Boundary Waters, Trip Reports, BWCA, Stories

Quetico 2012:Beaverhouse, Q, Jean, Burntside
by Mad Birdman

Trip Type: Paddling Canoe
Entry Date: 09/20/2012
Entry & Exit Point: Quetico
Number of Days: 7
Group Size: 6
Part 2 of 8
Day 1: Saturday, September 22

Up early to talk maps a bit with Mark Anderson. He informed us that the lakers were still in 50’ of water and turnover had not happened yet. We made it down to the dock for our boat shuttle by 7:15am, and loaded up without incident.

We had a quick customs stop at the dock on the border, and then headed up to a landing, the point where we would meet our truck shuttle to Beaverhouse. A brisk and heavy north wind was blowing, and Anderson’s boat was rocking pretty good in the whitecaps as Mark drove us up.

I had read accounts that the car ride was a “bumpy, crummy ride in an old Suburban”, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a nearly brand-new GMC Yukon with canoe trailer waiting for us at the landing. Mark had contracted CanoeCanada Outfitters out of Atikokan for the ride, and we were on our way into a sunny, if cool, fall morning. We got a nice glimpse of the fall colors on the ride, which was on a decently-graded gravel road. Shortly after we made the turn down towards Beaverhouse, we had two ruffed grouse nearly get smacked by our truck. Amazing how those birds just do not flush until the last possible second. Our driver was a young guy who had just finished up at University of Toronto, and was heading out to Alberta in a few weeks to work in the oil fields. He was nice enough to help us down the “portage” with some of our gear, lightening our load. It’s a nice gravel trail with some wood bridges, mostly downhill gradually to the landing, an inlet into BH. At the landing, we saw two guys pulling in as we were leaving. Some clouds had blown in, and the winds promised to by N/NW at 10-15 all day long with intermittent rain. Our paddles were in the water by 10:15am, so not a bad start to the day time-wise.


The wind helped push us out of Beaverhouse fairly quickly, and we were at the portage to Quetico in under an hour. With the later trip time this year, it had been 15 months since I had paddled a fully-loaded canoe, and I made mental notes to readjust some gear to help the trim at the portage. It always takes me a good few hours of paddling with my partner and boat to get into the swing of things. The portage is short and fairly level, with a bit of mud. Two boats paddled up the small riffle to get a bit of shorter portage, but Greg and I took out 50 meters earlier to avoid that. Water levels looked a bit low, and there were some emergent rocks visible there.

We were pretty socked in with clouds as we paddled the Quetico River into Quetico Lake.


We had several tripping options, and the plan was to make a “game-time decision” based on the wind: either camp on Q and fish there in the Eden Island area, or press on east. With the N/NW wind, we figured fishing would be a bit off anyway, so we decided to shoot east using a bit of the wind to help us sail though the squalls in our three boat flotilla using Brett’s canoe sail.


Winds got strong at times, and squalls of cold rain hit us intermittently. We had lunch (venison sausage and cheese on pita’s) about mid-way eastward on Q lake at 2:30pm or so, and kept pressing on to Jean. We saw a boat with the same two guys from the BH landing after lunch moving up on us, and we paddled just ahead of them the rest of the way out of Quetico, over the portage to Conk, and through Conk Lake. As we made the portage into Jean, we didn’t see them again, meaning they must have stopped to camp in Conk or headed off in another direction.

We were beat by the time that we hit Jean after dealing with the cold and rain all day, so were glad to see the peninsula campsite that opens into the main lake (PCD #35M) unoccupied. The fire ring was out closer to the point very exposed to the north wind, so we moved it into camp a bit for cooking. With the shorter days of late September, we realized the reduction in daylight and were soon cooking our pizza’s in the dark. We bring in fresh meat for the first two nights, but the cold temps meant everything was frozen solid still, and the meat would last two more days easily.

We enjoyed a caprese salad and a nice box of chianti with our pizza’s, and hit the hay exhausted. It was getting quite cold (my thermometer said low 20’s) and the wind started to lay down a bit.