Temperance River / Frost River / Kelso River
by Hamstirly
Trip Type:
Paddling Canoe
Entry Date:
06/08/2025
Entry & Exit Point:
Sawbill Lake (EP 38)
Number of Days:
6
Group Size:
7
Trip Introduction:
Discuss Trip:
View Discussion Thread (3 messages)
Part 1 of 7
Day 0 - Travel: Sawbill Campground Campsite #7
Ours is a group of seven new college graduates, fresh off four years of college sports, so we planned big. We wanted to canoe up the Temperance river, hike Eagle Mountain, and canoe down the Frost and Kelso rivers in six days. Technically day zero (our travel day) starts at midnight with us frantically baking and bagging the last of the food for the trip (and a little bit of pre-trip celebratory drinking).
11pm Cub Stop with the canoe on top
We slept through the morning and picked up one of our guys from the airport (who was doing his own trip to Europe before the Boundary Waters) and with his packing ended up leaving the Twin Cities at a much later than intended 5pm. We had dinner at Grandma’s after a quick walmart stop to replace the night one dinner steak we forgot at home. We showed up at 8pm and were warned of a 30 minute wait, which turned out to be only 5 because a huge room was reserved for a group that just didn’t show up. We got to the Sawbill campground real late, around 11pm in pitch black night. Finding our reserved campsite at night was a doozy, especially since our two cars got split up looking for the site. We set up the two tents we brought--two identical tents--and somehow the tentpoles fit in one but not the other, leaving one side of one of the tents a bit droopy. One of the guys left to find an outhouse while we were doing this and managed to walk for half an hour in the dark without finding the two right next to our campsite.
After the tents were set up, I had a hard time getting to sleep so I wandered the campground for an hour. I brought a watch with me that I was on the fence about packing in and that ended up being one of the best decisions of the trip--it saved us from getting into camp after dark many times and woke me up every day (most all the other guys managed to sleep in every morning). I headed back to camp after hearing thunder and made it back just in time to miss a torrential downpour, but not before hearing some beautiful loon calls and seeing some absolutely massive beetles. All seemed to bode well for the trip!
~Sawbill Lake
Ours is a group of seven new college graduates, fresh off four years of college sports, so we planned big. We wanted to canoe up the Temperance river, hike Eagle Mountain, and canoe down the Frost and Kelso rivers in six days. Technically day zero (our travel day) starts at midnight with us frantically baking and bagging the last of the food for the trip (and a little bit of pre-trip celebratory drinking).
We slept through the morning and picked up one of our guys from the airport (who was doing his own trip to Europe before the Boundary Waters) and with his packing ended up leaving the Twin Cities at a much later than intended 5pm. We had dinner at Grandma’s after a quick walmart stop to replace the night one dinner steak we forgot at home. We showed up at 8pm and were warned of a 30 minute wait, which turned out to be only 5 because a huge room was reserved for a group that just didn’t show up. We got to the Sawbill campground real late, around 11pm in pitch black night. Finding our reserved campsite at night was a doozy, especially since our two cars got split up looking for the site. We set up the two tents we brought--two identical tents--and somehow the tentpoles fit in one but not the other, leaving one side of one of the tents a bit droopy. One of the guys left to find an outhouse while we were doing this and managed to walk for half an hour in the dark without finding the two right next to our campsite.
After the tents were set up, I had a hard time getting to sleep so I wandered the campground for an hour. I brought a watch with me that I was on the fence about packing in and that ended up being one of the best decisions of the trip--it saved us from getting into camp after dark many times and woke me up every day (most all the other guys managed to sleep in every morning). I headed back to camp after hearing thunder and made it back just in time to miss a torrential downpour, but not before hearing some beautiful loon calls and seeing some absolutely massive beetles. All seemed to bode well for the trip!
~Sawbill Lake
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