The trip had every makings of one of my most memorable trips - a physical challenge that encountered the grand scope of the Boundary Waters and fulfilled a plethora of personal adventure goals. I left the trip with many of those things, but with something else too: a hard-earned lesson with newfound humility. It’s uncomfortable to share stories when you make a mistake, especially when that mistake has an impact on other people and when it feels like something that should have been so easily avoided. This story is one of those - a tale of how an incredible adventure was derailed by a single mistake and a handful of happenstances. That simple mistake could happen to anyone on a backcountry trip, and the lessons we learned late Thursday night form a vivid wilderness curriculum neither one of us who experienced it will soon forget.

The idea of this trip was first conceived after two friends and I set out to do the Voyageur Challenge. It was an incredible, unforgettable trip, marking the beginning of a multi-year dream to attempt a similar adventure from a very different angle. The Voyageur Challenge follows the border route and is defined by long paddles with infrequent and short portages. This new route would be something else. I envisioned an interior passage: a “border route challenge” that never touches the border. Instead, we would cross the Boundary Waters along the numerous interior lakes with short paddles and frequent portaging. Along the way, I also hoped to finally conclude a personal goal of mine to utilize every BWCAW canoe entry point (either by entry or exit). I had two remaining (not counting alternates), and this would be a great chance to wrap those up.

The first logistical hurdle came with deciding when and with whom. With a young baby at home and many of my friends living in similar life stages, finding time was challenging. My wife gave me the go-ahead for a four-day trip, which isn’t a lot of time for 160 miles (including 25 miles of portaging), but I would gladly take it. My list of tripping partners dwindled quickly: “having a baby,” “getting married”, “just had a baby,” or “no time off” were frequent responses. Three of us finally decided on a date, and we began planning. With a couple of weeks to the trip, one of the guys had to back out for family reasons. With two of us left, we loaded a two-seat Minnesota 3 and headed for Lake Vermilion and our grand adventure.

We started on Lake Vermillion at 10:00 on Wednesday morning. The weather was clear and calm, and we made fantastic time to Trout Lake. We turned east on Trout to take our first 200ish rod portage into Pine. It would be a portage-heavy day. From Pine, we went north on the river and portaged into Chad (a bit of a tricky portage to be sure). Much of the rest of the afternoon would be spent taking portages of similar distance, difficulty, and deferred clearing. From Chad, we headed into Buck, Western, Glenmore, Schlamn, and on towards Lunetta, where our first misadventure occurred. We didn’t see the final portage and ended up plowing ahead through the floating marsh for an exhausting trudge into Lunetta Lake. From there, I was back on a familiar route through Little Crab, Crab, and onto the mile-long exit portage. The beavers have remodeled since my last visit, with the former “wet spot” now requiring a paddle across. The sun was low in the sky as we approached Burntside Lake. We gorged ourselves on food and water and headed for one of our longest paddle stretches of the trip.

As we headed east on Burntside, I had an idea of where I wanted to get before the sunlight was gone completely. Burntside can be a tricky lake to navigate if you don’t keep track of the islands. We both added layers somewhere close to Lost Girl Island as the sun had departed and the night grew cold. On our way further east, the loons began calling, and I noticed one particularly close. Not thinking anything of it, we kept paddling in the now pitch-black when my paddle struck something underwater that felt like a log. That “log” surfaced with a splash near the yoke before diving again, only to resurface with a loud thud along the stern rock guard. The poor unsuspecting loon had been struck by my paddle, only to surface, see our canoe, dive, and strike its head on the back end! It was not the least bit amused by the visit!