As usual I was the first person to wake up; usually I wake up super early and then end up crawling back under my quilt after a mid-morning pee but not today. Wisconsin Guy had been talking the whole trip about making it a point to see a Sunrise, and a Sunset. We got a glorious sunset on Day 3 and Day 4, so I think he was set on that. I woke his little butt up and my other buddy sleeping with us in my 3 man tent, and we started slowly packing things and getting water boiling to make up the last of the coffee. From the island campsite on Stuart, the sunrise rose over the campsite on the east side south of the portage to Fox, the sky was clear and the air was crisp, and the sunrise was a perfect warm red that lit up the whole sky as it poked over the tree-lined horizon. Wisconsin Guy was happy; we got his perfect Sunrise before the trip was over. We woke up the rest of the guys, dolled-out the coffee, and finished packing.

   The portages out were easy and I don’t think we ran into anyone. We flew through the first part of the trek out, my ankles were killing me, my portage shoes don’t have the greatest ankle support and it seemed like the thought of having a beer and burger at Insula Restaurant in Ely was keeping us going strong. Once we got to the final portage, the portage to the cars, the 1.5 mile “gentle slope down” (to us) was now a 1.5 mile gentle slope up, and it sucks way harder going up than it does going down. Pike Guy and I split the portage, we traded off a few times to share the burden of that long bastard, my ankles were on fire, sweat pouring from my head, I passed it off to him the final 200 yards of the portage, and then it was over. Heaven, a BWCA trip completed and the weather couldn’t have been more perfect. Threw all of our crap in the cars, tied the canoes down to the 2 vehicles, and we were off. Btw, the food at Insula is amazing and you have to get the appetize of the Shrimp Wanton Tacos, they’re to die for. Ordered a tray of them just for me, “we’ve been sharing all week, we’re done sharing!” lol.

Conclusion:

EP 19 Stuart River to Iron Lake is a tough route, it’s not a bad route, and now that I’ve done it I’d happily do it again just to get to Iron Lake. Iron Lake was an amazing fishery that alone was worth the trip, we barely scratched the surface of the fishing potential of that lake, we put in enough time to catch enough fish, had we been picky and fished in the morning (we were all late morning folks), we could have easily doubled if not tripled our total catch. Curtain Falls is beautiful, and is the perfect jewel to top your crown of a trip here, seeing a few folks out there on the portage was kind of cool too, running into folks so far out in the middle of nowhere. The portages are bad, we single portaged which made them much more tolerable but I couldn’t imagine double portaging on this route, it would slow you down too much. Originally the goal was to get to Iron lake in one day, which I think the next time around it’ll be absolutely doable to make that trip in one day, but with everyone being green on this trip it worked out really nice to have a break day on Stuart before we made the push to Iron. Couldn't have asked for better company out there.