I have permit for entry point Cross Bay - 5 day trip, second week in September.

Hopefully fire situation will be resolved soon for everyones sake.

I am looking for any planning information on this route. Campsite and portage conditions, any general suggestions, route opportunities, cautions and warnings, animal viewing, etc.?

I am aware weather is fickle from year to year ...week to week. For you veterans of the area, if it's a normal year (whatever that means) are the odds higher for warm/hot, mosquitos ... or cooler autum weather? Is wind typically a problem then like it can be in October?

Party of 4

Thank you.

One nice route would be through Snipe, over to Tuscarora, Crooked, then either straight to Gillis and out through Brandt or if you want more time traveling, go thrugh Mora to Little Sag and again, out though Gillis and Brandt.

There's lots of trip reports from this area, here's one that covers the Little Sag/Gillis/Brandt portion.

A Paddler's Guide to Type 2 Fun

There are going to be few mosquitos at that time of year. My favorite time!

This is a really beautiful area and probably my favorite out of everywhere I've explored in the BWCA so far. I've made a couple of trips through Cross Bay EP, with one of them being the second week in September in 2022.

You are correct that the weather in early fall can be fickle...As my group's luck would have it, the long stretch of sunny and mild weather that preceded our visit ended halfway through our trip--we actually left a couple of days early as there was a pretty big storm system moving through that ended up dropping ~3" of rain by the time all was said and done. I remember speaking with Andy at Tuscarora and he mentioned that early fall seems to be when weather patterns change from quick summer thunderstorms to longer lasting systems, which was definitely our experience. Of course, it varies by the year, but it is definitely something to keep in mind. Be sure you have a good shelter/tarp, rain jacket, and pair of dry socks and you should be ok.

I would recommend heading south through Rib Lake into Long Island Lake and Cherokee Lake. There are numerous excellent sites on both Long Island and Cherokee, and my group found that retracing our path instead of doing a loop was fine--the sites were varied enough to be interesting and had all the amenities we could have asked for (my favorites include 551, 568, 567, and 891). With a 5 day trip, you would have enough time to check out North/South Temperance Lake and try your luck with fall moose sightings or head over to Tuscarora through Snipe Lake--another great spot with excellent sites.

Depending on how early you can get started there are two good options.

With an early start Long Island Lake is possible. Lots of portages, but pretty easy and short. One of the first portages has a real bouldery landing. Take your time and move carefully through the boulders. The rest of the portage is a breeze.

If you don't get an early start take the first site you find available. Finding a site(there are only 2) open on Cross Bay Lake would give you an evening of looking for moose in the bays. It is an enchanting lake. There is only one site on Rib.

If all are taken you have to push through to Karl or Long Island. Plenty of campsites there. With only 4 nights you may wiah to base camp on Long Island. It is a fun lake to explore and also Cherokee Lake is an easy day trip from Long Island with easy portages.

On the way out consider going out through Snipe and Missing Link to Round Lake. Snipe is a gorgeous lake. Same number of portages as exiting through Cross River access. It is a very short walk back to your car from the Round Lake access.

Cross Bay or Snipe would be a good last night camp.

This area has a nice mix of old forest and post-burn recovery areas from the Ham Lake fire.

I did Cross Bay last year into Long Island, entry on August 19th. There were zero bugs, weather was perfect. We pushed off about 8:30am, and we were on Long Island by around 2pm, taking our time to enjoy some scenery. The river sections are easy paddling and the lakes are small. Even with wind, you wouldn't run into any real issues until you get to Long Island Lake, should you take that route. Karl Lake would be better access into Long Island if the wind picks up. Its pretty narrow in there with steep banks.

The portage from Rib Lake into Lower George is the only one that stands out to me, the reeds block the view of the channel so we had a tough time finding it at first, and the water was low so our canoe scraped the last 100 feet or so on every submerged rock. Other than than, there's nothing difficult about the route.

The island site on Long Island Lake straight out from the portage (567) is the best on the lake IMO. From there, its an easy paddle to the portage to get down into Gordon/Cherokee if you want to day-trip to Frost Lake for the beach. We opted out of that, we figured it would be pretty busy in there like our trip a couple years prior to Cherokee. Instead, we just went and explored Long Island Lake, its pretty vast.

Have Rockwood drive you to Cross Bay and paddle back to Poplar. Great trip