BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
April 26 2024
Entry Point 23 - Mudro Lake
Number of Permits per Day: 5
Elevation: 1166 feet
Latitude: 48.0356
Longitude: -91.8301
On the Water- Monday July 20th-
On the water late considering how far we need to go today. Up the Horse river to the falls by 6pm. Started raining and NO campsites available. Mudrow-Alruss-Tin can Mike-Horse Lake-Horse River-Basswood. 13 miles by water. (not counting portages)
Tuesday July 21st-
Rain all night, all morning and all day. Went north by petroglyphs, table rock and the the Crocked Lake Narrows across Thursday bay to campsite. Basswood-Crooked Lake-Wednesday Bay-Thursday Bay. 11 miles in the rain.
Wednesday July 22nd-
Up early and calm winds to take advantage of, considering the big water we have to cross. Found beaver dam to lift over and did a portage from hell between Pandos lake and Chippewa Lake. VERY steep and slippery after rain. Many mud holes. Then the mile portage after Wagosh Lake to Gun Lake. Never saw another soul in a canoe or campsite the entire day! Thursday bay-Friday Bay-Pandos Lake-Chippewa Lake-Wagosh lake-Gun Lake. 11 miles by water.
Thursday July 23rd-
Finally had a dry night. got everything dry!!! A few portages today to Fourtown Lake campsite. Easy day by comparison. Gun Lake-Fairy Lake-Boot Lake-Fourtown Lake. 6 miles. Put the long miles at the first of the week for a buffer for contingencies!
Friday July 24th-
Last day. Stormed last night bad. A few portages today with one bad one between Fourtown Lake and Mudrow lake. To entry point by 1pm. Ready for a hot shower! 4 miles
Total-
45 miles by water
13 miles by portage (3 trips each)
58 miles total.
Eleven and a half glorious days and one terrible awful, rotten half a day.
Entry Date:
August 25, 2015
Entry Point:
Moose Lake
Number of Days:
11
Group Size:
2
Campsites: Generally, all seven were pretty clean and nice. Being only one tent didn’t put much demand on site. We had a fire first night but rest of time was fireless. No reservations about any of the sites otr going back, just wish they were more exposed to sun morning and evening - love that drying effect.
Food: We live to eat, so don’t single portage. I’d guess our food pack was 45 pounds to start. First dinner on Birch was Zups wild rice brats, french bread, and dehydrated baked beans cooked on grate. Other than first day where we had two brats left and cooked them with some eggs and left over french bread, breakfasts were all Tang, coffee, grape nuts (generic) with almonds, craisans, and Nido. Traveling lunches were cheese, summer sausage, crackers, peanut butter, tortillas, and drid fruit. We dried our own pineapple and apples and wil do more of those in the future. Loved the pineapple. Some layover days or early camp days we ate scrambled eggs. Started with two dozen, ate last four on last full day, no cracks. Medium size, cardboard carton, and a couple of wraps of bubble wrap secured with a bungee dealy Bob. Haven’t lost an egg yet in over five years of carrying like that. Had quesadillas two nights, JMO pizza two nights, eggs at least one night with JMO cornbread, Bear Creek navy bean (lunch and dinner) with JMO biscuits, generic hamburger helper stroganoff with dehydrated ground beef, and the new hit was dehydrated ground beef in McCormicks brown gravy over Idahoan mashed potatoes. JMO brownies and a JMO gingerbread (dessert and on trail next day); and then a JMO cake. We had made a batch of the fruit cake cookies that drbob pointed to me to and ate them at all three meals. The JMO mixes were all Jiffy. Since we can’t find them all in stores near us, we ordered on line - a dozen mixes for $12.00 - took 8 or so - including the chocolate fudge icing for the cake. And we’re going to look into making our own pizza dough mix - probably yeast and mix in morning to rise during day in pack.
Gear: All food cooked on an MSR Dragonfly with a Bernie Dawg Dragontamer. Heating the generator with alcohol makes this a dream system for cooking, with great very low simmer to full on and nearly no noise. Carried 5 - 22 ounce tanks, used almost 4 full ones. 2 ounce bottle of alcohol was too little for comfort. Big Agnes Copper Spur 3 UL - great in a wicked midle of the night thunderstorm Ogishkemuncie. I have an inexpensive Campmor nylon tarp I can’t kill as bad as I want an excuse for a CCS tarp. I carry pots and pans as need - just one 3 l pot and a 9" GSI fry pan on this trip and 3 GSI Fair share mugs - great. A CCS Deluxe food pack, a CCS Pioneer, and one of our first used from outfitter Kondos #3. Big disappointment was my Exped Synmat UL7 went flat on night three and could not find the leak in two attempts in the lake as I had a patch kit. Bummer. Will try to reach out to Exped for help.
Weather and bugs: Few bugs and despite one middle of the night thunderstorm - the kind where lightening lights up the whole tent brightly and the thunder is a one - one thousand - two - one th....BOOM away; and despite two other middle of the night light or very light rains, we never need rain gear once. Pretty amazing 11 days.
No special lessons other than as reported on the half day. Great half-day in Ely after - our usual laundromat visit after showers at CCO motel, some cold drinks - love that first pint of cold milk - and a great dinner at Ely Steak House where our eyes are bigger than our stomachs - and we both got queen size portions. Even walked to Red Cabin Custard, formerly Sharry’s, for dessert. Skipped the night cap at Zaverals this year. Nice driving home on Sunday of Labor Day weekend - much less traffic than most Sundays between Madison and Chicago.