Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

The Year of Rain
by RT

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 08/13/2009
Entry Point: Saganaga Lake Only (EP 55A)
Exit Point: Seagull Lake Only (EP 54A)  
Number of Days: 11
Group Size: 3
Day 3 of 11
Saturday, August 15, 2009

I was up before Matt and Gopher and was not greeting by a sight I wanted to see. The sprinkly rain had returned during the night, the sky was once again overcast, and a chill was in the air. I cooked up water for oatmeal and coffee and sat by the fire pit, waiting for Matt and Gopher to wake. We ate relatively quietly before striking camp, loading up the canoe and kayak, and pushing on our way into Knife Lake.

I was continuing my personal photo journal of “wilderness toilets” so we hit a few campsites on our way down Knife Lake; making it a special point to stop at a site (the one with the small bluffs placed in a watershed) we have eaten lunch at a few times to take a break, eat some snacks, and take more photos of that particular toilet. For some reason (probably due to the fact that the site is such a watershed) we have stopped at the site but have never camped there. It would be a great site if not for that reason.

The weather went from bad to worse; from just light sprinkly to straight up shitty. The wind had picked up and was blowing into our faces. The rain did not pick up but because of the wind it was becoming a hassle to paddle in a straight line. We continued on for just over a mile before deciding that it was too much of an annoyance and picked out the closest campsite.

As soon as we got the camp set up the wind died down and the rain quit. This is just proof that, in the BWCA, you can never count your weather chickens before they hatch. It was only slightly after noon (we had slept in a bit that morning) but we decided that since we had no particular place we needed to be we would just stay were we were. We were only a mile or so northeast of Thunder Point, a distance we could cover in no time at all, and our turn to make our run to Wisini Lake, my trip destination.

With the weather abated, and nothing else to do, Matt and I struck off in the canoe looking for some fish as Gopher took the kayak in his quest to scope out another boundary marker. Matt and I cruised around on the bays close to some islands near our campsite as Gopher disappeared into the distance to the south. We were happily getting skunked (once again) with our fishing when we heard a very distant but very loud, “Yeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaa”.

Unsure of what to make of it we kind of passed it off as Gopher getting frustrated and continued our fishing. About an hour later, off in the distance, we could see Gopher paddling up. There was no way he could have pulled a marker out of the rocks they were cemented in to and he gave up in frustration; his hands were roughed up quite a bit by the marker.

We went back to camp and we cooked up dinner while sitting under one of our strung up tarps. We made many jokes about the boundary markers and Gophers lack of strength while smoking cigars and eating before heading off to bed early; the clouds and rain had returned and any star watching was nixed.