My family and I have traveled to the BWCA for years. I think our first trip (Ely & Lake One) was back in 1988 when my kids were quite young. Made a couple of trips during the 90's. Last time I was there was exactly a year after the massive July 4 wind storm that knocked down all the trees for miles north of Duluth. I think that storm was 2004?? I remember driving up to Ely, and seeing the forest service out with bulldozers pushing downed trees up into piles. The only trees standing were birch.

So that was a while back. Next week Friday, on July 6th I'm leaving Grand Rapids, MI to travel up there with my 14 yo grandson. Can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to the trip.

One quick question for the group. I noticed on Google Maps- the location sharing feature, where I can allow others like Grandma and mom to see our location throughout the trip. If I take my cell phone along into the bwca, I'm suspecting that the phone's gps will capture the location easy enough. Is it plausible that they could track our position in BWCA? Does the cell phone need to transmit that data via the cell network? What do you think??

You will get gps on your phone, but you will want to download maps for offline use. To share your location you would need cell service, which I would not count on. There are other devices available for rent and sale that do location tracking, such as SPOT and Garmin InReach. Search the message board, there is good info on here about your options.

Im pretty sure that the data needs to transfer via cell network, and cell service in most areas of the BWCA is spotty at best no matter your provider.

I've had some luck sending texts by typing it and pressing send, then leaving my phone on all day while traveling. On the occasion it gets a connection for a few seconds, be it at the top of a hill or middle of a lake, it'll send and recieve data. I'd think that the location pings your phone sends out would likely happen in a similar fashion.
The obvious downside being that constantly being in "search" mode drains the battery pretty fast so this method requires a backup battery pack, high quality solar charger or some other source of USB power as well as the added weight of said power source.

If you do decide to try it, I'd sure like an update on your success or lack thereof. Like many, my phone is the best camera I own, but I've managed to squeeze 7 days of battery life out of a full charge by setting it to airplane mode and keeping it off unless pictures are being taken. But having my wife be able to see where I'm at, even in a far from real-time manner, might be the extra justification needed to add some form of charging capability to my pack.

The wind storm was July 4, 1999. I was on the Gunflint Trail at Wilderness Canoe Base exactly 2 weeks later and helped with cleanup. Went back to the camp after the Ham Lake fire and spent a week helping with rebuilding the camp. Have a good time on your trip. I am back just one week from m my trip.

In 1999 we drove up on July 5th and went in on the 6th with my Mom who was 74. Took us 3 days to get from Magnetic Lake to Big Sag!
The toughest portages I ever had were on the trip.
Took the same trip a few years later and the portages weren't near as bad?
The forest service kept trying to talk us out of the trip and the outfitter kept telling us that it was ok to go?
There was a lot of trees and lines across the road and they were cutting the tops of the trees off so we could drive in one lane. We felt bad that we didn't bring a chainsaw with us to help.