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March 28 2024

Entry Point 19 - Stuart River

Stuart River entry point allows overnight paddle only. This entry point is supported by Kawishiwi Ranger Station near the city of Ely, MN. The distance from ranger station to entry point is 28 miles. Access is a 480-rod portage to the Stuart River.

Number of Permits per Day: 1
Elevation: 1237 feet
Latitude: 48.0955
Longitude: -91.9887
Stuart River - 19

September LIS Loop

by Pete2Paddle
Trip Report

Entry Date: September 17, 2021
Entry Point: Little Indian Sioux River (north)
Number of Days: 8
Group Size: 2

Trip Introduction:
Planning for this trip in 2021 was crazy! This EP was closed early in the season due to fires just north of Lac La Coix. Then we moved west to Knife Lake. Then the entire BWCA was closed so I moved it to Voyageurs. Then everything opened again so it was back to our original trip. Our original plan was 4 guys but we were down to 2. After all the adjustments I was just happy to be going back.

Day 1 of 7


Friday, September 17, 2021[paragraph break] Day 0 ‘No Fire Ban’– Arrived in Ely midday and found out that the fire ban had been lifted while we were driving! I thought there was no way they would lift it so of course… I left my Sven Saw and hatchet at home! The cost to rent a saw was more than half the cost of the ‘Pocket Boy’ saw by Silky so I scooped one up. I am really happy with it after its first trip. The only other items we needed to pick up were the canoe and a ‘spot x’ satellite texting device. We grabbed a couple of beers and some dinner at Boathouse Brewpub and headed for our bunkhouse at Fenske Lake Resort.

 



Day 2 of 7


Saturday, September 18, 2021[paragraph break] Day 1 ‘Socks are Useful’ – Too excited to sleep well so we were up early. The coffee maker in the bunkhouse didn’t have any filters so I improvised a filter from an old (but clean) sock. It was in the upper 30’s that morning so it was nice to have a hot cup of coffee to start the day. The only radio station we could pick up that morning played nothing but Polka… it was perfect! I knew we would have some cold mornings, but I still didn’t think to bring some lightweight gloves! My hands were so cold getting our gear ready at the entry point, so I sacrificed another pair of socks and made some fingerless mittens. [paragraph break] Our goal for the day was Slim Lake and we were on the water by 8:00 so I felt good about our chances. The morning started out calm and foggy but quickly gave way to clear blue skies. We were a little worried about water levels because of how dry it was that summer but we never had to get out and walk the canoe. The first portage is fantastic! You can hear the rapids as you walk through the woods. It smells amazing and there are some old-growth trees that are pretty impressive. [paragraph break] After 4 miles of river paddling, the Pauness Lakes were a welcome sight. The sun was warming things up and I was able to shed my ‘sock-mittens’ as we took in the Devil’s Cascade campsite. The sound of the rapids below was pretty loud even with such low water levels. I can’t imagine staying there when the water is up! After a short break for a snack at the falls, we were back on the river. We met our first group at a beaver dam. 4 paddles all in their own solo canoes. We let them know the fire ban was lifted and could hear them talk excitedly about an evening fire as they paddled around the corner. [paragraph break] As we paddled into the southern arm of Loon Lake a south wind had picked up. We took the opportunity to rest our paddling muscles and wet our lines. No luck yet but we enjoyed the break and the chance to take in the beauty. Loon Lake was pretty choppy to the northwest as the wind continued to strengthen. We hugged the south shoreline before making a crossing north towards Little Loon Lake. The portage into Slim Lake is legit. You definitely notice the 120’ climb in your legs, shoulders and lungs. At this point we as sticking to our single portage plan but my resolve is breaking. We met a few more small groups that were also happy to hear the fire ban was lifted. They also confirmed that our goal campsite was available. [paragraph break] We picked the northern most site on Slim Lake based on reviews and the view did not disappoint. It’s perched high up on a rock with great views to the east and southeast. The view is enjoyable and in buggy months the breeze would be a welcome guest. The put-in is a little dicey with heavy gear and the climb from water to fire grate gets old quickly. I wouldn’t want to make this my basecamp but it’s worth a stop on a pass-through route. [paragraph break] Poured a little whiskey and set up our chairs to relax a bit. This is only my second trip with a chair and I will never go without one again. This is also my first trip with a Hammock and I’m really looking forward to a good night’s sleep. I have the ENO jungle nest and house fly rain tarp. My top quilt is the lightweight option from ENO but I upgraded my under quilt and went with the Zeppelin from UGQ. The forecast for the evening was mid 60’s and clear skies so I left off the fly so I could see the stars. Dinner that night was home-cooked penne pasta that I froze so it would keep. [paragraph break] ~Lakes Visited: Upper Pauness Lake, Lower Pauness Lake, Loon Lake, Little Loon Lake, Slim Lake

 



Day 1 of 7


Saturday, June 13, 2020 Woke up a little before the sun. Made some coffee and got moving. Driving up the Echo Trail road on such a typical Minnesota morning, 29 degrees, sunny, green and quiet. Excitement grew as we got closer to EP 14, the Little Indian Sioux River North. Found a spot right across from the start of the portage among apx. 30-40 cars and trucks. A little worried about the number of paddlers we would find out there as this was new territory for us but hey, it is in canoe country and not the city! Unloaded the gear and the boys took off with the canoes as I grabbed the food barrel and started down the trail. Once we had everything down by the river we met a group of guys coming off already. They were from Chicago area and made a point to exclaim about our amount of gear. We do not travel light compared to most, but we like our comfort. We do double portage but also base camp so once we are settled, we are settled in for the week. After letting them get out and up the portage we loaded up our 2 canoes and headed out. Light wind, sun, cool (apx. 38 degrees) but what a time to be alive!!! The first portage is a little downhill, rocky but not too bad, waiting a few times for different groups to unload and pass us, or to get loaded and pass us, ha. We were up here for the time together in the country and not to speed through. A few families were out, both with 2 children and dogs. Very nice groups, so nice to see this. Dogs were also on leashes. Finally got back to paddling up river and into Upper Pauness, had to go through many reeds as we were cutting the corner to take the shorter of the 2 portages available but got there just fine. Portage to Lower Pauness is a short, downhill walk that takes longer to unload and load canoes then to portage, esp. as I had to keep talking Andrew out of “shooting the rapids” here! Short paddle and a short chat with a few guys on shore asking where we were heading and helped us find the portage to Shell, which was quite the doozy for me, not so much for the boys. Not bad really, just hitting that beaver pond half way through and have to load and unload again was not fun, esp. with the portage being fairly busy. Meet another group with 2 dads and their sons, (again great to see!) and waited for them to maneuver the pond as I caught my breathe and the boys went back for a second trip of gear. Got to Shell pretty quickly after that. Little Shell portage was a breeze, did not even unload the solo canoe, the boys each just grabbed an end and whoosh walked up the short hill! Ever since then we have had a code for how difficult something might be, like “it will be Shell hard” or “do not worry, it will be Little Shell easy”, LOL. Paddled through Little Shell in about 10 minutes and into Lynx and found the first site taken, saw the next two also filled and hoped the one closest to Heritage portage would be available, it was #65 and was open. Got to this site around 3pm. Set up camp and had our traditional ribeye steak and potatoes first night dinner. Nice site, a few spots for tents, nice open fire area and on a little point to have the breezes keep away the bugs. The cove or bay behind the site was filled with smallmouth and had a nice rock shelf that probably held walleye down deep, but too much wind kept us from being able to do such type of fishing.

 



Day 3 of 7


Monday, September 20, 2021[paragraph break] Day 3 – ‘Rain & Whiskey Rations’ – It was one of the worst storms I’ve gone through for sure, but thankfully I never felt like my life was in danger. Lots of wind, rain, thunder, and lightning but no hail or 70mph winds. I actually slept pretty great and stayed dry in my hammock! Another morning of bacon hashbrowns and coffee followed by 10 hours of watching the rain. The CCS tarp paid for itself 10x over that day. There were only a few short breaks in the rain the entire day. I can’t imagine being in a tent for that long. [paragraph break] I could not believe how much it rained that day! Our estimate was 3 to 5 inches. So much water was running off of the tarp and pooling around my buddy's tent site that we had to catch it in pots and throw it down the hill! We also used rainwater to fill our gravity filter. I was not interested in paddling out to get some freshwater. [paragraph break] One of the highlights of the trip was when a family of loons came swimming by our site. They were calling the entire time and their calls would echo as if another family was answering back. We also had a tree frog perch on a tent pole and hang out with us for much of the day. [paragraph break] The weather report for the next day was a frost warning in the morning with scattered showers in the morning, clearing up in the afternoon.

 



Day 5 of 7


[paragraph break]Tuesday, September 21, 2021[paragraph break] Day 4 – ‘Raingear Goes on TOP’ – The next morning was definitely cold but we were happy to be up and moving again. All the bacon was gone so we moved on to our oatmeal and backpackers breakfast. Our goal for the day was to make it to Ge-be-on-e-quet Lake and find a nice site. It felt good to paddle again after a day of sitting under the tarp. [paragraph break] Our first portage to Thumb lake was a nice gentle downhill portage. With all of the rain we got, it was like walking down a tiny rapids at some points along the trail. Thumb to Finger was shorter than what was marked. Basically we hopped from one rock to the next until we could put back in. The portage to Finger Creek was pretty as they get. I garden stroll with views of the babbling creek along the way. The put in was a challenge and I ended up going knee deep and soaking one of my boots. Hate that… I have wet shoes and dry shoes and I like to keep them that way. [paragraph break] As we paddled across Pocket Lake we could see a rain shower heading our way. No problem I thought… I put my raingear on top. Turns out… I buried my raingear on the bottom! I was about to get soaked and it wasn’t very warm. I learned my lesson. Double-check where you put the rain gear if there’s rain in the forecast. It rained on us pretty steady all the way from the entrance to Pocket Creek until the portage into Ge-be-on-e-quet. The rain let up as we paddled to find a campsite. The northernmost site wasn’t what we were looking for and the site to the southwest was taken. We ended up in the easternmost site and it was beautiful. HUGE Red pine trees throughout this elevated site. The largest was near the latrine and it was so big that two of us couldn’t touch hands from opposite sides. [paragraph break] We set up camp including the CCS tarp so we could get things dried out. Once camp was set up we set out for some fishing. I couldn’t bring one in but my buddy caught two eater size smallies. Fish for Dinner! The evening was calm with a nice sunset, but the weather radio had another frost warning for the morning. [paragraph break] Another new item in my gear list was an arborist’s throw weight and line kit. This is a game-changer. My previous method was the ‘tie-rock-to-rope-toss-and-hope’ method. If you’ve used that method, you know how tedious and potentially painful it can be. I highly recommend picking up an arborist’s throw weight and line. Our new method was to throw the light line over our branch with the weight. Then we would tie that line to our heavier duty bear pack line, pull it over, and tie it off. My bear pack rope has a pulley system on it so all we had to do was repeat that process on the opposite end and tie the pulley off at the right spot. Bear pack duty went from stressful to fun![paragraph break] ~ Lakes Visited: Thumb Lake, Finger Lake, Pocket Lake, Ge-be-on-e-quet Lake

 



Day 7 of 7


Wednesday, September 22, 2021[paragraph break] Day 5 – ‘½ Travel, ½ Fishing’ – Day 5 was another cold morning but it warmed up pretty quick. Our goal for the day was an easy travel day to Oyster for some fishing. Morning travel on cool days is always amazing. I love the calm waters with a thin layer of ‘smoke’ rising up due to the temp difference. Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’ never fails to pop into my head. [paragraph break] The portage out of Ge-be into Green Lake was long enough to get us properly warmed up but not too difficult. Green Lake is a nice little lake. We didn’t check out the campsite but with only a single site on a lake like this, I can imagine it’s a popular spot. I also think it was on Green Lake where we saw a family of otters. They were playing in a back bay and just as soon as we saw them, they spooked and we never saw them again. Bummer. It would have been fun to watch them for a bit. [paragraph break] We made quick work of Green and Rocky Lakes. We put in on Oyster around noon and ended up staying in the second site we saw. Our goal was to set up camp early and head out for fishing in the afternoon. It didn’t hurt that we really liked the site too. It’s the southernmost site on the west side of the peninsula on Oyster. [paragraph break] The weather was ideal. Upper 60’s / Lower 70’s with clear skies. I actually got a bit of a sunburn that day. In the afternoon, we fished the small bay in the northwest corner of the lake for Bass and came up with a couple of eaters. We also found an abandoned beaver lodge along the shore and harvested some super dry and dense firewood for the night. Fish for dinner again! [paragraph break] ~ Lakes Visited: Green Lake, Rocky Lake, Oyster Lake

 



Day 9 of 7


Wednesday, June 17, 2020 Today was a mirror of yesterday, hot and windy. Made pancakes sweetened with dehydrated blueberries with bacon heated over the campfire. We mostly cooked our meals this way but heated water, made coffee and such using the little Canway camping stove using the fuel tablets for a quick and clean heat. Cooled off in the afternoon by wading into the water and just enjoying. NO, we did not bathe, just got ourselves nice and cool. Experimented with bannock hot pockets today. Dehydrated hamburger and cheese inside bannock and fried over the fire. I must say it was a pretty good imitation of a cheeseburger! Played cards again during the afternoon when Stephen spotted something in the water across the bay from us. Turned out to be a cow moose walking in apx. 4 feet of the water. Fun to watch for about 30 minutes as SHE cooled off as we had. More fishing brought a few more smallmouth and a very small walleye. Did not really matter what we caught, just fun to do it instead of mowing the yard back home, ha. During our after dinner chat we took notice of the animals we had seen. Moose, snapping turtle, ducks, loons, swans, squirrels, a single (thank goodness) mouse, eagles, a hummingbird that buzzed us one day at lunch and a beaver which we heard in the evening a few times slap the water with their tail to warn off something. On the way out on Friday we also saw a mink and a few snakes on a portage or two. Popped some popcorn this night as the wind died down a little and brought the mosquitoes out, but they were just a bother, not really biting. Fun to hear the boys exclaim that they had never seen popcorn cooked over a fire in oil before! I had to chuckle under my breath at this NEW discovery.

 



Day 11 of 7


Thursday, June 18, 2020 Thursday breakfast was biscuits and gravy with dehydrated hamburger. WOW was that a great start to a day! Daytime was more of the same for the morning then clouds moved in with some light rain so we hung around camp, played cards, fished from the shore and in the evening we decided to pack up what we could so we could get a quicker breakdown for our next day trip out. One last night of fishing brought a few more nice sized smallmouth, but as we already had a meal planned we just released them. Evening meal was again followed by star gazing and satellite watching and more talk of us just being us.

 


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