I managed to get a permit. New situation for me. My 13 year old daughter and I are going in on East Bearskin on June 5th for four nights. I'm hoping to basecamp on Alder and do some fishing and see the sights. I'm hoping we can do some fly fishing for shallow smallies and pike. Probably try to see Johnson Falls.

Is there anything totally missing? A preference for maps? I've been lurking here a long time so I can probably find my own info. I just want to thank anyone who helps.

Modestly, James

Welcome to this forum and good for you for planning this new adventure!

Good call on Johnson Falls. Be prepared for a vigorous hike to get there--even without a lot of gear. The Pine-Canoe portage is known as one of the most challenging in all of the BWCA. After you complete that, there is still another half mile or so through the woods to get to the falls. When you arrive, be sure to check out the upper and lower falls. We've had fun going behind the falls on the upper portion and looking out through the cascade. Also have enjoyed letting the current carry us out a bit from the cascade, kind of body surfing the flow.

At your chosen time of year the bugs will be prevelant so be prepared--a head net may be a valued part of the gear.

If you are not finding a site to your liking (or any at all!) on Alder, Pierz Lake or Canoe Lake are good alternatives, each only a short portage away. We found the western-most sites on these lake to be the best ones, in our opinion.

To get between Alder and East Bearskin, definately take the shorter portage. Not just because of length but overall difficulty as well unless you purposely want that extra challenge and variety.

Pre- or post-trip, consider a hike up Honeymoon Bluff for a spectacular view and Trail Center Cafe for very tasty eats.

Have a great trip!

We just did this same trip for the first time last fall. Delightful. And, yes, there is a reason we stopped short on Alder and did the Canoe-Pine portage as a day trip. It wasn't as bad as everyone made it out to be, but, of course, we were just doing a day pack and canoe. According to my gps track, the zig-zag switchbacks drawn on every map for that portage are way over exaggerated. Alder site 706 was great. With that many days in a basecamp, consider a trip to Bench Lake for brookies.

That'll be a great trip, James! I haven't been to that entry point and I'm sure you'll hear from others who have great suggestions. I do have experience with daughters in the wilderness so a few ideas there...

1) if she enjoys fishing, that's awesome! Fly fishing is also an opportunity to tie your flies together before you go. My daughters used to choose their colors for the patterns and it always amazed me how the hot pink/orange/green fluffy patterns worked just fine!

2) When I fish with my younger daughters I'm more prepared to change fishing styles more frequently. They like to fish but not as long as I do. :) It really helped when we got a gopro and they could make videos of anything they wanted while I fished. Some great footage, and a lot of nauseating videos too, but the cool videos are cherished memories.

3) I have both Fisher and McKenzie for navigation, no real preference, but my daughters enjoyed the one time I got them the cloth maps - True North? and they used those more for some reason. Still have them as mementos too.

4) You probably already know this...meal time with my daughters was about them and their likes. They help plan the menus, we make a few meals this time of year and do some dehydrating together, and then they enjoy the prep and even the clean-up. We video the clean-up time and while we wash dishes we talk about our favorite part of the day. Also great memories.

Glad you posted. Have a great trip with your daughter! I really enjoy tripping with my daughters. Your post brought back good memories and gets me excited for my trips with my daughters this summer!

For maps, just click on the STORE tab at the top of the BWCA.com site page and order the Voyageur #10 map. Actually, order 2 so your daughter has one, too. Great age to start developing map reading skills. Voyageur maps have become our favorite: great info, easy to read lake depths and contour lines, as well as fun facts about the history, geology and more. They ship out really fast, too.

I treasure the trips I took with my daughter!! I hope you do too!

I did that area as my first Solo in fall of 2020. It is a beautiful area. The site on the north shore of Alder, just east of the peninsula is fantastic. I recall the last site on the east end of Alder and Canoe both being underrated and would work well for small groups.

I camped on Pierz, the western most site, even though some of the better sites on Alder were open. Not sure why, but I did. The sites on Alder are better but it wasn't by enough to make it worth moving camp. The middle site on Canoe is supposed to be excellent, but was full when I was there.

Johnson Falls is a MUST! Well worth a day trip and a long one at that. Take your time and enjoy it. One of my favorite places. I agree with schweady that the switchbacks are exaggerated on the maps. It was a longer hike but without a canoe for a hat, it isn't bad. I added an image below I found when I was looking into the area that helped.

I had zero luck fishing, even in the outflow of the stream from the falls into pine, but that is more likely a credit to my lack of skill than the area. The few other people I ran into no one else was having any luck either that weekend for whatever reason

For maps, I bought one each of Voyager, McKenzie, and Fishers to see what I liked best. I prefer Voyager. I just liked the coloring better and it seemed to have more lake contour lines. They will all work fine. McKenzie is the largest scale at 2" per mile if that matters.

Ace - Your map reminded me to look more closely at the huge difference between what every map shows for the Canoe-Pine portage and what we actually measured when walking it last fall. It doesn't switchback nearly as much and it's actually about a half-mile shorter than advertised since you don't need to follow Pine's shoreline to the west to pick up the portage to Little Caribou. (That is, if you are skipping the falls...)
Images from Garmin BaseCamp

Schweady - I logged a very similar track when I walked it. It was with Gaia GPS off my phone in the top pouch of my pack, so should be about as accurate as this stuff gets.

Crazy the maps are all so far off. I remember when I walked back looking for signs the trail had been moved or straightened and not seeing anything. The overlay shown in the below is the "USFS 2016" map which I've found to be accurate for portage locations.

Thanks for all the good info, everyone. I'll be sure to post a report when we get back

Redyoda: "I managed to get a permit. New situation for me...
Modestly, James"

New situation, as in First Trip?? Just curious.

I've always used Fisher Maps. F14 covers this entire area.

The portage to take from E Bearskin to Alder is in the south arm of E Bearskin. The north arm portage does not get maintained as well and there were several large pines across the trail at inconvenient heights the last time I came through.

There are brookies in Bench. Lakers in Crystal and Alder. The fishing is very poor in Canoe Lake but there is a very nice site there. If you're sleeping in a tent and staying a few days you probably want to avoid the sloped sites on Crystal. When you visit Lower Johnson Falls, make sure you hike a little further and check out Upper Johnson Falls and the pretty little pond beyond it. The namesake of Spaulding Lake built a silver mining camp off of the east end that makes for an interesting bushwack. If you care to tackle the Canoe-Pine portage with gear, and do it early enough that there are campsites still available on Caribou it makes for an easy loop back to E Bearskin. In my experiences the Caribou side of this route is much busier than the Alder side. I didn't like the sites on Moon and Deer very much but for a group of 2 they would be alright.

If time allows??? Old cabin remains

Bobber number three, it's a new situation for me in that it's new terrain. We've done some pretty good wilderness backpacking trips in Wyoming, and Colorado. Navigation on the water is new. We use my canoes all the time. It's just on twenty acre bass lakes.