This is my first post - but for the last year I have been doing my best sponge imitation reading everything I can from this board. Thank all of you who have posted your experiences...so far I've had all my questions answered researching old posts, and picked up new ideas as well. I have my jello mold oven checked as baggage right now.

I've done many BWCA trips since the 80s. This will be my first Quetico trip. 4 of us in two tandem canoes. This is our first trip as a team. Routing: Beaverhouse, Quetico, Jean, Burntside, etc to Sturgeon and Tanner. From there we need to make our way over the course of a few days to the Bottle portage entry point where we meet up with my husband and a week's worth of new food to finish out the journey east to an eventual Mudro exit.

My question is about the eat 'em up portage - if our paddling team comes together well, we are considering taking this portage to reach Darkwater, then through the Rolands to Crooked/Iron/Bottle. There are few postings about this portage. I queried our outfitter, he said the last group he talked to about it were unable to even find the portage.

Has anyone taken this portage recently? Can you share any information that will help us decide which route to take once the Maligne widens out at Tanner?

Thank you all very much!

--Mary
TempoDown

Eat 'em up portage? Which one is that?

It's ten miles on gravel off of Hwy 11 to the turnoff to the Beaverhouse lake parking lot. Once you've made the turn, you have another four miles to go. Should take you about 30 minutes.

Are you paddling to the BH ranger station or will you be picking up your permit in Atikokan the day before?

Have a great trip! I've been through a lot of the area that you'll be traveling. It's all good. :)

We're renting canoes from the Ely outfitter we've used for many years. They will take us by van at O'dark:30 from Ely to the Beaverhouse drop off on the N side of the lake. We'll paddle S to the ranger station (I'm keeping my eye on the west wind forecast).

Not having firsthand experience, my understanding is that eat 'em up is the nickname of the portage that goes south from the middle of Tanner, climbs a ridge, goes through a swamp, then dumps you off where you can paddle south to Darkwater. I found a few old hits in trip reports, including a picture if a swamp that might have some Corduroy. But nothing recent, and very little of the portage can be made out on Google Earth.

Thanks for the good wishes. We are all excited, especially my 17 year old nephew. This will be his first wilderness canoing trip.

--Mary
TempoDown

I've talked to two groups in the past few years who did the "Eat'em'up portage" and both said never again. Much easier to go to LLC and then over to Crooked lake via several options....

from what I've read, the portage is slightly mismarked on most maps. It's not down at the tip of the bay on Tanner, but further east along the shore. The Chrismar map looks to be the best. Other than that everybody seems to say the middle bog part is pretty messy and the stream before the Darky river is very narrow and twisty with some pullovers. Sounds like an adventure

I did this portage about 5 years ago and have some bad memories. I got to Tanner and camped for the night on one of the nice island campsites and went over to the overflow which is worth seeing. I then found the portage and walked it the that night. I don't recall any problem finding it. The portage itself was reasonably long (for an old timer)but seemed only moderately difficult.

In any event I started the portage the next morning. Since I am solo I have to make three carries on my long trips. So I took my first pack over with little difficulty. I then took the canoe and got to the bog. Over the years I have learned that I do sideways corduroy logs ok but not length wise. So when I got to the length wise I lost my balance and fell into the bog. But that wasn't the worst. When I carried my last pack I fell into the bog in exactly the same spot but this time I was carrying my fishing rod which went about 12 inches down into bog muck. I had to have a long bath when I got out of the creek and into the Darky river.

Andrews Creek can be dry and was during the drought years but from all accounts there is enough water this year.

So as long as you are careful on the corduroy you shouldn't have a problem.

Thanks to all who replied. We made it home to Florida last night.

We found the Eat'em up portage. I guess to be precise we found two of them. Not sure which is legitimately the "Eat 'em up". The first landing was directly off the shore of Tanner lake (where a tree branch is flagged with a red ribbon). This led directly up a steep hill and looked fairly well worn near the landing, but not easily visible from the lake without that ribbon. The second is off an unnamed creek a bit downstream. This creek landing was deeper into the creek than the map would seem to indicate. We scouted the creek landing portage all the way to Andrews Creek. This was not well worn but it had been used within the previous few weeks based on the trace of passage through the tall boggy grass skirting the old lake bed. We decided it was beyond our abilities as a group. The fact that it was about 90F+ that day probably contributed to deciding not to try it. That and me getting bogged down in mud past my knees in a branch creek crossing. Twice. Some of us wanted to backtrack and scout the steep landing route that looks like it hits a branch of Andrews Creek farther upstream of our boggy path, but we'd lost a lot of time scouting the first one and decided to continue downstream on the Maligne to enter Minn from the north. Swimming the Eat 'em up bog mud off downstream of the Tanner rapids was a treat!

I will work on pulling together a trip report for our two week trip. Thanks again to those who answered in this thread, and to other posters from the last several years whose good ideas and shared experiences contributed greatly to the success of our trip.

--Mary
TempoDown