We drove up the day before and spent the night at Rockwood Lodge & Outfitters in one of their bunkhouse rooms. Late check-in was super easy and the room basic and clean. Quite a bargain vs a hotel room.

The morning started cloudy and rainy but we were too eager to get started to let that stop us. We had our paper maps, GPS, portage packs, and 2 Bear Vault cannisters (1 large, 1 medium). The folks at Rockwood were very friendly while getting our canoe and paddles ready. My experience is mostly with kayaking so I was a bit nervous about portaging but the nice guy at Rockwood showed me how to get the canoe up on my shoulders (far better than a YouTube video) and watched me do it once to make sure I got the hang of it.

We left the outfitters in a fairly steady rain and made our way to our first portage. We fumbled around a bit at the landing, not yet sure of our division of labor, but we quickly established a rhythm, taking our packs first and going back for the canoe and dry bag with our bear barrels.

After our first successful portage we were into Lizz, the rain had mostly stopped, and we were excited to see the very weathered sign indicating that we were crossing into the BWCAW!

We made our way into Caribou, chatting with another group who said they were heading for Winchell. This was a theme throughout the trip... lots of people heading to or from Winchell. We were also thinking about Winchell but decided to stop at Gaskin for the first night. After many open sites on Caribou and Horseshoe, all the sites on the eastern half of Gaskin were full and we ended up at Site 633 which had a somewhat steep landing but was otherwise beautiful.

We setup our camp, ate dinner, and went to bed with the sound of loons calling.