Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

Kawishiwi Lake Entry
by linkslvr

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 09/06/2008
Entry & Exit Point: Kawishiwi Lake (EP 37)
Number of Days: 5
Group Size: 2
Day 2 of 5
Sunday, September 07, 2008

Today was the day we would solve the mystery. After passing through 3 very lovely, and apparently very infrequently visted lakes, Beaver, Adams and Boulder, we tackled the first part of the portage out of Boulder Lk, which terminates at an unnamed pond about 135 rod later. This pond, only the width of a canoe, has a trail leading directly up the slope across from the terminus of the initial portage out of Boulder. While the Mckenzie maps showed an 85 rod portage coming from Roe Lake to the unnamed pond, we failed to find just where it came in to the pond. We paddled west along the pond hoping to find it, but never did. Since we had origninally bushwacked from this pond to the legititemate portage to Boulder 10 years ago, we figured that it couldn't have been that far west and so turned back to the more obvious trail. From the pond this trail hooked up with another trail going from Roe to Ledge lake. It was about 100 rods to this intersection, and then another 180 rods from this intersection to Roe Lake. McKenzie maps list the Roe/Ledge lake portage at 200 rods. Altogether we felt a full 1 mile of portaging is required to follow the most obvious route from Boulder to Roe. Unfortunately, once we got to Roe, it was too late in the day, and showers had rolled back in, so we proceeded to move on to Sagus lake to spend the night. The sites on Sagus are all 1 or 2 star sites, at best, but it was late, raining, we were tired, so they looked good to us.