BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
July 02 2025
Entry Point 1 - Trout Lake
Number of Permits per Day: 12
Elevation: 1381 feet
Latitude: 47.9144
Longitude: -92.3220
Trout Lake - 1
A Short Trip on Crab Lake
Entry Date:
July 13, 2008
Entry Point:
Crab Lake and Cummings from Burntside Lake
Number of Days:
4
Group Size:
3
Slept in and, after copious amounts of hot chocolate, reading good books, watching people paddle by, and planning our future, we headed to Cattyman Falls.
Water was low, but the falls were impressive. We sat on a fallen tree beneath the falls, didn't talk much, and just watched the water tumble by.
Night was spent burning up remaining firewood, talking about growing old, planning weddings, and getting to know each other a little better.
After a chilly night, Monday dawned warmer and dry. We took our time making breakfast. The deal I made with my wife was that we would base-camp and not pull up stakes everyday, so we set forth on a daytrip, looking for moose. No such luck, but my son started fishing and he just rocked it. Lots of Smallies and Largemouths and various sunfish, mostly over 8". Fishing is not really our thing. If we had known what we were doing, I think we would have caught much larger ones (I hooked into a big 'un but it got away, there's a surprise). My son caught enough 10-inchers for dinner, which he fileted and we deep-fried in the DO with cornmeal breading and cous-cous. Not bad, this whole fishing/eating/camping thing. 
Every evening brought brief showers and beautiful sunsets. The showers led to rainbows and clouds that only made the sunsets nicer. 
Every day we saw and heard loons on the lake (and not much else). After midnight, we heard wolves, baying at the nearly full moon.
Rain blew through from time to time. It was a little cloudly, but not so cloudy that I couldn't manage to get a four-star sunburn. The bugs were determined, but not really much worse than Northern Va, except that the warming weather brought out biting flies that were worse than the skeeters and not really that impressed by DEET.
We took another short day trip to Lunetta Lake, which was not that scenic but, still, we enjoyed collecting photos of the flowers along the way (hey, if you don't see a moose, you have to go with what you do see.) 
We cooked and ate and cooked and ate, not wanting to carry out all the food we had lugged in. DO Biscuits with chipped beef for breakfast. Trader Joe's boil-in-a bag Indian fare with dried chicken. Apples and cheese and sausage snacks rounded things out. My son had home-dehydrated fresh food for the trip which came out pretty tasty.
Another night of brief thunderstorms and awesome skies. 
After four days and three nights, we decided to head back because the drive home was long and tough. It was a short paddle and then a long hard portage back to where the tow boat picked us up, but we made it back to Ely, where we drank beer, ate food we didn't have to cook or clean up after, and loaded up on souvenirs.
The BWCA is an awesome place. Even my wife, who was not crazy about this trip at first,loved it. I wish we lived closer (or gas was cheaper). My thanks go out to everyone who has done so much to preserve this truly unique wilderness.