Heading in Thursday. Does anyone have any very current info on the water levels up fourtown and up the moosecamp river. The BWCA recently received a lot of rain.
Thank you

We just got out on the 4th. We went out Mudro and the creek to the lake is SUPER low. THe Horse River is SUPER low. Fourtown to Mudro is SUPER low. We had planned on going down the Mossecamp but decided against it because of the water levels. I saw a post here somewhere that said it is bad, like mud bad.

Any possibility of the river being up now?

I highly doubt it. It's going to take a bunch of rain to get the water level up

bombinbrian: "I highly doubt it. It's going to take a bunch of rain to get the water level up"

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Once the water levels drop in those rivers over a dry summer spell, they do not bounce back from an occasional 2-3 inch rain. They may run a touch higher for a day, but then drop back. It would take a long wet spell to bring them back.......lots and lots of rain.

Newbie question here: is Moosecamp River the same as Nina Moose River? I'm planning a trip starting at EP 16 Moose River North and have had a hard time finding Moosecamp River or Moosecamp Lake on Google. I want my friend and I to be prepared to slog if need be, but don't want to have the wrong information. Thanks for your help, y'all! I appreciate this forum so much <3

No. Moosecamp River flows out of Moosecamp Lake into Fourtown Lake and is a choice for those trying to make a Mudro EP loop west and north out of Fourtown -- Boot, Fairy, Gun, Bullet, Moosecamp. It barely drops at all in elevation, so there is very little current and is subject to very low water levels. Especially in years like this one.

Just came out on Saturday. Crooked Lake Loop - up through Horse an back through Fourtown. Ran into a couple of young guys on Gun that tried day tripping down the Moosecamp and had to turn around. If those 2 lightly loaded couldn't get through, I don't think it is passable. 2nd hand though so I can't say from personal experience. We came through Boot to Fourtown.

Horse river is low, but definitely passable. Besides the marked portages, there are a couple places where we had to line the canoes and a small beaver dam we had to pull over. Not too bad.

In general, water levels still low. The storms last week did not produce as much rain as I expected at our campsites, lots of wind and lightning.

We travelled Moosecamp lake to Fourtown this September and the first 1/3 was passable by canoe, but the bottom 2/3 was mainly mud without enough water to float a canoe. Luckily, a makeshift portage has developed on the west side of the river, which stays straight and skips all the turns in the river. The portage length registered 1.4 miles on my GPS, which means the river itself would have been well over 2 miles with all of the switchbacks.
It was really a rough time since we had 4 packs and a canoe for 2 people.

Is there "ever" enough water in this river to canoe the entire length, with just the beaver dams in your way? If so, I find that very hard to believe. It sure looked like there hasn't been much water on sections of that river for many years!

All that said, I actually enjoyed the challenge, which took us 4 hours for just the 1.4 mile portage portion. Of course, mistakenly, I tried several times to get the canoe back in the river when it looked like there was enough water, only to round the corner and see nothing but mud. Way too much work loading/unloading the canoe in all that mud.
It would have been much faster to just treat it like a 1.4 miles and forget about the river.

When we finally arrived at Fourtown, there was a wedding being performed on one of the campsites near the river, they were as shocked to see us as we were to see a woman in a wedding dress!

The short answer to your question is yes, in a normal water level year, the Moosecamp River is navigable its entire length between Moosecamp Lake and Fourtown. I have done it twice (including up and down the river one of the visits), and if my memory is correct, both were in the late July/early August time frame and done with no issue other than the beaver dam pullovers. There are a lot of turns and shallow areas, but its not a bad paddle at all.

I did a trip mid October some years ago. The Moosecamp River was easily navigable. The only thing in our way was the massive beaver damn.