder than it should have been, but with it being a popular lake we had to get pretty close to the landing before finally seeing a sign.

Safe and sound back at our outfitter we packed up, retrieved our car, showered and said our goodbyes. It was a fun trip with perfect weather, low bugs, some challenging work, but nothing I wouldn't do again.

~Duncan Lake, Bearskin Lake, Hungry Jack Lake