Saturday, March 12, 2011

Five of us stayed at Hungry Jack Lodge (HJL) on the Friday night before we trekked into the Boundary Waters. Phil was unable to get Monday off of work like the rest of us had, and since he only had to come over from Ely, he hiked in by himself on Friday afternoon. Cory and Bayla (Cory's dog) met us Saturday morning at Hungry Jack. For the Five of us that spent the night at HJL, the morning started with an early rise to stoke the wood stove, followed by biscuits and homemade mushroom gravy made by yours truly. Before making the short jaunt to West Bearskin with our gear, we decided we had better settle our bar tab with HJL from the night before...I was expecting it to be steep considering the slight headache I awoke with but thankfully the nice folks at HJL (Forrest and Ericka) didn't empty our pockets so we thought it best to add to our tab with a round of morning mimosas! Finally, we settled the bill, hopped in the truck and drove the 1 minute down the road to the West Bearskin access. Needless to say, we packed a little heavy... After loading the sleds in the snow we were off to cross West Bearskin heading towards Duncan. Although the parking lot at the access was full, there was little traffic on W. Bearskin. We met to guys on Duncan by the portage who were on their way out, they had also rented a tent from Mike at The Canoeist. The fishing report they gave us for Duncan sounded promising and kept our hopes up for Lake Trout on Rose. After a few minutes chatting with the other group we started the trek again, hauling the overloaded sleds across Duncan. Erin struggled a little with the load she was hauling but Cory was generous enough to allow Bayla (some type of sled dog from Greenland) to give some assistance and attached Bayla's harness to Erin's belt to help pull... sort of like Ski-jouring without the skis. It worked remarkably well and I did not catch up to Erin until we hit the portage from Duncan to Rose, the dreaded stairway portage.

Once upon a time, when was in much better shape, I spent a great deal of time rock climbing. How I wish that I would have brought my ropes with to lower (and eventually bring up) our gear down this hellish portage. Instead, it was all hands on deck in an attempt to SLOWLY guide each sled down this portage. It was a tedious task, with lots of cussing, but we made it down. Unfortunately we don't have any evidence of this because of the effort that was required to get the sleds down the hill, no spare hands for snapping pictures. Upon reaching the bottom of the portage I learned two very interesting things: 1. Phil (our friend that made it to Rose Lake the Day before us) attempted to lower his sled down the portage by himself... the sled got away from him on the lower staircase, hit a tree, and busted the front of the sled. All was not lost as he was just fine and was able to mend his plastic sled with an impressive amount of duct tape. 2. My cousin Brett had proposed to his girlfriend, Tina, at the top of the Stairway Portage overlooking Rose Lake and Canada. What girl could say no to a setting like that?! Looking back, its a really good thing she said yes, otherwise the rest of the trip could have been awkward! It's important to note that Brett and I are cousins. Erin and I, and Brett and Tina each had our first dates together (but separately) on the 4th of July in 2007. We didn't plan it and didn't even realize it until a year or so after. Kinda cool, except that when they beat us to the punch and got engaged... in our presence, and I had/have no plans of doing this same then or anytime soon... well... lets just say that got served a little crap for not keeping pace :)

The rest of the day was spent setting up the tent, gathering fire would and celebrating a new engagement in our cozy, warm, wall tent. The party continued late into the night (9:30 pm... we were exhausted) while sipping on our Growlers from Fitger's and Box wine. The other three in our tent slept on cots while I was on the floor on my sleeping pad (Reese and Cory were in Cory's tent and Phil in his portable fish house). My thought was that if the fire in the wood stove went out, I would be the first one to gt cold and could get up to stoke the fire. The good news is it worked, I was the first one up every time. The bad news is the wood we cut during the day was not nearly as dry as we had hopped and I was up A LOT during the night nursing coals back to life. It was a pretty restless night for me and we awoke chilly and tired. Here are some more pictures from Day 1:

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Five of us stayed at Hungry Jack Lodge (HJL) on the Friday night before we trekked into the Boundary Waters. Phil was unable to get Monday off of work like the rest of us had, and since he only had to come over from Ely, he hiked in by himself on Friday afternoon. Cory and Bayla (Cory's dog) met us Saturday morning at Hungry Jack. For the Five of us that spent the night at HJL, the morning started with an early rise to stoke the wood stove, followed by biscuits and homemade mushroom gravy made by yours truly. Before making the short jaunt to West Bearskin with our gear, we decided we had better settle our bar tab with HJL from the night before...I was expecting it to be steep considering the slight headache I awoke with but thankfully the nice folks at HJL (Forrest and Ericka) didn't empty our pockets so we thought it best to add to our tab with a round of morning mimosas! Finally, we settled the bill, hopped in the truck and drove the 1 minute down the road to the West Bearskin access. Needless to say, we packed a little heavy... After loading the sleds in the snow we were off to cross West Bearskin heading towards Duncan. Although the parking lot at the access was full, there was little traffic on W. Bearskin. We met to guys on Duncan by the portage who were on their way out, they had also rented a tent from Mike at The Canoeist. The fishing report they gave us for Duncan sounded promising and kept our hopes up for Lake Trout on Rose. After a few minutes chatting with the other group we started the trek again, hauling the overloaded sleds across Duncan. Erin struggled a little with the load she was hauling but Cory was generous enough to allow Bayla (some type of sled dog from Greenland) to give some assistance and attached Bayla's harness to Erin's belt to help pull... sort of like Ski-jouring without the skis. It worked remarkably well and I did not catch up to Erin until we hit the portage from Duncan to Rose, the dreaded stairway portage.

Once upon a time, when was in much better shape, I spent a great deal of time rock climbing. How I wish that I would have brought my ropes with to lower (and eventually bring up) our gear down this hellish portage. Instead, it was all hands on deck in an attempt to SLOWLY guide each sled down this portage. It was a tedious task, with lots of cussing, but we made it down. Unfortunately we don't have any evidence of this because of the effort that was required to get the sleds down the hill, no spare hands for snapping pictures. Upon reaching the bottom of the portage I learned two very interesting things: 1. Phil (our friend that made it to Rose Lake the Day before us) attempted to lower his sled down the portage by himself... the sled got away from him on the lower staircase, hit a tree, and busted the front of the sled. All was not lost as he was just fine and was able to mend his plastic sled with an impressive amount of duct tape. 2. My cousin Brett had proposed to his girlfriend, Tina, at the top of the Stairway Portage overlooking Rose Lake and Canada. What girl could say no to a setting like that?! Looking back, its a really good thing she said yes, otherwise the rest of the trip could have been awkward! It's important to note that Brett and I are cousins. Erin and I, and Brett and Tina each had our first dates together (but separately) on the 4th of July in 2007. We didn't plan it and didn't even realize it until a year or so after. Kinda cool, except that when they beat us to the punch and got engaged... in our presence, and I had/have no plans of doing this same then or anytime soon... well... lets just say that got served a little crap for not keeping pace :)

The rest of the day was spent setting up the tent, gathering fire would and celebrating a new engagement in our cozy, warm, wall tent. The party continued late into the night (9:30 pm... we were exhausted) while sipping on our Growlers from Fitger's and Box wine. The other three in our tent slept on cots while I was on the floor on my sleeping pad (Reese and Cory were in Cory's tent and Phil in his portable fish house). My thought was that if the fire in the wood stove went out, I would be the first one to gt cold and could get up to stoke the fire. The good news is it worked, I was the first one up every time. The bad news is the wood we cut during the day was not nearly as dry as we had hopped and I was up A LOT during the night nursing coals back to life. It was a pretty restless night for me and we awoke chilly and tired. Here are some more pictures from Day 1: ALIGN="LEFT" > " >

Monday, March 14, 2011 We awoke early to get a jump on what would be, to put it lightly, a struggle to get up the stairway portage. I made eggs for breakfast, and filled up everyone's water bottles as we would surely need it. We packed up camp and loaded the sleds one by one. As soon as one was loaded, Reese walked it over to the bottom of the portage. Like I said in the intro, the camera got packed away accidentally so I have no photos for the day. I can only describe to you the process of getting these sleds up the portage to Duncan. We realized that there was no way we were going to pull the sleds up the hill. The sun and heat the day before had made it too icy to even consider. We managed to rig up a pulley system using rope, webbing, and carabiners. REEL carabiners, not the ones you buy at in the checkout lane at the grocery store to hold your keys...DISCLAIMER, please if you use this system DO NOT use those biners. YOU WILL hurt yourself or someone else because they will break. Back to the system, we tied a loop in the end of the rope at the bottom of the hill. To the loop we attached a carabiner, which was then clipped to the tow rope on the front of the sled. Disclaimer 2: Be SURE the rope you use will be able to hold the wait you are pulling, other wise you will be slidding down a hill face first with a heavy sled chasing you... not cool. Again, back to the system, at the top of the hill we wrapped webbing around a sturdy tree and clipped a carabiner to it. The rope was run from the sled at the bottom of the hill, up, through the carabiner at the top of the hill and was hooked to a harness we had for pulling sleds. The two ladies stayed at the top of the hill so as not to be in the way at the bottom of the hill if this all went south. One guy put the harness on at the top of the hill and walked down, pulling the rope and sled up the hill, while the other two guys pushed and guided the sled up the hill... This worked better than I could have hoped. We got the sleds to the top of the first staircase and reset our pulley for the second staircase. It took some time but without the rope and biners we would still be on Rose Lake!

There was a strong South wind in our faces all the way across Duncan. Erin quickly tired out and I pulled both of our sleds, at the same time, across the last third of the lake. She rallied for the portage to West Bearskin and was hot on my heals when I hit the ice again. She keeps telling me she is not a tough "outdoorsy girl" but she keeps proving her self wrong!

We arrived back at my truck in the early afternoon, and headed for the Trail Center restaurant for a burger before heading back to Two Harbors to drop off the tent at the Canoeist where we finally got to meet Mike. He was shocked that we hadn't caught any fish (the best we did was one tip-up with the bait missing from the hook). From there it was back to Duluth were we parted ways with Brett and Tina who had to head back to Mpls. and we headed back to Bemidji getting home around 9:30 pm.

On the way home I got a voice-mail from Reese saying that he had talked to Cory and that Bayla was fine. The vet was able to remove the remaining 3 hooks from her lip, but she was still sore.

I would consider this trip a success even though I'm sure Erin and Tina had at one point or another plotted my demise for pushing them outside of their box(es). I think that they will look back at the trip and realize what they accomplished and the smiles that were had by all.

Lessons Learned:

1: Buy the best side cutters on the market. I don't care how much they cost, when there is a hook stuck in someones face (man or beast) you won't regret it.

2: Pack a climbing rope the next time you want to camp on Rose in the winter

3: Camp on Duncan and day trip to Rose

4: Wall tents/hot tents are THE WAY to go

5: Stay at Hungry Jack Lodge again

6: Ice screws work in frozen ground also... this was helpful

7: Taking the extra time to stop and take a bunch of picture is well worth it.

8: You need to get a wood stove VERY hot for a reflector oven to work...leave the reflector oven for summer trips.

Things to buy or things to leave behind for next trip:

1: BUY Crampons for the hill

2: BUY Side Cutter

3: Bring sunglasses

4: Bring Less food (always a problem)

5: BUY/BUILD a sled from Black River Sleds... Sweet toboggans!

Congrats again to my cousin and his new Fiance. Glad we could be a part of the memory!