Prologue and Initial Preparation

After completing my first solo in the Boundary Waters in 2023, I was eager to again spend a week in this wilderness, my favorite place in the world, in 2024. Last year’s experience of traveling the Louse River deep in the heart of the BWCA was sublime, and I knew that I wanted another similar experience for my next trip. Since the Louse trip had gone well overall, I knew that my only limit was the time I had available for this trip. From the beginning, only one river was seriously considered: The Frost River.

Whenever rivers in the Boundary Waters and Quetico are discussed, the Frost River is always a part of that discussion. This river is thought of by many paddlers as the most iconic route in the park, due to its challenge, remoteness, and beauty. It is notorious for challenging paddlers with a non-stop barrage of short portages around a multitude of beaver dams, the number of which varies greatly depending on the time of year and the prevailing water levels. For this reason, most choose to run the Frost River early in the paddling season, when water levels are at or near their highest of the year. This coincided perfectly with the May timeframe slated for my trip.

I had several personal reasons for choosing the Frost River, too. Ordinary, everyday family life could only be described as beautifully frantic, and I didn’t expect the pace to let up for many years. As an example, in January, I celebrated my 40th birthday by spending the day watching my three oldest children play in nine different basketball games. While I continued my daily workout routine of long sessions on the rowing machine at home and long treadmill runs while at work, the increasingly full social calendar meant that it took a very purposeful effort on my part to make time for maintaining my health. My oldest daughter Mary would be graduating eighth grade in the spring of 2025, and that meant I would need to choose a different week for my canoe trip next year. Through the immersive experiences of planning for and experiencing Boundary Waters trips the past two years, I had learned that this wilderness sanctuary was also a sanctuary for my soul. When I was in the Boundary Waters, I felt unencumbered, free to “step back from the canvas” of increasingly frantic daily life and just drink in the love of God. While I loved traveling solo, I also felt a deep longing to share this soul-cleansing sanctuary with my family, namely my growing sons. Next year would likely be my first trip with my oldest son Andrew, who would be 12 next spring.

All of these factors led me to approach this specific solo trip with the understanding that this could very well be my last solo trip for several years, as well as my last May trip for a while. May was a perfect time to travel the Frost River, and I was confident that I’d be able to handle the challenges of this route at this stage in my life. And so it was. 2024 was to be the year of the Frost River.

I prefer to enter the wilderness early in the morning on Sunday and exit early on Saturday, and began perusing the maps for the trip with this timeframe in mind. The Frost River itself is much shorter than the Louse, so I wanted to find a way to extend this loop slightly to make the best use of my time. Last year, I similarly extended my Louse River solo to visit Fisher Lake. While I loved camping on Fisher, my route last year was overly ambitious, resulting in fatigue and not enough time in camp to relax and fish as much as I had wanted. This year, I was determined to catch a fish, namely a northern pike or two, because I wanted to be able to experience the thrill of catching pike with my sons when they join me in the coming years. Also, purposefully making time to try to catch fish, even if unsuccessful, would force me to slow down and relax a bit more than last year. After a few months of pondering the maps, I finally settled on a route entering at Missing Link, with planned camps on Frost, Bologna, Little Saganaga, Spice, and Grandpa lakes, exiting at Seagull. After a quick call to Tuscarora to rent the canoe and request they book my permit in January, there was nothing left to do but pack!

Last year was my first year of preparing my own dehydrated meals, and I underestimated how much food I needed. This year, I was determined not to make the same mistake again, and increased each meal portion around 30%. This was also more motivation to try to find a way to catch a fish or two to eat! I spent three nights in February re-learning how to set up and sleep in my hammock in the yard when the weather approximated the overnight temps I’d be facing the Boundary Waters. The packing process itself was running behind schedule in the months leading up to the trip, but thankfully I was able to carve out a day or two in April to organize. I worked a lot in the last few days before the trip, but that allowed me a day or two after I returned to re-calibrate.

Ooh, crazy's what they think about me
Ain't gonna stop 'cause they tell me so
Fitz and the Tantrums “The Walker”
It’s always surprising to me how much planning goes into simply making such a long drive on either end of this trip. The drive home is simple: Exit the BWCA as early as possible in the day and power through the whole way home. Driving up is more difficult. Due to generally more favorable winds, I vastly prefer to be on the water paddling just before sunrise when in the park. In order to do so, I need to arrive at the outfitter during business hours the day before (Saturday) to check out the canoe and pick up my permit, then complete “final final” packing the night before entry at the bunkhouse. Entering at sunrise on Sunday necessitates attending Mass on Saturday evening in Grand Marais at 5 pm. All of these factors combine to make it most sensible to arrive on Friday, sleep (this year I camped at Trail’s End campground for a night), then do a short day trip on Saturday before heading to Mass, then returning to the outfitter to finish packing and sleep. In order to arrive on Friday with plenty of time to set up camp and to allow time for unforeseen stops or a roadside nap, I needed to drive through the night. This is a decidedly crazy thing to do. But as I told a friend or two leading up to the trip, I may spend the entirety of the year coloring inside the lines and conforming, but this is “Heath gone wild.” A singular week of the year that operates outside of all standard convention.
Gear changes for this year:

-No leeches. In spite of significant effortslast year, I just couldn’t keep them alive long enough to be worth the effort.

-Astral Rassler water shoes for wet foot portaging. Even though it was May, I found that I always ended up with water coming in over my Muck boots anyway.

-New food additions are whey protein powder plus more dry milk for protein shakes, and dehydrated homemade tomato soup for chilly, rainy days. -It seems each trip in the past had at least one chilly, wet, “tough” day. In spite of the extra weight and bulk, I brought along my 10x14” CCS tundra tarp. To pack or not pack the tarp was hands down the most angst-ridden decision I faced pre-trip. I threw it in the pack but planned to further evaluate this the night before my entry date when I had a more reliable weather forecast to go off of.

-I brought a different brand of weather radio (Midland from Menard’s) this year after getting zero reception anywhere in the park with my CCrane pocket radio last year.

-The canoe I rented was a NorthStar Northwind Solo. Last year, my Wenonah Wilderness from Sawbill had a permanently installed portage yoke, but this one had a clamp on yoke.

-I had shortened my bent shaft carbon fiber paddle 3” (to a new length of 52”) over the off season and looked forward to trying it out!

Stats—>Pack weight without food: 53 pounds|Final pack weight with food: 70 pounds| Meters rowed since last trip: 2,286,829|