Day 2: Entry Day!
Sunday, May 19th, 2024
The alarm sounds all too soon, and I pack up in the darkness by the light of my headlamp. There’s sufficient light to paddle out at 4:45, but I am not paddling until the lazy hour of 5:05. The calls of a Swainson’s Thrush and a Winter Wren see me off at the launch, and back across Round I go to the Missing Link portage, using the 50” spare paddle from Tuscarora. While the weight increase is noticeable, this just feels more comfortable to me. As I land, I hear a Pileated Woodpecker, one of my favorite birds, and this lifts my spirits. Moment of truth. Would the small changes I made yesterday to pack and canoe loading result in less portaging pain? Also, while obvious, it took me until this landing to realize I only needed to slide the portage yoke back to the seat for portaging, and could leave my thwart bag attached to the yoke when I did so, saving more precious time and fiddling.

I put the pack on, and immediately feel energetic enough to charge the initial climb out of Round! The surge doesn’t last long, but wonder of wonders, I know at that point that I am truly ready for a big travel day. It’s amazing what cooler weather, a better attitude, sleep, better load distribution, and a working belt on one’s pants can do. Yesterday, I noticed the fiddleheads growing alongside the trail when I was preoccupied with heat, bugs, and faulty pants. But today, I see them everywhere.

At the Missing Link landing, I hear my favorite new bird song of the day, a Veery. This is the first of many I would hear on this trip, but it remains a favorite.

After an uneventful paddle across Missing Link, I reach the 133 rod portage to Snipe, where I’m greeted by the “toy trumpet” call of a Red Breasted Nuthatch. The landing is a small “notch” on Missing Link. This portage has plenty of up and down in it, but mostly good footing. It’s a steep descent on the Snipe end to a great landing. Thanks to better footing, I make even better time on this portage, getting the pack across in 12 minutes. For double portaging, my rule of thumb is rods/5=minutes to get all the gear across. Though this time is frequently slowed by recording bird songs in the Merlin app, snapping photos of cool plants, and taking portage notes! There were many stiff club mosses on this portage, and a large swamp filled with the cheerful song of Spring Peeper frogs in the middle. Other notable bird songs heard here were: Nashville Warbler, Black/White Warbler, Northern Flicker, and Red-Eyed Vireo.

I’m sane, but I’m overwhelmed
I’m lost, but I’m hopeful, baby
Alanis Morrisette, “One Hand in My Pocket”
After about 15 minutes of paddling on Snipe, I realize I am disoriented. I paddled right by the “slot canyon narrows” that lead to the east toward the Cross Bay portage, and then it took me a while from there to locate the correct direction to turn. It ends up taking a good 20 minutes to orient myself, which is always a little unnerving, but thankfully I’ve had this happen a time or two so I’m getting used to it.

I reach the landing at 8:00. The landing for the Cross Bay portage is just before the beaver dam at the east end of the lake. There’s a steep rocky section in the middle, but otherwise this one is a lovely walk along some falls.

At the Cross Bay end, I eat an Rx bar and strip down to my t-shirt as the morning sun shines directly on me. This short river section at the west end of Cross Bay is a nice paddle, albeit quite buggy. So far the bug presence is the biggest difference I’ve noticed when comparing this trip to those of prior years. But all in all, it’s not too bad, provided I put my head net on.

I almost miss the portage to Rib. The landing is to the left (northeast) of the rapids a good bit, and has a small notch landing. When you start hearing the rapids, paddle close to shore and look for the notch! While on this portage, I notice many plants that look like tiny bright orange goblets peeking through the soil. Does anyone know what these are? The portage itself isn’t too noteworthy, aside from a long climb at the midpoint with some mud. While walking back for the canoe, I hear and feel the first ominous wind gust rushing through the trees off of Cross Bay. Already?! My portage notes said the Rib side had a terrible landing, and those complaints are valid. There’s plenty of space on the shoreline here, but a minefield of boulders in the shallow water means there’s nary a spot to put the canoe and loading packs is a sketchy endeavor to avoid a sprained ankle. I am thankful that I committed to wet footing and wearing Astrals this year.

At 9:05, I’m paddling on Rib. Somehow the lid came open on one of my Nalgene bottles, so I pause a moment in the calm north bay to pump some water. Though travel hasn’t been too difficult this morning, I am quite hungry and looking for a suitable spot to take a short break and eat some sweet potato porridge for breakfast. My hopes are set on the lone campsite on Rib, but when I come upon it, it is occupied, so I paddle on.

As soon as I round the point south of the campsite, the gusts I heard on the portage hit hard and fast. Whitecaps are rolling across Rib’s wide open southern bay from the west. Since I didn’t take any time to put extra weight up front before leaving the landing, I am quickly pushed into a weedy hummock in spite of my best efforts. Deep breaths. I need to find weight in this swamp to put in the canoe to continue down the lake to the portage, especially since the Rib campsite is taken. By God’s grace, right in front of me, are three hefty beaver chews. I don’t even have to get out of the canoe to retrieve them, and they are easily slid up to the very front of the canoe.

With massively improved control, I continue to make steady progress following the swamp hummocks on southeast side of Rib. There’s one small creek inlet I pass, but the second one is what leads to the portage. Once I reach it, I quickly turn into it with the full force of the wind and its accompanying whitecaps right on my stern. After about five hard paddle strokes, I surf right into the portage landing. Wow! That was more than I bargained for!

The portage to Lower George is uneventful with a good landing on the Lower George end. Since it’s a short portage and they worked so well on Rib, I bring two of the beaver logs with me.

The portage to Karl is a lovely forest walk with lots of birch trees, resulting in finding some prized loose birch bark laying on the forest floor. Some of these will become thank you notes and notes of encouragement for runners on my daughter’s junior high track/cross country teams in the coming year.

The portage from Karl to Long Island is incorrectly marked as starting in the campsite on Karl, when in reality the portage is just south of the campsite. I briefly consider staying here because I know the wind will be howling on Long Island and the site looks pretty good. But alas, I press on. This portage commences with a steep climb but is otherwise another short and pretty forest walk. I carried my two logs and a pretty big rock from the Karl landing, in anticipation of whitecaps on Long Island. I figured if I saw someone on the portage I would joke that I am a wide receiver on a football team and coach keeps telling me I need to get better at “holding on to the rock.”

From the portage landing, the sight of Long Island Lake stretched out to the west before me in an angry froth of whitecaps is a frightening one. I take a few more deep breaths and have a seat on a log to finally eat my breakfast, rest, and contemplate my options for a few moments.

This all has to be right. No getting lost when the waves are like this! I review my maps and see that there’s a site less than 100 yards away down the shore, and from what I can see, it looks like a nice spot. This is my first “out” in case the conditions are too rough for me to handle. From there, it’s a long open slog into the wind before reaching another place to stop, but I plan to follow the shoreline for protection and know that the waves should gradually subside as I reach the west end of the lake.

After a few more deep breaths, one more look at the map, and a short prayer, I shove off and begin making slow, steady progress to the southwest along the shoreline. I pass the first campsite easily enough and decide to press on. This is working! The toughest part is knowing when to turn south toward the start of the Long Island River. Once I do so, I spy a canoe ahead of me make a turn to the west and disappear, which confuses me, until I realize they must be headed down the Long Island River as well. Again, this feels like a gift from the heavens, as I’m not sure I would have seen the place to turn for the start of the river without that canoe showing me the way.

Now that I’m on the river, I’m quite committed to getting to Frost Lake today. That would be good news if it weren’t for all this wind, as Frost is known to kick up plenty of waves on a day such as this. While I wonder if I made the right call, all I can do for now is paddle on.

I portage around a beaver dam on the Long Island River and pull through a second.

Though I’m still waffling over my decision to head to Frost, I receive some more reassurance from above as the first Bald Eagle of the trip flies directly overhead twice while on this river section. Let’s do this!

For whatever reason, the Long Island River to Gordon portage isn’t on the map and that confuses me into thinking I was on the portage to Unload. I realize this when the portage is much shorter than expected. As I am getting situated on Gordon, the group of three canoes I’ve been trailing goes out of sight on the south end of the lake, which confuses me for a bit, until I realize they are likely headed to Cherokee. The huge overhanging cliff on the north shore of Gordon is the best rock feature on a lake I’ve even seen in the Boundary Waters and is impossible to fully describe here. Shortly thereafter I arrive at the portage landing to Unload Lake.

The forest on this portage has a prehistoric, unkempt, “Louse River” feel to it. It’s muddy, steep, and dotted with fiddleheads for the first half, and then it gets easier. The trees are amazing on this walk, with gigantic white pines at the halfway point, and enormous cedars in a grove very close to the landing on Unload.

At 1:05, I’m making my second pass across the portage with the canoe, and am feeling very good about how the day has gone. I know that the wind will make things difficult for me on Frost, but I’m getting here at the time of day I hoped for.

But before Frost, I have to deal with the beaver dam out of Unload. There’s probably a better way to handle this, and I hoped to pull over at first, but the water was very deep and I sank up to my knee in muck before portaging around the dam. This event, along with seeing a uniformly spaced, terrifying parade of whitecaps awaiting me on Frost, brings me right back down to a tired and frazzled state. I take my time gulping some water and locate a large rock or two for the front of the canoe here, including one gigantic perfectly triangular rock.

The paddle across Frost features the largest waves of the day: Constant two foot rollers. Fortunately I’m paddling into the wind which makes progress slow but control easy, and that means the waves should shrink as I slowly plod across the lake. There are five campsites here. Sites 1 and 2 are taken. The third one, which features a giant beach in the northwest corner of the lake, is also taken, and I can see a canoe on shore at the fourth. Just one more left, the site that is closest to the portage to the Frost River. This is my first choice campsite due to the location, but I hadn’t planned on this much suspense as to whether or not it would be open. If it’s taken, I’m in a pickle, because I really don’t want to paddle back across Frost in these waves. But it’s also a fair distance to wearily paddle onward to Bologna Lake’s single campsite, knowing that if it’s not open, I’ll be paddling down the Frost River in the dark to the next site on Afton. I am positively over the moon when I round the corner at 2:25 and see that this last site on Frost is open!

All the portages and the wind mean I’m worn out and famished, but I realize that I forgot to soak the noodles for my spaghetti in the thermos, so I pour those in and head out for some water for the filter and some firewood. While I love a good cedar fire, today I just find jack pine, but it should work just fine. On the way back to my site, another group of two canoes pull up to the site, also hopeful that they had found the last spot to camp on Frost today. I tell them they are welcome to share with me since the lake is full and I’m just a solo guy that will be leaving at first light, but they decline. Not sure what they ended up doing because they hung around fishing for a few hours after that.

Back at the site, once the firewood is fully processed, I begin unpacking and settling in. There’s plenty of open space here, but it’s oddly difficult for me to find decent hammock trees around due to lots of brushy spruce trees, as well as a very large jack pine that is down in camp. Eventually I figure out a spot that will work well enough, which means I finally feel like I can relax a little and finally eat my lunch along with an instant cherry limeade and a protein powder/dry milk shake. The fire grate has a nice view of the lake and there’s plenty of space in the kitchen area. There’s also a large tree right near the fire grate that has a raucous family of ravens living in it, which lends the site some additional character. When one of the raven parents returns with food, they get very loud, but this is a most joyful wilderness noise. While I’m finishing lunch, the wind suddenly dies down, and I see a canoe quickly head for the area south of the island for some fishing. After my dishes are cleaned up and they’ve vacated the area, I decide to try the same, since this will be my best chance at catching a Lake Trout on this trip. The wind stays calm and I get a good 60 minutes of unproductive fishing in, but considering how this lake looked just one hour prior, I’m very happy that I even got to try.

I want to run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls that hold me inside
I wanna reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name
U2 “Where the Streets Have No Name”
Back at camp I leisurely amble through the evening rituals of supper (unstuffed peppers with banana nut bread pudding), cleaning up, listening to the weather radio, and journaling by the fire. The weather should be ok tomorrow, albeit with intermittent rain showers. But things are supposed to turn truly lousy on Tuesday afternoon, and stay that way through the whole of Wednesday, with lingering effects throughout the rest of the week. While I had planned to make tomorrow a shorter travel day, stopping to camp and fish for pike on Bologna, I vastly prefer to get farther along on my planned loop while the weather allows it. Especially if I’m paddling past Bologna before 9 AM, I favor pushing onward toward Little Sag. If I choose to stop on Bologna, then I’ll make a shorter loop through Crooked, Tuscarora, then back out via Snipe and Round. These ideas are nothing more than wild brainstorms at this point, and I’ll just have to see how the river is treating me as I go along tomorrow.

I’m still journaling as the last light fades from the sky, and finally close my notebook at 10:15. A bizarre “pumping” noise occasionally emanates from the campsites to the north of me, and at first I assume that they must have a Bluetooth speaker and are having a little dance party up that way. But after a few minutes, I vaguely remember hearing that this is the very unique call of the American Bittern. As I listen to this incredible bird call, I reflect on today, which in many ways left a lot to be desired. The wind wore me down, the bugs were an annoyance, and I didn’t catch a fish or see a plethora of wildlife. Even so, this was unquestionably a marvelous first day. The difficulties that I faced today required focus, a little bravery, and a little luck. Somewhere out there during the long slog to reach Frost, I let go of the problems and tasks left undone back home, nearly 1000 miles away. I am here. And tomorrow, I will be following that sacred ribbon of life known as the Frost River even deeper into the heart of this wilderness which I hold so dear.

Stats—>Lakes: 12 (11 lakes, 1 river)|Paddle distance: 8.8 miles|Portages: 10 + 3 beaver dams|Portage rods: 661 (2.1 miles)|Travel time: 9 hours, 20 minutes

~Round Lake, Missing Link Lake, Snipe Lake, Cross Bay Lake, Rib Lake, Lower George Lake, Karl Lake, Long Island Lake, Long Island River, Gordon Lake, Unload Lake, Frost Lake