BWCA Entry Point, Route, and Trip Report Blog
April 17 2024
Entry Point 69 - John Lake
Number of Permits per Day: 1
Elevation: 1217 feet
Latitude: 48.0547
Longitude: -90.0569
Far East Loop
Entry Date:
June 06, 2019
Entry Point:
North Fowl Lake
Exit Point:
Pine Lake (68)
Number of Days:
3
Group Size:
2
Got up and watched the sunrise at Tettegouche State Park, stopped in Grand Marais for breakfast at South of the Border Cafe, then went up to our entry point. The road to the entry point turned to gravel and is long and winding but for us it just added to everything. We went in and paddled through John Lake, we had trouble finding the first portage but after we did it wasn't a difficult portage. Canoed through the Royal River, North Fowl, and into Moose Lake. The canoeing was awesome. Nice easy going and beautiful scenery. The portages into North Fowl and Moose were muddy and wet, going into Moose was actually a creek the whole way, which made things difficult. Found a campsite on Moose and relaxed after a long day only to be woken up in the middle of the night by something outside the tent sniffing and nudging my head. That was all that happened, but I didn't sleep much that night. In the morning we were greeted by beavers swimming right up close and slapping their tales at us. Unfortunately both in the evening and the morning the little black flies were so bad if you had any flesh showing whatsoever they found it. Worst bug situation I've ever had.
Paddled the rest of the way through Moose, Vaseux, Fan, and Mountain Lake today. But in a lot of distance today. Portages were very muddy and difficult. Mountain Lake was beautiful. We had planned on staying on Mountain Lake but made it all the way through and decided to portage into Clearwater. The portage from Mountain to Clearwater was our first portage of the trip that was close to being all dry. It was a tough climb in elevation but this was also better maintained that the other portages we had been on. We stayed at the campsite the farthest east on Clearwater and it was an awesome campsite. Very large and elevated above the water. Would love to make it back there. Once again the little black flies made things unbearable if you had any flesh exposed in the evening or the morning.
The plan for today was to get part of the way through Pine and camp for the night. Once into Pine the paddling was great. We saw our first other people in a couple days when we met some on a portage. We had a light breeze at our backs and before we knew it we had blown past all of the campsites that we had planned on checking out and we were at the end of the lake. There were two campsites there and they both looked awesome, but every time we pulled up on shore the little black flies were there to greet us, so we decided to just paddle through McFarland and go out.