I heard of the Kruger Waddell Challenge in 2020. It was during the week of the challenge that year that I noticed chatter on the BWCA.com forums about the adventure. I was intrigued and read reports from Muddyfeet, Kelso and Matt, BeaV and Kendra, Scott Baste, and Mike Ward about the challenge. I began efforts to plan and train for my own attempt at the challenge right away. I bought a used Wenonah Advantage off of craigslist in April of 2021. I began taking BWCA trips to parts of the route that spring with my son Peter, and my dad. I signed up for the challenge in 2021 and I trained a bit, but I didn’t train a lot. So, when the challenge time rolled around, I wasn’t very ready. Lucky for me, there were forest fires in the BWCA and Quetico that year and the week before the challenge, the forest service closed the entire BWCA to everyone, and the challenge was canceled. I wasn’t too upset about that because I wasn’t in very good shape to do it anyway.

In 2022 I was not ready and wasn’t even trying to train for it.

Same story in 2023.

But after the 2023 challenge, I enjoyed reading the tales of previous challengers so much, I decided that I needed to try it. So I did go on my first solo paddle/camping trip in October 2023. After a bunch of rain, the Cloquet river was running very high, and I took a 3 day trip with the goal of paddling as many miles as I could per day. I was pretty good about pushing the pace all day on the 3 days and made it 67 miles in my big Old Town Discovery and gained a lot of confidence in all day paddling/portaging.

Spring 2024 I hit the ground running by paddling as much as I could. I did some neat river sections on the St Croix, Nemadji, the Rum, the Moose Horn, Root, and Namekagon and the Root. Mostly with my dad and son, Peter, and also lots of my other family members. I also took a couple of Bwca trips with family. For solo training, I mostly did a bunch of workouts on the St Louis River and Lake Superior in Duluth/Superior near my house to get miles in, often in the mornings before work. On August 30th I met the other Challenge Paddlers in Ely, MN and we discussed our plans with each other. I went to International Falls that evening after dinner, and prepared for my voyage.

My wife and son, Peter, sent me off into the darkness on the morning of Aug 31st at Sha Sha Resort in International Falls. I paddled with a friendly tailwind across the upper basin of Rainy Lake. Near the end of the first basin, I got a little unsure of which bay to travel down to find the Brule narrows to the second basin. I saw red and green channel marker buoys going down a bay, and thought maybe that was the right way to go. But it seemed too soon. I had so much open water left ahead of me before I thought I would need to look for the Brule narrows. So, I pulled over and used my compass to figure out where I thought I was on the map and nervously continued east on the basin. Then I saw a motorboat heading east and he cut into a narrow up ahead. I figured that must be the right way to go, and it was. At this point, I was still enjoying a nice tailwind, but now, suddenly there were large rolling waves coming from the northwest. It was weird that there were no rollers before I stopped, and then instantly there were large rollers. Whatever, they weren’t breaking, and weren’t difficult to handle, so I continued on.

I passed through the Brule narrows and ventured out into the large lower basin of Rainy, and here I found large breaking waves for the first time. They were coming from due west, and there was enough fetch to make them menacing. I hadn’t paddled much in large waves during my practicing, and the one time I did, I capsized. So, I was pretty leery of exposing myself to a few miles of open water when it was rough. I cut straight south from the narrows, which afforded me the comfort of paddling broadside or turning upwind when I saw a large set bearing down on me. I found that going directly parallel to the large waves was much more stable than going with them. I prayed a Hail Mary whenever things got dicey. (There were many Hail Mary’s in this stretch). I found that traveling in the same direction as the waves, I tended to get perched up high over the center of the wave with little water under the ends of the boat, then the wind could cause you to spin easily, and wildly. Even worse, when the ends of the canoe get lifted by waves, and the center has little water beneath it, it gets very tippy instantly. And I was not used to that. So, I found that paddling broadside to waves, even though not entirely the direction I wanted to travel, did get me closer to the lee shore and out of the wild stuff eventually. It also meant adding some distance to my route, which was not ideal, but better than swimming across a large basin if I dumped. I followed the south shore of the second, large Rainy Lake basin and took a few breaks along the way to the narrows where I would find Kettle Falls.

As I entered the narrow, a huge sturgeon porpoised out of the water. It must have been a 6 footer. I have seen dozens of sturgeon jumping and porpoising on the St Louis River, where I did my training, and it reminded me of home. My son, Peter, and I fish for sturgeon at home, and both of us were lucky enough to land these beasts this year. They are probably my favorite fish to catch on rod and reel.

I went through the Kettle Falls boat washing station (an effort to keep zebra mussels out of the higher lakes of Namakan and Kabetogama). It took about 15 minutes, but I didn’t mind since I needed a good, long lunch break. As I set off into Namakan, it was directly into a very stiff headwind. Really stiff. And progress was slow, but I forged on. As I rounded a few points and began traveling south and south east, the waves were pretty wild. More Hail Mary’s. I got down to larger stretches of Namakan and began worrying about getting degraded, or windbound. I took a long break on the Canadian side and watched the whitecaps build. I saw a long point in front of me and figured that I could make a small portage across it to get into some lee water for a bit. Unfortunately the wind had other plans, and made thighs so rowdy, I couldn’t land. In this stretch it felt like riding a mechanical bull while trying to paddle. The quartering wind kept grabbing the tail of my canoe and trying to blow me sideways. It was a real struggle to maintain heading in any direction except the rocky shoreline. I was not able to land and portage, so I surfed my way around that point. At this time, the wind was shifting dramatically from a westerly direction, to a northerly direction. The waves became criss-crossed and rolled from two 90 degree directions at once. Big Time Hail Mary’s in this stretch. I also thought a lot about Father Baraga who got blown across Lake Superior in a birch bark canoe in 1846. As I continued on, I tried to go between a couple islands, but the strong winds blew me farther east than I had planned. I wound up getting blown through a different channel than I wanted, but it wasn’t out of the way too far, so I just went with it. After a wild ride, I wound up down at a small island at the bottom of Blackstone Island. The large basin crossing ahead of me was too rowdy to consider crossing. I wasn’t worried about dying out there from a long swim because the water was warm, but I did not want to get swamped and have to make a 1 mile or longer swim, losing precious time and energy. It was a near hopeless situation, and I got out on the island and began looking for a suitable place to hang out for the rest of the afternoon, or even camp if the wind persisted all evening. After resting on the island for about 20 minutes, I noticed the whitecaps were diminishing a little. The wind had shifted again and I was given an opportunity to shoot the widest crossing I had left for that Lake. I got in and immediately bared down against the mechanical bull type situation and quickly made it to the south shore. Then I rode the wind down to Grassy Bay, where I finally got reprieve from the large, unorganized waves. I found the Grassy Portage and got to work carrying my gear across. The portage was very wet, and I sank ankle deep into the mud many times. After crossing that and boarding the canoe again, I had a stiff tailwind down the long bay into Sand Point Lake. It rained on me in this section, and I didn’t even bother with my rain coat. After a break on Sand Point Lake, I noticed a very menacingly looking wall cloud approaching. I knew it would have strong winds, and possibly lightning, so I headed to a point on the Canadian side with cabins, to get off the water while it hit. It certainly had gusty winds and rain, but there was no lightning. So, after 30 minutes, I set out again and headed into Little Vermilion Lake, At this point, I was caught by the 3 person Canoe of BeaV, Kendra, And PRDave. I had a 4 hour head start on them, and they caught me by taking fewer breaks and more direct lines across the large basins. It was nice to see familiar faces and even though I was running out of energy, I paddled hard to stay with them for about 30 minutes. I told the them I was going to make it to Loon Lake before stopping, and they decided to do the same. We passed a camp with a son in law of one of the challengers, and another campsite that was flashing their light at us in the darkness to say hello or invite us to land. We continued on, and night fell. I didn’t stop at this point to get out my lights, because I was interested in keeping with my company. But after a bit, I couldn’t keep up and then had to navigate the wild rice patches of the Loon River on my own in the dark. At first it was hard, but once I was able to find the established channel, it was not hard to stay in it and continue. I had to get some lights soon though and began looking for a spot to get out and get them. But after 10pm, when I found a place to get out, I fell in the mud and water up to my waist. I was demoralized and then decided to just camp where I was. It was fine, and not a bad tent spot. 61 miles completed for the day.

After a poor night of sleep, I got up at 4:20 and to my dismay it took me 50 minutes to break camp. I don’t know why it took me so long, but that’s what it took. At 5:10am I got on the water and without lights or a map (why would you need a map on a simple river section??) I promptly paddled up a tributary creek in the wrong direction. I continued up this increasingly narrow creek for way too long before I finally dug a map out of my pack and realized I had to turn around. I made it back to the correct channel at 6am and headed in the right direction up the Loon River. I crossed the mechanical portage and set off into Loon Lake with a few motorboats approaching. These shuttle motorboats wasted no time in going where they are going. It didn’t cause any problems for me, but they zoomed right by me and didn’t slow down a bit. That was fine, no problem, I was just surprised at how they didn’t even seem to care that I was out there. Anyways, I was looking hard at the wind, which was already beginning to build from the Northwest. On the simple crossing of Loon, I was being blown around enough to judge that I didn’t want to travel north for 4 miles into that headwind, and then deal with the large, exposed basins on the east end of Lac Lacroix. In my preparations I had scoped out a bypass route to the south that crossed much smaller lakes in a due easterly direction. There were many long portages in between, but with a savings of 8 miles total, I figured it would be worth the effort to stay off of LaCroix. Crossing Oyster and Agnes I had to deal with high winds and large waves. These lakes are a fraction of the size of LaCroix, so I feared I might have become wind bound if I took the LaCroix route. Plus, I thought that portaging would be my strongest suit, so a few 1 mile portages seemed like cake to me. It actually went pretty well, but looking at the overall time to cross these lakes and portages, 8.5 hours, it might not have been a time saver. Oh well, at least I wasn’t degraded on Lac LaCroix. However, this route did take its toll on me, and I got very tired, and pessimistic about my goals and was feeling down. I took an hour break at Curtain Falls, and did not want to embark on Crooked Lake, as it had large whitecaps running down the first basin.

I pushed off anyway, and hugged the southwestern shores of upper Crooked until I got to a set of islands I had to get around. I thought I would have to go south behind them to avoid the large waves, but the waves seemed to be letting up a little. It was after 5pm now, and I hoped that would be the case. Luckily I was able to gingerly cross to the East and get under the Canadian points and begin a nice long downwind section. I crossed all the middle Crooked Lake bays here with a stiff but manageable tailwind. Things were finally starting to turn around for me, and instead of looking for bailout spots, and campsites, I was expanding my view of how far I could make it that evening. I decided for some reason that Table Rock campsite was a good goal, and even though I was tired and was doing a lot of slow paddling, I figured that slow paddling is better than sitting on shore. After passing the spot where, in 2020, my dad caught a huge 40” pike, I made it to Table Rock Campsite. Just as it was getting dark, nobody was there, and I decided to pull off and check out the site. I think most of the campsites on the Voyageurs highway are historic and saw countless Indigenous and Voyageur travelers, but I know Table Rock was a monumental site. I haven’t ever stayed there, and so I decided to add my name to history by camping there. 43 miles completed for the day.

Unfortunately, I did not sleep well here. I was constantly awake and tossing and turning. My alarm was set for 4:20, and after opening my eyes again, at 3:05, I decided to just get up and leave. Except for the previous night where I paddled until 10pm, I had never paddled at night. So, getting on the water at 3:50am was quite the experience. I could see the clear sky, and the reflection of the sky on the water, but there was no moon, and I ran into shore or rocks multiple times on my journey towards Basswood falls. I focused on keeping the Orion constellation to my left, and continued on. This was the first time in my life that I navigated by the stars. It was awesome, but slow. I did find the pictograph area on Crooked Lake/Basswood River, so for a bit, I knew where exactly where I was. I was only paddling at half speed in the darkness, because I didn’t want to capsize when I hit rocks, and I DID hit rocks a few times, so it was slow going. Then, when I found Lower Basswood Falls, I couldn’t find the portage. I eventually found it to the left of the falls, further left than I thought it would be and crossed it with my headlamp on. At this point, the sky began to lighten up a bit and I was able to find the next portages without too much difficulty. I crossed the 1 mile Horse Portage in daylight, and was surprised at how far a mile really is when carrying all your gear plus a canoe. As I was getting near the end, I hit an overhanging tree with the canoe and it knocked it off my shoulders. I had to abruptly set the canoe down in disgust and could then see the end of the portage 100 yards ahead. Dang, almost made it the whole way. Oh well. I took a long break at the end of the portage and then set off onto a glassy Basswood Lake., I was really excited to be given the opportunity to cross Basswood in calm conditions as I feared, with its large size, that Basswood would be ugly. In the middle part of Basswood you need to do a 3 mile southern stretch and at that point I endured a strong headwind. It was fine, though and I turned to the east again and enjoyed a nice tailwind across the rest of Basswood. I stopped for a 1 hour long lunch break at a point on the US side and dried out my gear from the previous night's dewey camp. The sun was now beating down on me and I worried about getting sun burned. I put on a long sleeve shirt and decided that I would try to get some sunscreen at the Canadian Customs Station at Prairie Portage. But when I arrived there, I decided to just forget about it and continue. It was fine.

I made the puddle jumps from there into Knife Lake and began a big downwind cruise along one of the longest stretches of the trip. I had to get out twice for breaks, but I enjoyed Knife Lake. There is a 3 or 4 mile section at the end that I still had a big tailwind for, but I was ready for a break, so I took a long break at the portage into Ottertrack. I found out that the lake used to be called Cypress because of all the Cedar Trees, and I wish it was still called that. The surrounding topography and foliage was so different from everywhere else along the way, I liked the old fashioned name for this lake. I was very tired in this section, however, and experimented with different leg positions to keep paddling and making any kind of progress. I made it to the famous Monument Portage and crossed it without problem, but set my gear down at the end to take a break and prepare for nightfall. I noticed a large muddy entrance to a long wooden plank dock at the end, and when I donned my gear to cross the mud hole, I instantly sunk up to my knee in soft mud. I had to laugh as I got out of it and onto the boardwalk. That was the deepest I have ever sunk on a portage.

A couple portages later I was finally on Big Sagana Lake. I wanted to cross it before dark, but darkness was already falling as I got onto it. I made it to American Point and decided not to cross the 2 mile open water section in the dark. I made camp and was able to make a phone call from there to my wife, and another call to my parents. I was happy to be this far in 3 days and enjoyed the time in camp eating and setting up my gear for a quick departure in the morning. 52 miles for the day.

I slept amazingly well. I woke up at 6:39 am. Far beyond my alarm of 4:10 am. I slept right through the alarm! I was upset about that, but I felt amazing. I think that was the best night of sleep I have ever had. I felt like a million bucks. I got out of camp and on the water in 20 minutes and decided that I would just continue through the next night until I was finished. I really felt great.

Big Sag had a moderate south wind, so I crossed it and steered a little north of the islands to use them to block the medium sized waves. I quickly made it to Connor’s Island and passed the campsite where my son and I fried up a nice northern pike shore lunch a few weeks prior. As I approached Sag Falls, I turned southward and began the Granite River section where I battled stiff headwinds on every south facing stretch.

I read on a previous person’s trip report that they made the Granite River section in 5 hours, so beating that became my goal. I don’t know where they started and ended theirs, but I made it from Sag falls to the narrows of Magnetic/Gunflint Lakes in 4:48. I was happy with that, and happy that the southerly wind was now coming from a southwesterly direction. Instead of crossing to the southern lee shore of Gunflint, as I thought would be necessary, I was able to stick to the northern shore of the lake. It meant less distance, and for the first couple miles I had a great push from the wind. As I got to the third mile though, the waves started getting rowdy. A few Hail Mary’s got me through the toughest parts, and after a long struggle, I landed on the beach at the end of the lake. I was pretty wiped out at this point, and as I tried to get out my food and rest, I got bombarded with questions from a large family who was enjoying the beach. There must have been 18 people there, from kids to grandparents, and they all wanted to know everything about my trip. I was happy to share stories, but I was getting distracted and needed to focus on my food and hydration. I took a very long rest and finally shoved off, with my new goal of getting over the Long Portage from Rose to Rove before dark. At this point, I still planned on paddling all night, so I was taking extra care to hydrate and feed as much as possible. I thought I had only brought a tiny, way zoomed out map, for the next several lakes. I tried hard to figure out where portages should be, and without a detailed map, I was kinda struggling to find them. I didn’t have any big problems, but each long stretch would be met with doubt about exactly where I should be looking for the next portage. On one of my stops around North Lake, I found a really good, detailed map of this section in my map bag. I did bring a good map afterall! I was happy to have better route finding after this.

I had mostly rear quartering winds now, and except for a stiff headwind across North Lake, the wind was directly helping me, or at least somewhat helping me. I crossed the height of land portage without any fanfare or baptism ceremony. I don’t remember the Voyageur’s pledge while making a first crossing of it, except the part about not kissing another voyageur’s wife, so I did say that sentence out loud while crossing. “I will not kiss any other voyageur’s wife!” Ha, good fun, I wish I had a shot of rum to drink and a wet cedar branch to get sprinkled with, but alas, I had to focus on crossing the Long Portage without having to use valuable headlamp batteries. South Lake was large and long. Again I had a rear quartering wind, which pushed me along, but also takes energy to keep the wind from spinning me broadside. The wind was always trying to grab the tail of my canoe and spin me broadside to the wind. It’s common for these situations, and I had a LOT of these situations. Oh well, I did still get pushed by it somewhat, so that was better than a headwind. Once onto Rose Lake, I was surprised at how far it was to the portage. I was getting blown sideways a lot on this lake, and finally had to just get to the south eastern shore to get myself under control. The wind was still strong, and care had to be taken among the decent sized waves. The sun went down as I crossed this lake, and I landed at dusk and quickly prepared for the two mile Long Portage and took off in the twilight. I made it about a mile before I needed a break and had to check a spot I passed shortly before to make sure I didn’t miss the turn off to the large portage path onto the Border Route Trail. I donned my headlamp and continued another quarter mile until I found the proper turn. I needed one more rest before I finished the portage, but while I was carrying, I thought I heard voices behind me and music off in the woods. I’m sure they were both figures of my imagination, but I attributed it to there being the possibility of hikers camping nearby with music playing in their camps. (although probably not the case…)