Sunday, August 23, 2026 Alarms went off at 5:30am to start on some oats for breakfast and get onto the water as early as possible. Our host at the lodge was nice enough to open a little early and help us load up the canoes and be on the water by 6:45am. With our hearts set on making it to Lake Alice we knew we had a lot of paddling ahead of us.

Paddling through Lake One was pretty easy work, we got blessed with beautiful weather and a little mist coming off the lake made for beautiful views. Our first portages into Lake Two weren’t near as efficient as they could’ve been, but what else can I expect for a bunch of our first portages. We then had some more fairly easy going through Lakes Two through Four, weather stayed nice and we could shield ourselves from the wind for the most part. From there it’s three short portages into Lake Hudson, which we handled swiftly and got on our way. Hudson was not my favorite lake we’ve paddled so far, oddly shaped and still showing a lot of burn damage from the Pagami Creek fire of 2011. This is also where we started to feel some of the wind in the open area of Hudson. From Hudson we had to conquer our longest portage of the trip, 93 rods into Lake Insula. This portage was a doozy but went quicker than I thought it would. Coming out of it into Insula we had to pause to refill our waters and were met by a couple that was unhappy with that decision.

It was at this point I started to realize I may have slightly underestimated the challenge of this route. We made our way into and through Insula and for the first part of it didn’t have too much trouble, our tired arms were able to push through behind islands that mostly protected us from the afternoon winds. The latter half is where we really ran into trouble. The lake widened and we had to cross a big open section through some strong winds to get to our final portage into the Kawishiwi River. I’m not sure if it was pure stubbornness or stupidity that pushed us through, but we managed to make it all the way across Insula and were greeted by two very friendly dogs with another group at the portage as a nice little gift for our efforts.

The river was barely holding a current and was narrow enough to shield us from the wind again, which made for easier paddling even with our exhausted bodies. Once we turned the corner into Alice that protection was quickly gone. We immediately were able to see the campsite we wanted to get to, nearly all the way across the wide-open surface of Lake Alice. With no one packing binoculars, we had no choice but to start paddling into the wind and hope we would be greeted by an empty site. Nearly 45 minutes of straight paddling against the wind we were just close enough to make out that the site was indeed empty, and we could focus on putting all of our reserve energy into making it there.

Mercifully, after over 9 hours of paddling and portaging, nearly 22 miles in the canoe and about 1.5 miles of total portages (accounting for the double portages), we had made it to where we would be calling home for the next 4 nights. To reward ourselves for our hard work, I had packed some frozen ribeye steaks I threw in the sous vide at home along with some instant mashed potatoes. Well deserved dinner after a strenuous day. First day in the boundary waters done, couldn’t have gotten much better weather, and couldn’t have pushed much further than we did. Well worth it though.~Lake One, Lake Two, Hudson Lake, Insula, Lake, Alice Lake