Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

June 2009 Basswood River - Crooked - Brent - McIntyre
by bulldawg

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 06/25/2009
Entry & Exit Point: Quetico
Number of Days: 8
Group Size: 5
Day 4 of 8
Sunday, June 28, 2009 Here we go, woke up to misty rain, more wind, and much much cooler temps. It had to be in the 40’s when we broke camp. We paddled through Brent with hopes up heading up into Suzanette for a 2 day layover but we couldn’t find a suitable campsite. I had made a misjudgment and marked a site on my map on an incorrect lake and the sites that we found were only suitable for a layover and we wanted to stay 2 days. [Excerpt from son: Ok, so we are heading down Brent to Suzanette and for the first (and only) time we had the wind at our backs. We are ready to get out of the cold rain and get into dry clothes. As we head down what seems to be the final stretch we abandon paddling and put our paddles in the air. Surprisingly, this works and we are able to steer by moving the paddles back and forth. Then, we get to what seems to be our 4 star campsite. We spend 2 and a half hours looking for this campsite because all the ones we found were not good ones. So, we head back up where we came from facing the wind this time] We paddled on and finally landed on an island site that turned out to be a perfect spot. The fire pit was protected by a large bolder from the constant and steady wind coming off of the lake and the island was large enough for the boys to explore without concern. We hunkered down, made chili for dinner, cut plenty of firewood, and called it a night.