I brought my daughter on her first trip to the bwca last year and we ended up spending most of our time in areas where most of the trees were shorter than us. I need to stay in older growth areas this year or she may be lost forever. We will be entering on Sea Gull and I was planning on staying on Jasper, Alpine or Red Rock for three or four nights and then maybe moving on to SAK or Ogish for another three or four nights. I have not been to this area for 20 years so I know very little about recent fire damage. The main thing is to camp in older growth areas.

If you have any suggestions for nice campsites I would love to hear about them.

I will be bringing my wife, daughter, son and his friend and I would really like to get them on some fish. Any tips on locations for SB, Walleye and Trout would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to send me an e-mail if you would like to keep things a little more private.

Thanks for any help you can give me.

Seagull, Alpine, Jasper, the southern tip of Red Rocks, and half of Ogish all all in the burn area. If you want old growth you want to avoid those lakes.

You can find outlines of the approximate burn areas on Voyageur Maps. www.voyageurmaps.com

This area is riddled with burn, blowdown, etc. if you cannot change the permit then go immediately to the west end of Ogishkemuncie. I would not mess with the Seagull, Alpine, Red Rock area. (You would likely have to go well up to the Red Rock Bay Area to get away from all burn. The east end of Ogishkemuncie is burned. Push on through the narrows to get past the burn areas. The area from there to SAK remains uncharred but does have some areas of smaller trees due to the blowdown. The east end of SAK is largely unburned but as you move west toward Thunder Point you will encounter more burn on the south side of the lake.

Can you change your permit? Where to go off the Gunflint?

Is there a permit available for the Lizz Lake area? (Entry 47). Horseshoe Lake, Gaskin Lake, and Winchell Lake remain unburned and are in moose central. Very often calves are with the females. This should be of interest to your daughter. Winchell has cliffs on the south side with paths to the top for a great view. I would catch a site on Horseshoe for the moose watching and then on Winchell or Omega for the change of scenery. Another option for good scenery is Vista Lake.

Another option would be to pull a permit for Cross Bay Lake (Entry 50 I think). Head down to Long Island Lake, Frost Lake, Cherokee Lake. Long Island has some burn on the southeast quadrant. Frost Lake is again for locating moose. It also has golden sand beaches and a very gradual bottom for some swimming opportunities. Cherokee Lake has the great scenery. You could also spend some time on Snipe Lake which is west of Cross Bay Lake. A couple of nicer campsites and some paddling to see the cliffs and other bays of the Lake.

For more options others can point you toward entries to the east side of the GunflInt Trail.

Close by but not the Gunflint is the Sawbill Trail area. Pull a permit for Sawbill Lake.

Head west through Alton and Beth to Grace or Phoebe Lake. Day trip on the Phoebe River. But be prepared for beaver dams.

OR head east into the Fire Lakes (Smoke, Burnt, and Flame). Contrary to their names, these lakes do not have burned areas. After a few days move over to the east to Kelly or Jack Lakes. Stop to see the abandoned mine between these two lakes. Again, some have had luck seeing moose on Jack Lake.

Hope this helps. Have a great trip!

If you stick with your itinerary you can avoid camping in the burn areas.

The northern 3/4 of Red Rock avoided the burn, and those campsites are all fully wooded. We stayed at the campsite about halfway down the lake in 2016, on the west side, just north of the islands that are in the narrow part. That site, and all the other sites north of that on Red Rock, are all older growth forest. Had great walleye fishing around the islands in the middle of the lake.

If you stay on Red Rock a couple days, you can easily make Ogish in a day. As Michwall2 stated, about the northern 1/3rd of Ogish was burned. Even in some of the burn areas, some of the campsites were spared. We stayed at site #792 on Ogish last year, it's a beautiful, large site with lots of large trees. You can see the burn got to within about 50 yard of it in all directions, but you'd never know it from being in the campsite. Everything south of that site on Ogish is fine.

I'd also suggest just going to google maps, look at the lakes on your itinerary, and switching the view to "satellite" view. You can get a very good detailed look, down to the individual campsite, and what was burned, (lighter colored) and what was untouched, (still dark green).

Not sure when you're going, but if it's mid-late July or later, the burn areas are also great for blueberries.

I was through this exact area last August and until you hit Red Rock much of the shoreline will be burned. As johndku pointed out, if you're going around early August you'll find the place is littered with blueberries. We camped at a really nice site on Alpine which did not get burned, and spent an afternoon filling a pot with berries. We could have picked more if the kids had been willing to stay longer. I published a trip report about it here.

Going south of the trail through Missing Link or Cross Bay was real nice for me last year. Mostly mature forest, but got into some burn areas, too. Long Island Lake was like that. Some of the east end was a decade into recovery, but most of the lake was mature forest. As a birder, the young forest and the margins of the young areas were the best for bird diversity. Some big old trees on Cherokee and healthier white birch than you see coming up the shore.

Your intended entry is going into the core of the 1999 blowdown and much of that has burned. Still time to get a new entry.