Wednesday, September 03, 2025
After a day filled with construction zones seemingly stretching every mile along my route through WI and MN and arriving to Ely on a sunny and pleasant early September day with temps in the mid 70's, I now find myself standing at the entry point, looking out to a dreary, windy and rainy Snowbank Lake. The temps had dropped 30 degrees overnight and today was to the warmest day of the next three. Oh joy. My trek across Snowbank lake to Boot Lake was quite unenjoyable and as soon as I reached the end of Harri Island, I was greeted with the whitecaps I had hoped to avoid with my 7 AM start time. Not to be dismayed, I pointed the bow of my Northstar Solo N/NW into the wind and pushed ever so slowly towards Three Sisters Islands, then up near Half Burnt Island, before turning east and quartering the now smaller waves of Snowbank's north end all the way to the portage. Now that I was already an hour behind the pace I hoped to set, I knew this was going to be a long day. I caught a couple bass on Boot Lake just to break up the paddling and saw quite a bit of wildlife on that lake- loons, trumpeter swans, great blue herons, mergansers and a solitary bad eagle. Even little Boot Lake had occasional whitecaps, and the rain was now coming at me in sheets, not really the ideal start to a week long visit to the BW. I otherwise passed as quickly as possible through Boot, into Ensign and then across my last portage of the day into Vera. I had hoped to make it to Missionary Lake today, but after 6 hours of fighting the wind and rain (which had now stopped), I took site #1243 on the NE portion of the lake and started the process of setting up camp.
The rest of the day on Vera was quite enjoyable, light sprinkles came and went a few times and the winds calmed down until after midnight when they again kicked back up. I did a little fishing (no luck), gathered what little dry firewood I could find, took a much needed late afternoon nap and started reading my book for the trip- The Lure of the Labrador Wild (highly recommended). Some of the best pictures from this trip came during that afternoon and evening on Vera, including a long look at the soon to be full moon rising directly south across the lake from me later that evening. The misery of the early 1/2 of the day was easily washed away! Listening to the weather radio before bed that night, I discovered there was a frost advisory for that night, with forecasted temps expected to hit the low 30's. Little did I know at that time that the same advisory would take place the next 3 nights as well. I was ready though, with my rain tarp pulled in tightly around my hammock, my underquilt securely in place and a bevy of cold weather sleeping gear at my disposal. To be honest, I never noticed the cold during any of the nights on this trip, although I was always extremely careful to keep that sleeping setup dry, as without it I would have been in serious trouble.
Lakes traveled: Snowbank, Boot, Ensign, Vera.