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BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog

March 19 2024

Entry Point 14 - Little Indian Sioux River North

Little Indian Sioux River (north) entry point allows overnight paddle only. This entry point is supported by La Croix Ranger Station near the city of Ely, MN. The distance from ranger station to entry point is 32 miles. Access is a 40-rod portage heading North from the Echo Trail.

Number of Permits per Day: 6
Elevation: 1364 feet
Latitude: 48.1466
Longitude: -92.2103

Warpaint Lake

by RJB
Trip Report

Entry Date: July 20, 2014
Entry Point: Little Indian Sioux River (north)
Exit Point: Little Indian Sioux River (north) (14)
Number of Days: 1
Group Size: 3

Trip Introduction:
Since I could not find anyone who had been to Warpaint Lake (including portagekeeper) I decided to see if we could get there. This represents one day of a week long trip. I will post another report relative to our group trip. On that trip we base camped on Lynx Lake and bushwacked to Yodeler/Achundo and on to Rangeline. We camped there on the night of the wild storm and were preserved from death only by the grace of God. We exited Rangeline from the Sioux Hustler Trail. It took over 4 hours to bushwack the trail to Hustler Lake. Again that will be detailed with pictures on a separate report.

Report


On 7.20 we left Lynx Lake and took the 240 rod portage to Ruby Lake. The portage, prior to the storm, was in excellent condition. It suffered only light damage after the storm. It is mostly mildly uphill to Ruby Lake and makes for an easy return to Lynx. Once on Ruby we paddled to the southern most section of the lake to locate the stream to Warpaint. There is no need to try to navigate the stream. We chose to bushwack the eastern side of the marsh. Here's a picture from Google Maps (oh, well that didn't work ...you look it up!) [paragraph break] I would say that it was an 80-90 rod bushwack in to Warpaint. All we did was maintain the higher ground, look for openings and keep the marsh in view. We were rewarded to see a very pretty lake.

View looking out to the island

[paragraph break]

My traveling companions Luke & Evie at the entrance to the lake [paragraph break]

Not having a canoe did not stop us from swimming to the island, and a very pretty little island it was with plenty of blueberries.

At age 61 I'm not quite the swimmer I once was ...actually I was never a great swimmer ...so we improvised and I returned via a log flotilla.

View of the Rocky cliff shoreline on the point just to the SW of the island. Again the lake was very pretty and appeared to have some rock shoreline and higher areas.

All in all a very worthwhile afternoon trip. Perhaps someone can cut a trail so we can see what type fish are in the lake. Sorry the pictures are disjointed from the comments ...I'm sure you can figure it out.

 


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