Boundary Waters Quetico Forum :: Listening Point - General Discussion :: Lake Count
|
Author | Message Text | ||
Grizzlyman |
|
||
Spartan2 |
I went through the list of BWCA lakes at the top of the page and just quickly counted the ones I could remember, and including named creeks and bays, and rivers, came up with somewhere between 175 and 200. I am sure if Spartan1 counted up, he would use a more scientific method and get a more exact number, but this one works for me. :-) Even though we did our tripping over 42 years, we didn't live nearby like so many of you, so we didn't have even one trip a year average. I think a total of something like 22 BW trips, plus a couple in Quetico, one in Temagami, and two short trips in Algonquin. |
||
naturboy12 |
I have paddled 92 unique lakes across 18 trips, not counting any of the rivers that got me to them such as the Moose River and LISN. Several lakes passed through on multiple trips with 4 being the highest (the Pauness lakes). Multiple times camping on quite a few- Loon (3), Boot (2), Fourtown (2), Iron (2), Good (2), Wood (2), Agnes (2), Upper Pauness (2), South Temperance (2), Lac La Croix (2 on opposite ends) but only at the same site twice (Loon and Good). If things go to plan I'll be adding more nights on a new to me area of LLC this coming summer along with adding 4 new lakes to the list. And now that I know this, I'll have to plan something special for unique lake 100, which will most likely have to wait 2025. |
||
TreeBear |
Stumpy: "TreeBear: "So I geek out big time on this one. I have a spreadsheet where I do out math including lakes visited, lakes camped on, percentage of total lakes visited, and on and on. After 69 trips, I have visited 435 different named lakes, which is still only about 39% of the total BWCAW lakes which is about 1114 give or take. My most visited lake is Rove which I have visited over a dozen times now from a wide run of entry options: Daniels, Duncan, E Bearskin, Daniels Spur trail, Clearwater, and Crane. Haha, it is a problem, but it gets me through the winter when traveling conditions are harder! Right now, the excel spreadsheet has seven pages: a lakes visited tab, an "unfinished business" tab, a trips taken tab, an entry points utilized tab, a top-10s tab, a "need to visit" tab, and a BWCA historical info tab. Then stuff gets super nerdy from there! Lakes visited is a list of all BWCAW named lakes with their number of campsites and acreage. Each has a checkbox for "visited" and a checkbox for "camped on." That data spits into a formula that adds up the number visited divided by the total to give a percentage. There's also an adjacent table tracking "lakes visited by method" including "type of canoe hull." The trips tab is also super out-of-control with dates of each trip, number of days, number of nights, entry point utilized, type of permit, mileage traveled, number of portages taken, rods personally portaged, lakes visited, number of lakes visited, and percentage of lakes visited that were new to me. Those get spit into a bunch of formulas for calculating BWCA nights per year, mileage traveled per year, mileage travelled per BWCA night, and portages taken per year as well as projections like "is the number of new lakes I visit per trip slowing down?" Also stuff like "mileage travelled by type of canoe" which, fun fact, the Voyageur Challenge this year just pushed Kevlar past Aluminum for my miles-traveled list. Entry points track the entries I have utilized (enter or exit) and, fingers crossed, I am hoping to finish canoe entry points this year with trips utilizing Little Indian North, Trout, and Farm (still working on wrapping up hiking and winter EPs - only about halfway there.) Of course, lots of other nerdy stuff. Anyways.... I might need help! |
||
Speckled |
|
||
Speckled |
Trip Listing (EP, Date, Participants) Bucket List (future lake list) Current Year (Weekend listing & associated plans) Favorite Lakes (My top 3 favs for May Lake trout, June Walleye, Sept Lake Trout, Oct Brook Trout - my usual trips) Packing List Templates (seperate lists for solo or tandem and summer or shoulder season) Gear Weights - Current gear weights and potential future replacements BW Lake trout - Netting data and lake information for all BW lake trout lakes BW Brook trout - same BW Walleye - same Personal Best Fish - listing by species |
||
beanpole |
|
||
TreeBear |
|
||
Morchella |
|
||
Speckled |
55 lakes I've only been to/through once. My most visited lake was tie at 5 times. There are two lakes I've been to on five separate trips. No surprise, these both were EP lakes. My most camped on lake - also a tie at 4 times. |
||
cowdoc |
|
||
LindenTree |
Looks like I am around 130. 70 of those new lakes were from the summer of 2023 in the Gunflint and Tofte Ranger Districts. |
||
Deeznuts |
|
||
Stumpy |
TreeBear: "So I geek out big time on this one. I have a spreadsheet where I do out math including lakes visited, lakes camped on, percentage of total lakes visited, and on and on. After 69 trips, I have visited 435 different named lakes, which is still only about 39% of the total BWCAW lakes which is about 1114 give or take. My most visited lake is Rove which I have visited over a dozen times now from a wide run of entry options: Daniels, Duncan, E Bearskin, Daniels Spur trail, Clearwater, and Crane. I want to be that Geek. I need help... been to over 500, I think, but so many lakes, that I don't want to double list. |
||
noodle |
|
||
A1t2o |
Been to 1 lake 4 times. |
||
AlexanderSupertramp |
|
||
Z4K |
After 18 trips I'm at 117 lakes, 19 of which I have paddled on 2 separate trips, only 1 that I have paddled on 3 trips (Brule) and 3 that I have camped on twice (Brule, Canoe, Basswood). I'm not counting unnamed lakes and I counted the Kekekabic Ponds as a single lake. The most lakes I have visited on a single trip is 32, the least, 2. *edit I had forgotten all about camping on Basswood on two different trips |
||
AlmostCanadian |
AlexanderSupertramp: "I'm at 32 since the beginning of last year when I first visited BWCA. Some repeats in there. I'm adding a couple more this weekend if walking on hard water counts the same as dipping a paddle. I feel like a newb!" I'm at 34 lakes in 5 trips with only two repeats. How many lakes/trips does it take to increase our BWCA newb status? |
||
IndyCanoe |
51 different lakes, 5 different rivers. |
||
boonie |
|
||
Tony |
Tony |
||
grizzlyadams |
|
||
boonie |
|
||
shock |
|
||
Mapmaker |
I also started a gear weight spreadsheet, and add a new column for each trip. That way I can mark what items I take, review what was really used/needed/missing and make changes on trip to trip. Good way to prep/geek out in the offseason to review all that. Helps my Christmas list when thinking about what gear to ask Santa for to shave weight too. |
||
WhitePine1 |
|
||
YetiJedi |
27 trips for me 123 lakes plus several rivers camped on one lake 29 nights (Wood) Most lakes in one trip: 42 over 16 days. Those of you with the spreadsheets make me wish I would have done a better job tracking my trips. I like reading about your observations. |
||
Voyager |
|
||
beanpole |
We've made 4 trips total. 3 of them were on the same/similar route covering 14 lakes. Last year with trip 4 we added 10 new lakes. We are still deciding on a route this year. |
||
oneportage |
|
||
bobbernumber3 |
beanpole: "...I never thought to use conditional formatting..." how will you?? |
||
SurlyDude |
37 trips (15 winter no paddle dipping I suppose) 103 unique lakes 40 lakes most on a single trip 11 times to Seagull (6 times in the winter) |
||
JD |
* Trip Count: 13 * Unique Lakes: 108 (118 inc. various bays) * Unique Rivers & Creeks: 12 (Kawishiwi River counted multiple times based on section) * Most lakes from single entry: 36 (Moose Lake) * Most lakes on single trip: 28 (LIS Interior Tour, 9 days) * Average number of lakes per trip: 22(!) * Most used entry: Moose Lake (4 trips, everything else 1!) * Most visited lake: tie between Ensign-Splash-Birch-Carp-Melon-Seed-Knife-Amoeber-Topaz-Cherry (3 times each, from 2 diff entries - wonderful area but I'm trying to focus on new ones!) * Bodies visited more than once: 31/130 (24%) * Bodies visited only once: 99/130 (76% - variety is the spice of life eh!) I've been running gear spreadsheets since my first trip in 2018 and rely on a new sheet for weight distribution and packing checklists for every single trip. The phrase "did you check the spreadsheet?" is a joke among my tripping group. It helps keep pack weights as low as possible so no one gets stuck portaging "the bear", and ensure you're not overpacking food (which is much harder since everyone ends up picking up a few extras "just in case"). One protip I will give is to use conditional formatting to highlight cells green/orange/red based on expected/tolerable weights (i.e. green from 0-8oz, orange from 8-32oz, red from 32oz+). Google Sheets will create transition colors to make this more flexible as well. I love my colorful spreadsheets. :) It makes an unintuitive format (grid of text) more intuitive, by making it more visually descriptive. |
||
Speckled |
I'm sure new lakes will get crossed off the list, but right now when I think about about a BW trip, those favorite lakes have an almost unbreakable pull. |
||
bobbernumber3 |
TuscaroraBorealis: "Did you read/understand the question in the original post??? YaMarVa: "How do you know someone goes to the Quetico? - They will tell you without you asking them. Good thread! I never thought to count up the individual lakes. I've got a few in the BW, too! |
||
Pinetree |
|
||
pleflar |
Edit: Two nights each slept on Ima and Adams for tie in that category. |