Our Boy Scout troop tries to do a "High Adventure" trip as a reward for all the hard work that is done throughout the year. This trip is is reserved for the older scouts only. Doing this trip will be 6 - 16&17 yr old scouts, Bryan (t-ball or mule), Trent (chicken), Brennan, Jake (Stallone),Alex, and Jeff(a replacement for Kyle who ended up getting ankle surgery before the trip).The adults are Brian (Boy Scoutmaster),Gary (Brennan's dad), and Tom (myself, and Trent's dad). Although everyone in the group has been on plenty of hiking, canoeing, and camping trips, we have never put together a trip like this as a whole. It all became because of the high costs associated with the normal high adventure to Philmont in New Mexico. Brian came up with the idea of BWCA and we ran with the idea. We spent countless hours on the forums getting to know how to pack, where to go, and other info from people such as Kanoes, Basspro, Missmolly, Savage Voyageur, and others. There was also info from various outfitters in Ely since we would probably need to rent equipment (we only had to rent 4 aluminum and a canoe trailer). After discussing many different entry points we decided on trying for Mudro Lake EP23. With this entry we could do some serious portaging and hopefully get away from the majority of the people. Canadian Waters will be our oufitter but to be honest every outfitter we spoke to were great. Dan Waters said we would be best with aluminum canoes due to the nature of boys (and he was right).Dan put in our application for Mudro in the lottery and we got it! Now "GAME ON". The boys were devided up into three groups of two. One group was in charge of ROUTES and FISHING. One was in charge of MEALS, and the other was in charge of EQUIPMENT. We decided to make all single portages to save time and dehrydrating as much food as possible to save on expenses. In the weeks before the trip various items were prepared or secured. A 18 x 23 tarp was made from house wrap and contact cement. Leech containers were made from gatorade bottles. 50 BDB's were made (our apologies to OLD SCOUT). Gamma Lids were purchased for food buckets. These ideas all came from this forum----Thanks. The plan became clear, to single portage 4 people would carry canoes, the other 5 would carry hiking backpacks. The 2 with the lightest packs would also be responsible for carrying the (4) 5 gallon buckets. For this group of 9 BWCA newbies we felt we were ready (I hope).