I've got a permit for mid-June at Clearwater and I'm wondering if there are any points of interest to visit that I am not aware of. I've been on Clearwater before and seen the overlooks on the border route trail. I've also been to Johnson falls. We did try to hike to the top of the cliff on Clearwater, but never found the landing for it.

Our tentative route will be to start the loop on Mountain and follow the border all the way down to Fowl then head back through East and West Pike. I expect to take 6-7 days. We might camp on Gogebic for the last night, but I'm not sure if it is worth the extra effort.

So far Gogebic and Pemmican are the only new points of interest that we plan on visiting. Are there any other spots we should check out while we are in the area? Where would you recommend we stay more than one night? I don't plan on going to the west of Clearwater since the Rose area seems like it's own trip.

Here's a thread that you started a few years ago in which I mentioned gps coordinates for the start for the hike up to the Clearwater palisades, and the Mountain Lake overlook spots (both W and E directions from the Clearwater-Mountain portage are worth the short hike).

schweady: "Here's a thread that you started a few years ago in which I mentioned gps coordinates for the start for the hike up to the Clearwater palisades, and the Mountain Lake overlook spots (both W and E directions from the Clearwater-Mountain portage are worth the short hike).
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I did get a chance to see the BRT lookout points on the last trip and did mention them in the original post. We'll likely visit them again this trip, but it was more for the rest of the route that I was asking about. Any suggestions on fishing spots, scenic points to get out and take a look at, or anything like that? Especially for the eastern side of the loop because I don't see a whole lot of detail for those lakes on the maps.

Gogebic is a tough lake to get to but, is definitely worth the effort. If you haven't seen it already? Here is a trip report

A1t2o: "I did get a chance to see the BRT lookout points on the last trip and did mention them in the original post."

Sure. See that now. Anyway, start your climb up to the top of Clearwater's palisades just to the west of the huge pile of talus.

The head of the trail up the palisades can be really difficult to spot if you don't get pretty close to shore. The outfitting team at Clearwater Lodge gave us a good description of what to look for and it still took us a while.

Here is a photo of the "landing" area, and a link to a video that shows this spot in relation to the palisades. It's a steep hike up, but well worth the view.



As for fishing -- we have caught a handful of lake trout over the years in CW, ranging from itty bitty to big. Definitely more on the smaller end of the scale. Troll a crankbait that dives to 20-25 feet through 30-50fow along the shorelines and you should hook up with a few. The hot bait has changed every single year, but our most productive have been: #9 chrome/blue scatter-rap taildancer; chrome/blue crocodile spoon using weight to get deep; purple tiger jointed flicker shad using weight to get down.

There is reportedly a large number of small-ish smallmouth bass in this lake as well, but we have only ever run into one while trolling for trout.

Are there any popular points of interest for the rest of the route? We'll be traveling the full length of Mountain, Moose, and North Fowl before turning back to travel across East and West Pike. Our last trip, we stayed on Clearwater and only went to see the Johnson Falls. This trip we are going a lot further and not going to spend much time on Clearwater itself. In fact, we are talking about skipping most of Clearwater to take Caribou back just to see the lake.

I only recently learned that you can reach Gogebic from the BRT. If you took your look counterclockwise, you could take the portage from Clearwater to West Pike, but then turn right and follow the BRT to Gogebic. You could camp on G without climbing the ladder up from West Pike.

It doesn't make as much sense to portage this way if you're making the loop clockwise.