BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
July 26 2024
Entry Point 30 - Lake One
Number of Permits per Day: 13
Elevation: 1230 feet
Latitude: 47.9391
Longitude: -91.4792
My son Remy and I, and my friend Keith and his son Charlie put our canoes into Lake one at 9:30 Monday morning after dropping off a car at the Snowbank Lake landing. Lake One can be tricky to navigate. On our way to Lake Two we turned East too early and ended up paddling about a mile out of our way into a dead-end bay before we realized our mistake. We blamed the fact that Lake One was split between Fisher Maps #10 and #4 for our error. If the entire lake had been visible at once on a single map, we would not have made the wrong turn. Once we got back on course we portaged the 30 rods into a pond and then portaged the 40 rods into Lake Two. The weather was nice, and there was a bit of a tail wind out of the West. We stopped for lunch on the shore of Lake Two. After lunch we canoed through the North end of Lake Three and into Lake Four. We stopped for the night at a campsite on the West shore of Lake Four, just North of the channel heading toward Hudson Lake. We had to battle swarms of mosquitoes as we set up the tents. We then had a nice refreshing swim. Because we had brought steaks along for the first night, we didn't go fishing.
On Tuesday morning we had a bacon and eggs breakfast then packed up camp and headed out in our canoes. As we canoed past our campsite, we realized that Remy & I had left our hammocks pitched between trees. We landed again and quickly packed them up. Once again we had beautiful weather. We paddled East and completed 3 short portages before entering Hudson Lake. The 105 rod portage into Lake Insula was exhausting! Lake Insula is a large gorgeous lake broken up by multiple islands and penninsulas. We had lunch at a campsite on a large island just East of Hudson Lake. It felt like we had a tail wind as we were heading East, and then as we turned North it seemed like the wind shifted and was at our backs once again. We navigated Lake Insula flawlessly and camped for the night on the island just West of Williamson Island. After setting up the tents and a refreshing swim, Remy & I got back into the canoe and tried to catch some fish. We had no luck! At 9PM that night, just as we were going to bed, a thunderstorm rolled through. That night I was awakened several times by the loud croaking of bullfrogs from the shallows around our island. What noisy neighbors!
By Wednesday morning the weather had cleared, but the wind was now coming from the Northwest, pretty much in our faces. We paddled to the North end of Lake Insula and tackled the largest portage of our trip. The 180 rod walk to Kiana Lake actually seemed easier than the 105 rod carry into Lake Insula. We headed onward into Thomas Lake where we really started feeling the headwind. We finally made it to the campsite just Northeast of the portage into Thomas Pond in time for lunch. After lunch we proceeded across Thomas Pond and into Thomas Creek after hiking across the famous Kekekabic Trail. We managed to easily run the rapids in Thomas Creek and avoid the 2 short portages. We camped for the night on Hatchet Lake at the northern campsite. It was cool and windy, so we didn't swim. There was lots of threatening weather going by to the North of us, but we stayed dry. After supper we canoed back to Thomas Creek to fish and look for moose. No luck on either count, but we did see a beaver swimmming.
The weather was nice again Thursday morning, but the wind was out of the West which was the direction we were heading. We portaged into Ima Lake and canoed across it. Before portaging into Jordan Lake, we watched a bald eagle sitting in a tree get harrassed repeatedly by a seagull. The narrow channel leading into Jordan Lake is quite beautiful. It is narrow like a river with big rock outcroppings. We paddled across Jordan, Cattyman, Adventure, and Jitterbug Lakes. We found the Eastern campsite on Ahsub Lake taken, so we camped at the Western campsite which had a great place for swimming in front of it. There was a very brave loon in front of the campsite who didn't seem to mind if we got close to it. We tried our luck at fishing, but only caught 1 smallmouth which was too small to eat. Between 5:00 and 7:30 that evening we saw a number of canoes heading across Ahsub Lake from Disappointment Lake to Jitterbug Lake. We weren't sure where they were planning to camp, but it was getting late.
On Friday we awoke again to good weather. We paddled the length of Disappointment Lake and portaged into to Parent Lake and then on to Snowbank Lake. It was July 4th, and as we entered Snowbank Lake the sounfd of firecrackers reminded us we weren't in the wilderness anaymore. After a brief splash war on our way across Snowbank, we made it to the landing and our car was still there. What a great trip!
Kawishiwi Lake Entry
Entry Date:
September 06, 2008
Entry Point:
Kawishiwi Lake
Number of Days:
5
Group Size:
2
Light rain kept my oldest brother and I company as we left the put in on Kawishiwi Lk at 7:30 AM. The journey to Koma Lk, our camp for the night was uneventful. A beaver dam at the entry to Square Lk, had robbed it of much of it's water, but otherwise there was nothing of note. We camped at a very lightly used site on the north side of the lake, nearest the portage to Malberg, a nice cozy camp for the evening. The rain did have the benefit of providing two very nice rainbows after showers passed.
A couple of fish were caught and released on Koma and then the light rain moved back in leading to an early evening. 
Today was the day we would solve the mystery. After passing through 3 very lovely, and apparently very infrequently visted lakes, Beaver, Adams and Boulder, we tackled the first part of the portage out of Boulder Lk, which terminates at an unnamed pond about 135 rod later. This pond, only the width of a canoe, has a trail leading directly up the slope across from the terminus of the initial portage out of Boulder. While the Mckenzie maps showed an 85 rod portage coming from Roe Lake to the unnamed pond, we failed to find just where it came in to the pond. We paddled west along the pond hoping to find it, but never did. Since we had origninally bushwacked from this pond to the legititemate portage to Boulder 10 years ago, we figured that it couldn't have been that far west and so turned back to the more obvious trail. From the pond this trail hooked up with another trail going from Roe to Ledge lake. It was about 100 rods to this intersection, and then another 180 rods from this intersection to Roe Lake. McKenzie maps list the Roe/Ledge lake portage at 200 rods. Altogether we felt a full 1 mile of portaging is required to follow the most obvious route from Boulder to Roe. Unfortunately, once we got to Roe, it was too late in the day, and showers had rolled back in, so we proceeded to move on to Sagus lake to spend the night. The sites on Sagus are all 1 or 2 star sites, at best, but it was late, raining, we were tired, so they looked good to us.
From Sagus we moved on north through Kekekabic up to the South Arm of Knife Lake. The weather was improving and the light showers we had been experiencing the first two days we getting less frequent. We encountered a young couple from Seattle on their very first BWCAW adventure. That brought back memories of my first trip, over 30 years ago, and of my first trip with my older brother, over 20 years ago. We wished them many more and moved on down to the east end of SA Knife Lake for our camp for the evening. We found a lovely spot that had an abundance of firewood, and appeared to receive almost no use. The last passing shower of the day produced another full rainbow. After that the sky cleared and we enjoyed a great display of the stars to go with our evening campfire.
The weather finally cleared and we had a picture perfect day for our travels over to Little Sagnaga. There is a very significant gain in elevation from Knife Lake to Little Sag.
We experienced the results of not only the blowdown, but also the Ham Lake fire. It was particularly interesting to see what didn't get burned as the Ham Lake fire did its damage. One question we wondered about was the change in the ecology of the burned over areas. Our camp on Little Sag (which was in the burned area but had almost all of the trees on the actual campsite area spared from the fire) was a perfect example of the changeover from forest to grass, wildflowers and other sun/dryer condition loving vegitation. In those areas now fully exposed to the sun, we wondered would the consequently more arid conditions make it more difficult for the predominant trees species to return. Would some of those areas become more prarie like? When fire was a more natural feature, was there acutually less forest?
We spent a beautiful afternoon relaxing on our Little Sag camp. I even went for a swim. We had only a couple of parties move through our part of Little Sag. All in all it was a perfect BWCAW day.
Clouds were moving back in and the wind picked up as we moved southwest to our destination that day, Koma Lake. At the put in for Makwa lake, another nearby portage would take us to Hoe lake, which would allow us to get to Ledge Lake and thus return to Boulder Lake, allowing us one more attempt to solve the Roe to Boulder lake "mystery". However I was unable to talk my brother into taking this detour as commitments back home were calling. After fighting a strong wind out of the South/Southwest all the way to Koma we stopped there and planned an early start the next day to allow us to get back home to Milwaukee by Thursday evening.
On the water at 6:30 AM we got all the way to the take out on the south end of Lake Polly before the skies opened and it started raining heavily. The rain continued all the way to the take out on Kawishiwi Lake. In a rain that heavy, very little stays dry, no matter how well protected. The temp was dropping and we were more than happy to load up the car and head back home. While we never solved the mystery of the Roe/Boulder Lake portage, we will likely be back in a few years to finally answer that question.