009: BWCA v. Quetico

Episode Transcript

[0:00:35 – 0:01:01] Adam: all right welcome to episode nine of tumble home a boundary waters podcast sponsored by clearwater historic lodge and also by our good friends at surly surly hell a delicious light lager i’m adam with me as always is your host eric i really sneaked in there didn’t let you i want to i’m saying eric my name is eric
[0:01:03 – 0:01:03] Adam: Episode 9.
[0:01:04 – 0:01:08] Adam: Quick, we want to start with a Iditarod, fantasy Iditarod update.
[0:01:09 – 0:01:11] Adam: Thanks to all of you who signed up.
[0:01:11 – 0:01:14] Adam: The Iditarod is not finished, but Yor has won.
[0:01:15 – 0:01:18] Adam: Hashtag Roar for Yor.
[0:01:19 – 0:01:20] Adam: And I did have him on my team.
[0:01:20 – 0:01:21] Adam: Did you have him on your team?
[0:01:21 – 0:01:22] Adam: I did not.
[0:01:23 – 0:01:23] Adam: Foolish mistake.
[0:01:23 – 0:01:28] Adam: I’ve had him on my team every year of Fantasy at Deadrod, and he’s always done very well.
[0:01:28 – 0:01:29] Adam: I’m very happy to see your win.
[0:01:30 – 0:01:35] Adam: Nicholas Petit is taking second, and I believe Mitch is in third already.
[0:01:36 – 0:01:41] Adam: I don’t know if anybody is behind them that has reached Gnome, but they’re in.
[0:01:41 – 0:01:46] Adam: Currently, I believe I’m still in the lead, actually, in Fantasy at Deadrod for our pack.
[0:01:46 – 0:01:48] Erik: Most likely you are.
[0:01:48 – 0:01:54] Erik: You probably did 20 times more research than anybody else in the pack combined.
[0:01:54 – 0:02:04] Adam: I’m sure that probably is true, although I did a lot less work, and I spent a lot less time on my team this year than I normally would, but I just usually pick the same seven mushers anyways, so…
[0:02:05 – 0:02:26] Adam: maria gaffney local musher here was in first for a long ways and i she did have mitch so the last time i looked i was in the lead but she still had mitch he was about to reach gnome so she may have passed me back so anyways a lot of fun um we gotta got something to announce here uh eric i have to tell you just me
[0:02:27 – 0:02:52] Adam: and all the listeners too can know this oh i imagine with them since it’s as you’re talking we are recording yeah um i have an announcement natalie and i have adopted a puppy today wow a little husky so that’s why there’s a puppy that really explains why there’s a dog laying on the floor here a little snoozing baby husky baby husky’s sleeping uh she does not have a name yet but uh
[0:02:53 – 0:03:04] Erik: But we are going to be posting on RBWCA, and we hope that you will upvote it enough so that it gets on our all, so that it eventually ends up with the name Husky McHuskyface.
[0:03:04 – 0:03:06] Adam: Husky McHuskyface is the leader.
[0:03:06 – 0:03:10] Adam: I have a short list right now, and that one’s definitely up there.
[0:03:11 – 0:03:14] Adam: But we’ll see if you guys have any suggestions for Pup’s name, but
[0:03:15 – 0:03:16] Adam: Yeah, well, kind of.
[0:03:17 – 0:03:19] Adam: She’s not really much of a camper right now.
[0:03:19 – 0:03:21] Adam: We just literally got her this morning.
[0:03:21 – 0:03:22] Erik: Well, how old is she?
[0:03:22 – 0:03:25] Adam: She is now 11 weeks and three days old.
[0:03:25 – 0:03:32] Adam: She was born right after the winter solstice on like a negative 25 degree day.
[0:03:32 – 0:03:33] Adam: Here’s a little background for you.
[0:03:33 – 0:03:35] Adam: She is the biggest of four.
[0:03:35 – 0:03:38] Adam: There’s three females and one male in the litter.
[0:03:39 – 0:03:42] Adam: Her mother’s name is Doris and her father’s name was Ozzie.
[0:03:42 – 0:03:45] Adam: And he’s a bit of a jerk, but Doris was a nice dog.
[0:03:45 – 0:03:48] Erik: And her grandmother’s name is Ayla, and she lives at my house.
[0:03:49 – 0:03:50] Adam: Yeah, you have Ayla now.
[0:03:50 – 0:03:52] Adam: So it’s all connected.
[0:03:53 – 0:04:01] Adam: She’s a very precious little thing, though, and we will hopefully be able to take her on our camping trip and to do the Frost River here just before Memorial Day.
[0:04:01 – 0:04:02] Adam: We have our permits already booked.
[0:04:03 – 0:04:05] Adam: The PTO has been signed off on.
[0:04:05 – 0:04:06] Adam: We are going to the Frost River.
[0:04:07 – 0:04:08] Adam: This little puppers is coming with us later.
[0:04:09 – 0:04:14] Adam: She doesn’t know it yet, but we’re going to start hopefully training to get her comfortable in a canoe.
[0:04:14 – 0:04:21] Adam: So if anybody has any tips on how to get a puppy, an 11 week old Husky to enjoy going on a canoe in water, let me know.
[0:04:22 – 0:04:23] Adam: It should be fun.
[0:04:23 – 0:04:24] Erik: Trial by fire.
[0:04:26 – 0:04:27] Adam: So that’s what’s new around here.
[0:04:29 – 0:04:29] Adam: It’s exciting stuff.
[0:04:30 – 0:04:32] Erik: Yeah.
[0:04:32 – 0:04:32] Erik: I don’t know.
[0:04:33 – 0:04:33] Erik: We didn’t…
[0:04:33 – 0:04:37] Erik: I think that’s enough of a springing of a surprisement on me.
[0:04:37 – 0:04:41] Erik: I know in the past couple weeks we’ve been… Yeah, usually it’s a mental surprise.
[0:04:41 – 0:04:44] Adam: This is more of a physical dog surprise right there.
[0:04:44 – 0:04:47] Erik: Well, you know, I was kind of surprised to see the dog, but, you know, I just…
[0:04:48 – 0:04:52] Adam: We have been thinking about it, but we made it official today.
[0:04:53 – 0:04:54] Erik: There she is.
[0:04:54 – 0:04:54] Erik: There she is.
[0:04:54 – 0:04:58] Erik: Hopefully we can get some background snoozing noises.
[0:04:58 – 0:04:58] Adam: One more.
[0:04:58 – 0:05:02] Adam: Yeah, she was making a few noises and kicking before, but she’s pretty quiet right now.
[0:05:02 – 0:05:03] Adam: One more note of background.
[0:05:03 – 0:05:09] Adam: My cat is named Agnes, and she is directly named for Agnes Lake in Quetico.
[0:05:10 – 0:05:12] Adam: Cause she was the biggest cat in her litter.
[0:05:13 – 0:05:17] Adam: And when I picked her out and it was right after we had done our Aquetico trip that I ended up getting her.
[0:05:17 – 0:05:22] Adam: So I wanted to name her after Aquetico Lake and I wanted her to have an old lady name.
[0:05:22 – 0:05:28] Adam: So if we can somehow stick with that theme too, that’d be great to either the lakes or an old lady name, but we’ll see.
[0:05:28 – 0:05:29] Adam: Which, you know.
[0:05:29 – 0:05:31] Adam: She’s big, so big lake would be great.
[0:05:32 – 0:05:40] Erik: A nice segue into the main topic of today’s discussion, which is Throwdown 2018.
[0:05:40 – 0:05:44] Erik: Boundary Waters, Canoe Area Wilderness versus Quetico Provincial Park.
[0:05:44 – 0:05:46] Erik: Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
[0:05:46 – 0:05:50] Erik: Here comes the fancy lady in the shimmering bikini with round one.
[0:05:50 – 0:05:51] Erik: Party horn.
[0:05:52 – 0:05:52] Erik: Party horn.
[0:05:52 – 0:05:53] Erik: Yeah, what?
[0:05:53 – 0:05:55] Erik: We’ll get some party horns in there, some air horns.
[0:05:55 – 0:05:59] Adam: Yeah, you need to include a party horn sound effect over that.
[0:05:59 – 0:05:59] Adam: Party horns.
[0:06:00 – 0:06:02] Adam: An attempt at a party horn.
[0:06:02 – 0:06:03] Adam: You guys knew what I was doing.
[0:06:03 – 0:06:04] Erik: Yeah, I think we all did.
[0:06:05 – 0:06:12] Adam: So, yeah, you on Clearwater’s Facebook page this week, you had posted a lovely hand-drawn map of the Quetico Superior Wilderness.
[0:06:12 – 0:06:18] Adam: Which I had a copy of that at one point and it just wore out and no longer is on the wall.
[0:06:18 – 0:06:22] Erik: But it’s a beautiful, I believe it’s a worn out map.
[0:06:22 – 0:06:25] Adam: Yeah, I looked at a map so much that it’s no longer usable.
[0:06:25 – 0:06:27] Adam: That’s how cool of a map this was.
[0:06:27 – 0:06:28] Adam: And you posted a nice image of that.
[0:06:29 – 0:06:51] Adam: That map, it just basically is a great regional overview of the entire area, including both the Quetico Provincial Park, Boundary Waters Canoe Area, the whole Grand Portage deal, and the La Varendre Queensland permit areas around the Arrow and Northern Light Lake, the large Northern Light Lake there.
[0:06:51 – 0:06:52] Adam: Yeah.
[0:06:52 – 0:06:54] Adam: It goes all the way over to Rainy.
[0:06:55 – 0:06:57] Erik: It gets over a little bit on the west side of the map.
[0:06:57 – 0:06:59] Erik: It gets to Rainy.
[0:06:59 – 0:06:59] Adam: It’s a beaut.
[0:07:00 – 0:07:03] Adam: Plus all these nice little hand drawings of people of the area.
[0:07:03 – 0:07:12] Adam: There’s some fine chaps on the Grand Portage humping up some large packs of gunpowder or beads with buttless chaps on.
[0:07:12 – 0:07:14] Erik: Buttless chaps on the Grand Portage.
[0:07:14 – 0:07:17] Erik: If anybody has Portage of the Grand Portage, let us know.
[0:07:18 – 0:07:22] Adam: We’ll be getting to portaging too later, but yeah, that is the mega portage up here.
[0:07:22 – 0:07:25] Erik: But if you’ve done it in buttless chaps, we really want to know.
[0:07:25 – 0:07:26] Adam: We need pictures.
[0:07:26 – 0:07:37] Erik: Yeah, and it’s actually the map, I’ve got to give credit, if you’ve ever seen or had your hands on those big, it’s the size of an oven door.
[0:07:37 – 0:07:38] Erik: It’s like a huge book.
[0:07:39 – 0:07:39] Erik: Yeah.
[0:07:39 – 0:07:40] Erik: Fisher Maps, W.A.
[0:07:40 – 0:07:43] Erik: Fisher puts out with all of it.
[0:07:43 – 0:07:44] Erik: It’s their whole series.
[0:07:44 – 0:07:49] Erik: It’s a whole series of a little bit farther out, zoomed out maps, more of a broad overview.
[0:07:49 – 0:07:53] Erik: I would never recommend actually bringing these maps out.
[0:07:53 – 0:07:55] Adam: No, they’re great for like a wall hanging.
[0:07:55 – 0:07:59] Erik: Great for wall hanging or trip preparation.
[0:08:00 – 0:08:01] Erik: It’s really fun to look at.
[0:08:01 – 0:08:05] Erik: But the map that shows the broad overview is on like the first page of the booklet.
[0:08:06 – 0:08:08] Erik: And booklet is the opposite of what it is.
[0:08:08 – 0:08:09] Erik: This thing is like…
[0:08:09 – 0:08:12] Erik: It’s like a full newspaper size.
[0:08:12 – 0:08:13] Erik: It’s fun how big it is.
[0:08:13 – 0:08:18] Erik: And we’ll share this hand-drawn map, which is I think a…
[0:08:20 – 0:08:42] Erik: dying thing like nobody really hand draws maps like this anymore it’s really cool it’s got all like little stories on it images of uh camping animals the voyagers and then you know it shows kind of the outline of of the the two protected wildernesses as they stand today yeah it’s a
[0:08:43 – 0:08:53] Erik: To find map, I don’t know, actually, I wasn’t able to find exactly on the map who drew it, or if that artist is known at all, or if it was just somebody that W.A.
[0:08:54 – 0:09:03] Erik: Fisher, you know, had that drawn for them, but it does bring us to our main topic for the day, which…
[0:09:04 – 0:09:16] Erik: I do talk to people about on a regular basis, and I think it’s going to be the theme of this podcast and trying to get some of the bigger questions out of the way first.
[0:09:17 – 0:09:19] Adam: Yeah, this is the true overview.
[0:09:20 – 0:09:24] Erik: And it’s the Bonjewaters versus Quetico.
[0:09:25 – 0:09:28] Erik: And we’re going to run down some facts.
[0:09:28 – 0:09:30] Erik: These are the facts, ma’am.
[0:09:30 – 0:09:33] Erik: And these are the things that we can’t argue.
[0:09:33 – 0:09:36] Erik: It’s just they are what they are.
[0:09:36 – 0:09:47] Erik: And then we’re going to get into kind of how we feel the things that are a little bit more subjective in terms of the two different parks.
[0:09:47 – 0:09:48] Erik: So…
[0:09:49 – 0:09:51] Erik: You ready to run down this list?
[0:09:52 – 0:09:53] Adam: Yeah, let’s hit it.
[0:09:53 – 0:10:00] Adam: I mean, these areas are connected, but there are definitely big differences between the two parks, just the feel of them and when you’re traveling in them, how you get to them.
[0:10:02 – 0:10:04] Erik: That is funny that you mention that because, yeah, they are…
[0:10:04 – 0:10:12] Erik: It’s all one, but… Well, hopefully people will be able to kind of see these maps or the specific one we’ve been talking about.
[0:10:12 – 0:10:17] Adam: Yeah, we’ll definitely post that one on the Instagram page, Tumblr Home Podcast.
[0:10:18 – 0:10:19] Adam: Is it Tumblr Home Cast?
[0:10:19 – 0:10:20] Adam: I should know this.
[0:10:21 – 0:10:21] Adam: Tumblr Home.
[0:10:22 – 0:10:22] Adam: Tumblr Home.
[0:10:23 – 0:10:26] Adam: It’s Tumblr Home Cast on Instagram, so we’ll put the map up there, but…
[0:10:26 – 0:10:30] Erik: But it really does give you a good idea of, like, they basically are touching.
[0:10:30 – 0:10:31] Erik: It’s the same area.
[0:10:32 – 0:10:36] Erik: If it wasn’t for the arbitrary borders, which, boy, we could have some experts on.
[0:10:36 – 0:10:38] Erik: That’s an interesting story about the border.
[0:10:38 – 0:10:39] Erik: Oh, yeah.
[0:10:39 – 0:10:40] Erik: That’s a whole other topic.
[0:10:41 – 0:10:45] Erik: But it is funny that there is a different feeling between the two parks.
[0:10:45 – 0:10:55] Erik: There clearly is a difference in whether it is you following yourself along on a map to see, well, now I’m up in Canada and this is Quetico.
[0:10:56 – 0:10:57] Erik: I should feel differently.
[0:10:57 – 0:10:58] Erik: But I think it’s more than that.
[0:10:58 – 0:11:01] Erik: There are definitely some differences, some things that make it feel different.
[0:11:02 – 0:11:07] Erik: And even just visually looking at it, you can tell the difference.
[0:11:07 – 0:11:07] Erik: But…
[0:11:08 – 0:11:13] Erik: Let’s start out with the facts, the numbers, just to give you an idea of what’s going on.
[0:11:13 – 0:11:14] Adam: By the numbers.
[0:11:16 – 0:11:17] Erik: By the numbers.
[0:11:17 – 0:11:19] Adam: That’s the same theme as their fact checker.
[0:11:19 – 0:11:23] Erik: Yeah, we only have one theme, and it’s the beeping of the Morse code.
[0:11:23 – 0:11:27] Adam: I’m not musically inclined, but I do enjoy singing and making beeps.
[0:11:28 – 0:11:30] Erik: Messages by that tone anymore.
[0:11:30 – 0:11:31] Adam: What are you starting us out with here?
[0:11:32 – 0:11:33] Erik: The size of the park.
[0:11:33 – 0:11:34] Erik: Which one do you think is bigger?
[0:11:35 – 0:11:36] Adam: The Boundary Waters.
[0:11:36 – 0:11:36] Adam: It’s not?
[0:11:37 – 0:11:37] Adam: Wow.
[0:11:37 – 0:11:38] Adam: It’s very close.
[0:11:38 – 0:11:44] Adam: Because it’s in two different segments, and it just seems, yeah, but, yeah, all right.
[0:11:44 – 0:11:45] Adam: How close is it?
[0:11:45 – 0:11:46] Adam: I was surprised, too, actually.
[0:11:47 – 0:11:49] Adam: I’m surprised, but I’m not shocked.
[0:11:49 – 0:11:50] Erik: I’m not shocked.
[0:11:50 – 0:11:51] Erik: I mean, I figured they were about the same.
[0:11:51 – 0:11:59] Erik: The BWCA is 4,400 square kilometers, and Quetico Provincial Park is 4,760 square kilometers.
[0:11:59 – 0:11:59] Erik: Mm-hmm.
[0:12:02 – 0:12:07] Erik: And the main reason I’m using square kilometers is it was the only unit of measure that I was able to find that both used.
[0:12:09 – 0:12:13] Erik: But like you were mentioning, the boundary water is very fragmented.
[0:12:13 – 0:12:16] Adam: Yeah, that’s the one thing that Quetico really has going for it.
[0:12:16 – 0:12:17] Adam: It’s a block.
[0:12:17 – 0:12:18] Erik: It’s a huge block.
[0:12:19 – 0:12:20] Erik: Hunter’s Island, baby.
[0:12:20 – 0:12:25] Erik: It looks like a big, fat wolf head, just consolidated.
[0:12:25 – 0:12:26] Erik: I agree.
[0:12:26 – 0:12:27] Adam: It definitely looks like a fat wolf head.
[0:12:27 – 0:12:28] Erik: Big, fat wolf head.
[0:12:28 – 0:12:30] Erik: It’s like a fat Lake Superior.
[0:12:32 – 0:12:35] Erik: And the biggest difference, and you know,
[0:12:37 – 0:12:38] Erik: Again, there are some facts here.
[0:12:38 – 0:12:51] Erik: We’ve been laying down the line on some facts, but there is totally a feeling of being able to get to just about any point in the Boundary Waters depending on where you enter in about a day.
[0:12:52 – 0:12:56] Erik: If you’re hardcore, and even if you’re not that hardcore, you can kind of get to like…
[0:12:57 – 0:13:01] Erik: even the heart of the Boundary Waters, on a long day.
[0:13:01 – 0:13:09] Erik: But there are places in Quetico that I don’t think you could get to in a day unless you were going absolutely bare bones.
[0:13:09 – 0:13:14] Adam: You’re in a racing canoe with a fanny pack full of power buyers.
[0:13:14 – 0:13:16] Erik: And even then, I don’t know.
[0:13:16 – 0:13:20] Erik: There are places where I think it’s at least a day and a half, two days.
[0:13:20 – 0:13:24] Adam: Yeah, you’d have to have an incredible tailwind or something to reach something.
[0:13:24 – 0:13:25] Adam: And even then, no.
[0:13:25 – 0:13:29] Adam: So that’s… We can get to Knife in a day easy, even without a tow.
[0:13:30 – 0:13:39] Adam: That’s basically the middle there, and there’s other ways you can get deep into the Boundary Waters, but Knife to me feels about as deep into the Boundary Waters as you can pretty much get.
[0:13:39 – 0:13:43] Erik: Well, I think some of those trips we did, like the Laos River…
[0:13:43 – 0:14:08] Erik: well that stuff’s like really remote too because it it doesn’t necessarily feel like you’re not just paddling paddling paddling there’s just like you don’t see anybody there’s a bunch of uh really difficult portages that don’t seem like they ever get used so that’s like even though you look at him drop the louse river on the podcast like that that’s top secret stuff you better go back we’ll edit this out stop no i think we can keep it in there it’s not that big of a deal no
[0:14:08 – 0:14:10] Erik: Yeah, if you’re up for the Laos River, let us know.
[0:14:10 – 0:14:13] Adam: If you even know where that is, you call us up.
[0:14:13 – 0:14:13] Erik: Yep.
[0:14:14 – 0:14:14] Erik: Hey, come on.
[0:14:15 – 0:14:16] Erik: Don’t talk down to the listeners.
[0:14:16 – 0:14:19] Adam: Now we definitely have to go back and delete this whole passage.
[0:14:20 – 0:14:20] Adam: Yeah, right.
[0:14:20 – 0:14:22] Adam: It’s a fun spot, though.
[0:14:22 – 0:14:22] Erik: It is.
[0:14:23 – 0:14:29] Erik: And so after the size, the next biggest difference, and these numbers are from 2007.
[0:14:31 – 0:14:36] Erik: which was the last year that I was able to find numbers on either of the parks.
[0:14:37 – 0:14:42] Erik: And that’s the next noticeable difference, I think, and that is the usage.
[0:14:44 – 0:14:51] Erik: Which in 2007, there was a recorded number of about 87,000 people visiting Quetico.
[0:14:54 – 0:15:03] Erik: And in that same year, there’s been years since then that the Bungie Waters has been recorded, but 2007 was the last year I was able to find anything on Quetico.
[0:15:04 – 0:15:06] Erik: So, 87,000 in Cuetico in 2007.
[0:15:06 – 0:15:11] Erik: I know it’s almost 10 years ago, but I think these numbers have held pretty strong since then, give or take.
[0:15:12 – 0:15:18] Erik: In 2007, there was over 250,000 people that visited the Boundary Waters.
[0:15:18 – 0:15:19] Erik: Yeah, makes sense.
[0:15:19 – 0:15:20] Erik: Almost, you know.
[0:15:20 – 0:15:21] Erik: Almost four times as many.
[0:15:22 – 0:15:24] Erik: Not quite, but around there.
[0:15:24 – 0:15:25] Erik: Three times as many.
[0:15:25 – 0:15:25] Erik: That feels right, yeah.
[0:15:26 – 0:15:30] Erik: And it feels right, yeah, based on our experiences out there.
[0:15:30 – 0:15:34] Erik: Though ours are a little bit more shoulder heavy.
[0:15:34 – 0:15:36] Adam: Yeah, I’d love to see going deep into Quetico and…
[0:15:37 – 0:15:42] Adam: you know, the end of July or something and just see, I mean, even then I’m sure it would be pretty sparsely populated.
[0:15:42 – 0:15:44] Erik: No, that’s what I’ve heard.
[0:15:44 – 0:15:49] Adam: It would probably be because we always seem to go to Quetico on the edge of the season.
[0:15:49 – 0:15:50] Adam: So it’s like, it’s really sparse.
[0:15:51 – 0:15:52] Adam: There’s nobody out there.
[0:15:52 – 0:15:52] Erik: Yeah.
[0:15:52 – 0:15:52] Erik: Yeah.
[0:15:54 – 0:16:04] Erik: I’m going to quickly try to run down the permitting system, which is going to be the least interesting part of this whole conversation, but it’s warranted.
[0:16:04 – 0:16:05] Adam: Do the micromachines voice.
[0:16:06 – 0:16:07] Erik: Micromachines voice?
[0:16:07 – 0:16:09] Erik: Oh, wow, yeah.
[0:16:09 – 0:16:11] Erik: Well, I’ll talk at normal speed.
[0:16:12 – 0:16:12] Erik: And we’ll speed it up.
[0:16:12 – 0:16:18] Erik: But then in posts, I’ll double the speed, which I think I could probably figure out how to do that.
[0:16:18 – 0:16:18] Erik: Brilliant.
[0:16:19 – 0:16:27] Erik: Yeah, so if you do have any questions on how the Boundary Waters permitting system works in detail, listen to Episode 1.
[0:16:27 – 0:16:29] Erik: I go into it thoroughly.
[0:16:30 – 0:16:34] Erik: How the permitting system between the two parks is different.
[0:16:34 – 0:16:40] Erik: The main difference is in the Boundary Waters, it’s a per-person rate.
[0:16:41 – 0:16:45] Erik: And in the Aquatico Provincial Park, it is per-person per night.
[0:16:45 – 0:16:49] Erik: And it is also dependent on where you enter.
[0:16:49 – 0:16:56] Erik: So there’s, right off the top of my head, I don’t know, like 60, 70 entry points in the Boundary Waters.
[0:16:56 – 0:16:57] Erik: They’re all the same price.
[0:16:57 – 0:17:00] Erik: 16 per adult, 8 per youth, $10 reservation fee.
[0:17:00 – 0:17:02] Adam: Same price if you do two nights or a week.
[0:17:02 – 0:17:10] Erik: You can go in on May 1st for a day, and it’ll cost you the same as if you went in on May 1st and stayed in for a year.
[0:17:11 – 0:17:16] Adam: Mind-boggling, but most people do two, three nights, so it all averages out for them.
[0:17:17 – 0:17:18] Erik: I get it.
[0:17:18 – 0:17:19] Erik: Yeah, totally makes sense.
[0:17:20 – 0:17:26] Erik: To a certain extent, maybe a discussion that could be had at a later date about how to better fund the park.
[0:17:27 – 0:17:34] Erik: But Quetico charges per night, per person, like I said, but it also depends on where you’re entering from.
[0:17:34 – 0:17:42] Erik: So if you’re entering on the north side of the park, which gets significantly less use, it’s the cheapest option.
[0:17:42 – 0:17:43] Erik: It changes every year.
[0:17:43 – 0:17:47] Adam: Is it because of the use or is it because you’re coming in from Canada?
[0:17:48 – 0:17:48] Erik: I don’t know.
[0:17:49 – 0:17:51] Erik: I think it has a lot to do with trying to incentivize people.
[0:17:51 – 0:17:54] Adam: I thought they were just trying to get the Yankee dollar on the southern entry points.
[0:17:54 – 0:17:55] Adam: The Yankee dollar.
[0:17:56 – 0:17:58] Erik: Episode 10, the Yankee dollar.
[0:17:58 – 0:18:00] Adam: We’re going to get down to brass tacks.
[0:18:00 – 0:18:01] Adam: 17 minutes in.
[0:18:01 – 0:18:02] Adam: Yep.
[0:18:02 – 0:18:02] Adam: I don’t know.
[0:18:03 – 0:18:04] Erik: I guess I’ve always just assumed.
[0:18:04 – 0:18:07] Adam: You got the loony entry points and you got the Yankee dollar entry points.
[0:18:07 – 0:18:10] Adam: I always thought there was just a little extra tax on the Yanks.
[0:18:11 – 0:18:14] Adam: Coming up from the south, that’s why I thought it was set up that way.
[0:18:14 – 0:18:18] Erik: But the price is the same in Canadian either way.
[0:18:18 – 0:18:19] Erik: The price is…
[0:18:20 – 0:18:22] Erik: So it’s more expensive from the north side.
[0:18:22 – 0:18:24] Erik: It’s cheaper on the south side coming in from the United States.
[0:18:25 – 0:18:28] Erik: But it’s always going to get…
[0:18:30 – 0:18:54] Erik: it’s always going to get um you’re going to pay for it in canadian dollars regardless even though it might be on the north side like i said it changes so frequently it’s around 15 per person per night for an adult about 650 per youth per night uh it’s 21 to come in from the american side uh through prairie portage or cash bay which are like the two main entry points
[0:18:55 – 0:19:15] Erik: which to clear the air on that before we get too far there’s 21 entry points in Quetico and there are 6 ranger stations and that’s another big difference is you have to enter Quetico even though your entry point might not be right where a ranger station is you have to go to a ranger station
[0:19:16 – 0:19:16] Erik: To get in.
[0:19:16 – 0:19:18] Erik: You can’t just take the side way in.
[0:19:18 – 0:19:21] Erik: Yeah, you can’t just go through an outfitter like you can in the Boundary Waters.
[0:19:21 – 0:19:26] Adam: Yeah, you can’t visit your ranger in Atacocan and then wander off willy-nilly.
[0:19:26 – 0:19:26] Erik: Well, you can.
[0:19:27 – 0:19:31] Erik: Actually, the main headquarters in Atacocan, you can go to get your permit.
[0:19:32 – 0:19:32] Erik: Fact checker.
[0:19:32 – 0:19:34] Erik: We’re fact checking on the fly.
[0:19:35 – 0:19:38] Erik: You can just go to Atacocan and go to the main ranger station there.
[0:19:39 – 0:19:43] Erik: Otherwise, all of the other ranger stations are out in the field.
[0:19:43 – 0:19:56] Erik: right yeah you just can’t like paddle up into honor track and then veer north no and head into emerald or whatever no you would have to stop at cash bay and then head down or stop at prairie porters and then head you know head up but
[0:19:57 – 0:20:06] Erik: I was always under the assumption that the prices were there to incentivize people to go into points of entry that got less use.
[0:20:07 – 0:20:11] Adam: I just thought they wanted us to come up, drive up into Canada and spend some more bucks up there.
[0:20:11 – 0:20:12] Adam: To spend the American dollar in Atikokan?
[0:20:12 – 0:20:13] Adam: That’s what I thought it was all about.
[0:20:13 – 0:20:17] Adam: And then it’s like, well, if they’re coming in from the south, we’ll charge them a little bit more.
[0:20:17 – 0:20:24] Erik: Based on our experiences in Atikokan, it does seem like they could use a few more dollars up there, whether that’s Canadian or American.
[0:20:24 – 0:20:24] Erik: Everybody could.
[0:20:25 – 0:20:40] Erik: One of the other big differences in entering the wilderness, whether it be BWCA or Quetico, the permits that need to be secured, you can do those starting at roughly the end of January for the BWCA.
[0:20:41 – 0:20:47] Erik: Changes, it’s usually middle of the week and the third week of January that those become available for everybody.
[0:20:47 – 0:20:50] Erik: For Quetico, it’s five months in advance of your trip.
[0:20:52 – 0:21:02] Erik: And the other big thing with Quetico, obviously, if you’re coming down from Canada into the Boundary Waters, I don’t hear of too many people doing that.
[0:21:03 – 0:21:05] Erik: I actually don’t know what you would need to do that.
[0:21:06 – 0:21:11] Erik: Is there an RIBC version of a Canadian coming down into the Boundary Waters?
[0:21:12 – 0:21:12] Erik: I don’t think so.
[0:21:13 – 0:21:15] Adam: Maybe he’s just needing an R.A.B.C.
[0:21:15 – 0:21:16] Erik: Yeah, maybe.
[0:21:16 – 0:21:17] Adam: How are you going to get back?
[0:21:17 – 0:21:18] Erik: That’s the biggest thing.
[0:21:18 – 0:21:37] Erik: If you’re going to enter in from the States, from the Boundary Waters side, and paddle up into Quetico, you do need a remote area border crossing pass or a CAN pass, and that needs to be applied for and secured well in advance of your trip because if you’re mailing it in, it takes almost two months to get sometimes.
[0:21:37 – 0:21:42] Adam: Yeah, I think the last time we did ours, it ended up being like three weeks we got ours back.
[0:21:43 – 0:21:43] Erik: Yeah.
[0:21:43 – 0:21:49] Adam: But it could take longer, they say, right on the application to leave plenty of time to do it.
[0:21:49 – 0:21:55] Adam: You can always go up to the border station at Pigeon River and get it, but they’re not happy about it.
[0:21:55 – 0:21:57] Adam: They usually give you the time over in RABC up there.
[0:21:57 – 0:22:03] Adam: They got plenty of other important work to do, and they’re not shy about telling you.
[0:22:03 – 0:22:04] Adam: You should have done this through the mail.
[0:22:04 – 0:22:05] Adam: So just do it through the mail.
[0:22:06 – 0:22:06] Erik: Yeah, do it through the mail.
[0:22:07 – 0:22:33] Erik: We’ll provide a show note link to some of the more finer details into permitting for the Quetico, the R-A-B-C, which is $30, and it lasts for a year, and it allows you to enter anywhere along the Canadian and United States of American border between International Falls and Sault Ste.
[0:22:33 – 0:22:33] Erik: Marie.
[0:22:34 – 0:22:34] Erik: Right.
[0:22:35 – 0:22:45] Erik: Pretty significant permit that, just based on the way things are going, I don’t imagine is going to be a thing that we are going to be allowed to do for very much longer.
[0:22:45 – 0:22:46] Erik: Yeah.
[0:22:46 – 0:22:48] Adam: Check in with the drone, please.
[0:22:48 – 0:22:49] Erik: Yeah.
[0:22:49 – 0:22:52] Erik: So permitting for the Bonjouir is clearly cheaper.
[0:22:53 – 0:23:04] Erik: Probably one of the reasons that the Aquatico gets roughly a quarter of the use, access, cost of permits.
[0:23:04 – 0:23:05] Erik: We’re going to run down quickly.
[0:23:05 – 0:23:10] Erik: The two parks do share a lot of similarities in terms of regulations.
[0:23:11 – 0:23:13] Erik: I’m going to quickly run down these.
[0:23:13 – 0:23:19] Erik: The cans, bottles, anything that’s not reusable or burnable, banned in both parks.
[0:23:20 – 0:23:21] Adam: Don’t even think about it.
[0:23:21 – 0:23:33] Erik: Both motors, mechanized items are both banned in both parks unless specifically mentioned as being a lake where you can use a certain size motor.
[0:23:34 – 0:23:35] Erik: Lac La Croix, there’s parts.
[0:23:35 – 0:23:41] Erik: Loon River, obviously some of the lakes that share borders like SAG.
[0:23:42 – 0:23:45] Erik: Places like, you know, on the north side too, Batch 1 and NIMH.
[0:23:45 – 0:23:47] Erik: I know there’s some specific regulations.
[0:23:47 – 0:23:52] Erik: But on the whole, the idea is that motors and mechanized items are prohibited.
[0:23:52 – 0:23:53] Adam: You can take your machines.
[0:23:53 – 0:23:54] Adam: You can go on and get.
[0:23:55 – 0:23:56] Erik: Yeah, get those machines out of here.
[0:23:56 – 0:23:59] Erik: Party size is the same for both parks.
[0:23:59 – 0:24:07] Erik: No more than nine people on a permit or together at one point in time, whether that be a portage or a campsite.
[0:24:07 – 0:24:24] Erik: uh pets are allowed in both parks oh so you can bring the pup biggest thing to know if you are a non-resident though your vaccine certification should be on your person boy oh boy i’ve never sounded so official in my life uh pack it out clearly that should be uh regardless of where you are yeah
[0:24:25 – 0:24:32] Erik: If you’re in the target in Duluth, Minnesota, pack it out.
[0:24:32 – 0:24:32] Erik: Seriously.
[0:24:32 – 0:24:33] Erik: Pack it out everywhere.
[0:24:33 – 0:24:38] Erik: It shouldn’t even be a thing that’s designated pack it out area.
[0:24:38 – 0:24:40] Erik: Pack it out all the time.
[0:24:40 – 0:24:41] Erik: Vegetation.
[0:24:42 – 0:24:42] Erik: Common sense.
[0:24:43 – 0:24:45] Erik: You shouldn’t be cutting that stuff down if it’s green.
[0:24:46 – 0:24:48] Erik: You shouldn’t be hacking in your own trails or campsites.
[0:24:48 – 0:24:50] Erik: That’s the same down the line.
[0:24:51 – 0:24:59] Erik: Um, the, uh, the, one of the things that’s pretty much the same, but, um, has a little bit more of a flexibility on our flights.
[0:25:00 – 0:25:04] Erik: Not that, uh, there are a ton of pilots listening, but just for your, uh,
[0:25:04 – 0:25:12] Erik: For your experience, there is a mandatory flight restriction over the boundary waters of 5,000 feet.
[0:25:12 – 0:25:13] Erik: No planes can fly below that.
[0:25:15 – 0:25:18] Erik: Obviously, there’s times for emergencies.
[0:25:18 – 0:25:21] Erik: It’s actually only suggested in Quetico.
[0:25:22 – 0:25:24] Erik: We’ve been out there where we’ve seen planes flying over.
[0:25:24 – 0:25:25] Adam: Yeah, we got buzzed on Watasi Island.
[0:25:26 – 0:25:33] Erik: Yeah, it was probably the commuter flight from Thunder Bay up to Anacok and all the big wigs up at FiberTech.
[0:25:35 – 0:25:36] Erik: Hot shots.
[0:25:36 – 0:25:38] Erik: So those are the same things.
[0:25:39 – 0:25:44] Erik: The biggest differences camping in the Bajau waters, you have to camp at a designated site.
[0:25:45 – 0:25:48] Adam: Those are obviously on your Fishers.
[0:25:49 – 0:25:49] Erik: Red Dots.
[0:25:50 – 0:25:53] Erik: Your McKenzie’s, your Voyager maps.
[0:25:53 – 0:25:54] Erik: Nat Geo.
[0:25:54 – 0:25:56] Erik: They’re all going to be marked.
[0:25:57 – 0:26:05] Erik: Camping in the Quetico, you can camp wherever you want, but more often than not, you’re going to be camping at a place where somebody else has camped before you.
[0:26:06 – 0:26:07] Adam: There are designated campsites.
[0:26:08 – 0:26:10] Adam: They just aren’t marked as reliably on the maps.
[0:26:10 – 0:26:10] Erik: Yeah.
[0:26:11 – 0:26:19] Adam: And sometimes you stumble upon one that’s not marked, but it’s clearly a beautiful site on a rocky point, and we’ve definitely had some of those too.
[0:26:19 – 0:26:19] Erik: Yeah.
[0:26:20 – 0:26:25] Adam: I don’t think we actually stated any, like, ooh, we’re just going to camp on this random island for no good reason.
[0:26:25 – 0:26:26] Adam: We always were able to.
[0:26:26 – 0:26:27] Adam: There’s plenty of campsites.
[0:26:28 – 0:26:33] Adam: They just really aren’t marked or set in a way that you have to use them.
[0:26:33 – 0:26:41] Erik: No, it sounds a lot more wild than it actually is, where it’s like, well, you can camp wherever you want, but you don’t really want to.
[0:26:42 – 0:26:44] Adam: Yeah, there’s plenty of really nice spots.
[0:26:44 – 0:26:48] Erik: Yeah, there’s plenty of openings where it’s, hey, this is a nice natural campsite.
[0:26:48 – 0:26:50] Erik: Why would I want to try to make my own thing?
[0:26:50 – 0:26:57] Adam: Yeah, there’s websites out there where you can basically go on and people have them marked on maps for you and little comments on them.
[0:26:57 – 0:27:03] Adam: So you can kind of, if you generally know your route, you can kind of plan ahead and mark them on your map for yourself.
[0:27:04 – 0:27:07] Adam: Uh, for future reference or, you know, just have a couple of targets in mind.
[0:27:07 – 0:27:10] Adam: Like we did that on our last trip through the man chain.
[0:27:10 – 0:27:13] Adam: We kind of knew where we were going to be looking to stay for the night.
[0:27:13 – 0:27:18] Adam: And, uh, then we knew there was a couple options for camping in those zones.
[0:27:18 – 0:27:23] Erik: Yeah, you might find yourself ending up having to paddle a little bit more than you were planning on it.
[0:27:23 – 0:27:28] Adam: Yeah, we’ve definitely run into where there’s two spots marked on the fissure, and you’re in there, and it’s like, there is no sights here.
[0:27:28 – 0:27:29] Erik: Yeah, there’s no sights.
[0:27:29 – 0:27:30] Erik: Why are these marked?
[0:27:30 – 0:27:31] Adam: You have to move on.
[0:27:31 – 0:27:35] Adam: I mean, you could just go camp where the dot is, but…
[0:27:35 – 0:27:36] Erik: There’s nothing there.
[0:27:36 – 0:27:40] Erik: What are you going to just like climb up a cliff and make something work?
[0:27:40 – 0:27:41] Erik: I mean, legally you could.
[0:27:41 – 0:27:43] Erik: That’s the biggest difference.
[0:27:43 – 0:27:46] Erik: You know, you can’t just camp wherever you want in the Bajau waters.
[0:27:46 – 0:27:48] Adam: So it’s a difference, but not really that big of a difference.
[0:27:48 – 0:27:51] Erik: No, the biggest difference is they’re more fun to find.
[0:27:52 – 0:27:54] Adam: Sometimes you’re surprised by them.
[0:27:56 – 0:28:08] Erik: The biggest difference within those designated campsites, whether they are marked on a map or not, is there are latrines and fire grates at every Boundary Waters campsite designated.
[0:28:08 – 0:28:08] Erik: Very civilized campsites.
[0:28:09 – 0:28:11] Erik: That’s how you can tell that it is a designated campsite.
[0:28:13 – 0:28:18] Erik: Within the Quetico, there are no latrines and no fire grates.
[0:28:18 – 0:28:27] Erik: You’ll find a lot of fire rings, but no actual metal Nina foundry steel grate.
[0:28:27 – 0:28:30] Adam: Yeah, another good reason to have a cast iron with you.
[0:28:30 – 0:28:31] Erik: Yep.
[0:28:31 – 0:28:32] Erik: Make your own grate.
[0:28:33 – 0:28:39] Erik: Finishing up with the one, or two, there’s two more big, big differences in terms of fishing.
[0:28:40 – 0:28:46] Erik: Bonjouar’s, well, you can do just about anything in there with tackle, bait, lures.
[0:28:47 – 0:28:48] Adam: Be willing to carry it.
[0:28:48 – 0:28:53] Adam: They really don’t care if you bring minnows with you or lots of treble hooks.
[0:28:53 – 0:28:59] Adam: But yeah, our friends to the north have a little stricter rules in place for the fishing that seem to make sense.
[0:29:00 – 0:29:00] Erik: Mm-hmm.
[0:29:01 – 0:29:09] Erik: And those are barbless hooks, no live or at any point in its life alive bait.
[0:29:10 – 0:29:11] Adam: No preserved baits, please.
[0:29:11 – 0:29:12] Erik: Nope.
[0:29:12 – 0:29:21] Erik: And yeah, if you want to really get into the details beyond the barbless, no live bait regulations in Quetico…
[0:29:22 – 0:29:29] Erik: The regulations between Ontario and Minnesota are pretty similar, but the differences are so subtle.
[0:29:29 – 0:29:33] Adam: It’s definitely worth a read if you’re planning on doing it.
[0:29:33 – 0:29:34] Erik: Yeah, it’s definitely worth a read.
[0:29:34 – 0:29:36] Adam: You’re going to want to read that over with a comb.
[0:29:37 – 0:29:38] Adam: Yeah.
[0:29:38 – 0:29:43] Adam: And there is a non-resident fishing license option that you can do, I think…
[0:29:43 – 0:29:45] Adam: There’s several different options.
[0:29:45 – 0:29:46] Adam: I’ll just leave it at that.
[0:29:46 – 0:29:51] Adam: You can either do a whole year or they offer shorter versions or you can cover just your trip.
[0:29:52 – 0:29:53] Adam: But they are kind of pricey.
[0:29:53 – 0:29:54] Adam: They are.
[0:29:54 – 0:30:02] Adam: And on top of the RABC and then your nightly camping fees, it can get a little more expensive doing that Quetico trip.
[0:30:02 – 0:30:04] Adam: But I would argue that it’s worth it.
[0:30:05 – 0:30:05] Erik: Yeah.
[0:30:06 – 0:30:11] Erik: And then we’ll finish up with another just black and white difference.
[0:30:11 – 0:30:18] Erik: There are no firearms allowed in Quetico Provincial Park, whereas the Boundary Waters, you are allowed a firearm.
[0:30:18 – 0:30:23] Erik: It does have some pretty strict regulations on where that firearm can be discharged.
[0:30:23 – 0:30:29] Erik: Within 100 yards of any water portage campsite,
[0:30:30 – 0:30:36] Erik: Any place that you could potentially find another person, especially over the water.
[0:30:36 – 0:30:40] Erik: I mean, that’s just… You don’t want to be shooting over the water with anything.
[0:30:43 – 0:30:44] Erik: Those are the big differences on paper.
[0:30:45 – 0:30:50] Erik: What do you think the biggest difference just in your mind that comes to mind when you’re thinking about the two places for you is?
[0:30:51 – 0:30:55] Adam: Well, yeah, we mentioned there’s no latrine or fire grate usually.
[0:30:55 – 0:30:56] Adam: So…
[0:30:58 – 0:31:25] Adam: you know that in general it just feels a little more wild up there but for me the main difference yeah i would just say it’s a little more wild which with that goes the there’s less people the campsites themselves don’t seem as trampled or trammeled and uh yeah you know you know just in general you feel a lot more out there when you’re in quetico you know it’s um
[0:31:26 – 0:31:30] Adam: it’s definitely like a step up from you feel like you’re in this park.
[0:31:30 – 0:31:33] Adam: That’s kind of, yeah, there’s everything’s kind of set up for you there.
[0:31:33 – 0:31:36] Adam: Everything’s a little closer to your entry point.
[0:31:36 – 0:31:38] Adam: Like you can really get out there in Quetico.
[0:31:38 – 0:31:39] Adam: It’s one big block.
[0:31:40 – 0:31:42] Adam: And, uh, for me, yeah, that’s the main difference.
[0:31:43 – 0:31:52] Adam: Um, I think we’re going to want to talk about portaging later, but just in general on the campsites, like I just, I really enjoy too, when you get into a Quetico site, um,
[0:31:53 – 0:31:57] Adam: There’s usually like this pile of rocks where you would normally find a fire grate.
[0:31:57 – 0:32:04] Adam: You just find this crazy jumble of rocks that whatever the last group that came through there, that’s how they set up their campfire.
[0:32:05 – 0:32:07] Adam: You always find these crazy volcanoes.
[0:32:07 – 0:32:19] Erik: Yeah, we’ve come to call them the volcanoes of Quetica, which I don’t know, maybe we’re doing something wrong, but I typically don’t like my fire being built on top of like a four-foot pyre of rocks.
[0:32:19 – 0:32:21] Adam: Yeah, they really like their fires up tall.
[0:32:22 – 0:32:25] Erik: I think it’s just because people just keep building up the ash and rocks.
[0:32:26 – 0:32:26] Erik: Yeah.
[0:32:26 – 0:32:32] Erik: And again, we are always in the park usually at colder times of the year.
[0:32:32 – 0:32:36] Erik: So we kind of like the fires to be a little closer to the ground, a little bit more intimate.
[0:32:36 – 0:32:38] Erik: You can actually gain some warmth from them.
[0:32:39 – 0:32:40] Erik: And the cooking is a little bit easier.
[0:32:40 – 0:32:40] Erik: Yeah.
[0:32:41 – 0:32:53] Erik: I would say it’s, you know, well over half of the campsites that we go to, we find these big piles of rocks and ash that are way higher than you would ever find any Boundary Waters fire grant.
[0:32:53 – 0:32:53] Erik: That’s the beauty of it.
[0:32:53 – 0:32:55] Adam: It’s, you know, that’s how the last group set it up.
[0:32:56 – 0:32:58] Adam: And you are free to make the fire pit your own.
[0:32:58 – 0:32:59] Adam: So that’s also nice, too.
[0:32:59 – 0:33:04] Adam: If you get in there nice and early, you saw yourself up a big pile of beautiful dry cedar.
[0:33:05 – 0:33:07] Adam: And firewood is very plentiful.
[0:33:08 – 0:33:10] Adam: You don’t have to really ever worry about finding ample firewood.
[0:33:10 – 0:33:17] Adam: But then, yeah, you get into camp and you can kind of make that fire pit area exactly how you want it based on what the wind is doing for that day.
[0:33:18 – 0:33:22] Adam: So there’s a little more freedom to set it up however you please.
[0:33:22 – 0:33:35] Erik: And those fire grates in the boundary waters are nice for cooking on, so you do have to consider that when you’re going into the Quetico where you have to bring in your little, either you have to bring in one of those little foldable grates or just plan on building up some rocks.
[0:33:35 – 0:33:41] Adam: Usually you can set a couple rocks, especially we have mentioned we bring up usually a whole cast iron set, so you can kind of…
[0:33:41 – 0:33:53] Adam: Build a little channel off to the side of your fire and kind of scoop coals into it and then kind of get your couple nice rocks set up there where you can rest your cast iron in a pretty even way and cook on it that way.
[0:33:53 – 0:33:58] Adam: But I think for what they weigh, to bring one of those little collapsible…
[0:33:59 – 0:34:01] Erik: They slide nicely in front of the food pack.
[0:34:01 – 0:34:02] Adam: Right, yeah.
[0:34:02 – 0:34:04] Adam: So that’s always a good thing to have in mind.
[0:34:05 – 0:34:16] Adam: The other main one being that there’s no latrines, and the latrine for me in the Boundary Waters is not an uncomfortable thing, but it’s not a great thing.
[0:34:16 – 0:34:19] Adam: Usually they just smell because everybody’s going in one spot.
[0:34:20 – 0:34:45] Adam: it’s kind of nice you got a little seat back in the woods and i you know you go up there you find it you do your thing and you come back to camp but it’s never a pleasant experience whereas in the boundary waters this takes a little getting used to from going from boundary waters to quetico that there is no little latrine little box pooper in the woods you’ve got to just go off and find yourself a log or a rock to kind of crouch next to and
[0:34:46 – 0:35:05] Adam: dig yourself your little cat hole cat holes it’s the uh the latrine to the north and i’d say that that’s probably the thing that most people would have uh you know trouble transitioning to yeah a little weird at first but once you get used unfortunately i think that is i do i’m fine with without the
[0:35:07 – 0:35:36] Erik: plastic toilet in the woods yeah because that’s kind of an eyesore and it smells terrible but on the other hand sometimes in the quetico you will like just see like a piece of toilet paper somebody can cover their cat hole up properly that’s what i was going to say is like for me it’s not a big deal but i think for what i’ve experienced the majority of people just can’t really handle not having a place to to do that in so you find way more toilet paper on the ground in quetico
[0:35:36 – 0:35:37] Adam: Yeah, it’s a thing.
[0:35:37 – 0:35:38] Adam: It’s definitely a thing.
[0:35:39 – 0:35:39] Adam: Everybody poops.
[0:35:40 – 0:35:42] Adam: We can all agree on this.
[0:35:42 – 0:35:46] Erik: And everybody’s apparently very afraid to go poop in the dark in the woods.
[0:35:46 – 0:35:49] Adam: Yeah, so they go a little too close to camp, too.
[0:35:49 – 0:35:51] Adam: Like, I like to go quite a ways back.
[0:35:51 – 0:35:53] Erik: Or they’ll just flip over a rock right in camp.
[0:35:53 – 0:35:54] Erik: Right.
[0:35:54 – 0:35:55] Erik: And you go to, like, flip it over.
[0:35:55 – 0:36:01] Adam: If you see a rock sitting in camp in Quetico, just in an unusual area, definitely don’t go and kick that rock over.
[0:36:01 – 0:36:01] Adam: Yeah.
[0:36:02 – 0:36:03] Adam: So, anyways.
[0:36:03 – 0:36:10] Erik: I mean, I think in a perfect world, I would prefer no fire grates in the boundary waters and latrines in Quetico.
[0:36:10 – 0:36:13] Adam: Yeah, if we could trade one for the other, like, let’s do that.
[0:36:13 – 0:36:16] Adam: Because yeah, that’s my biggest gripe with Quetico is like, I’m fine with it.
[0:36:16 – 0:36:25] Adam: But yeah, you definitely see evidence that there’s other people that just aren’t fine or able to grasp the concept of getting far into the woods and being discreet.
[0:36:26 – 0:36:26] Adam: Yeah.
[0:36:26 – 0:36:30] Erik: I mean, you see that in the banjo bars, though, even, too, still, like, right on the edge of camp.
[0:36:30 – 0:36:30] Erik: You do.
[0:36:30 – 0:36:34] Erik: People who get up in the middle of the night, and they’re just like, I don’t want to go up to the train.
[0:36:34 – 0:36:38] Adam: One of the grossest things you can find is, like, a wad of toilet paper in the woods.
[0:36:38 – 0:36:38] Adam: You see that on portages, too.
[0:36:39 – 0:36:42] Adam: It’s not going to ruin your trip or anything, but it’s still unpleasant.
[0:36:42 – 0:36:48] Erik: I mean, what are these, like, these are the people that get caught for urinating behind a dumpster in a city.
[0:36:48 – 0:36:52] Erik: Like, have you ever heard of holding it in?
[0:36:52 – 0:36:53] Erik: Plan it out a little better.
[0:36:53 – 0:36:53] Erik: Yeah.
[0:36:53 – 0:36:58] Erik: I mean, or if you have to go on a portage, like, sorry, you got to pack that out.
[0:36:58 – 0:37:00] Erik: You don’t just get to leave that in the woods.
[0:37:00 – 0:37:01] Erik: Put it in your pocket.
[0:37:01 – 0:37:01] Erik: Yeah.
[0:37:01 – 0:37:03] Erik: Get a little plastic bag.
[0:37:03 – 0:37:03] Erik: I mean, it’s…
[0:37:04 – 0:37:05] Adam: I’m really talking down to everybody today.
[0:37:06 – 0:37:06] Erik: No, no.
[0:37:06 – 0:37:14] Erik: I think we should be allowed to talk down to people who just wipe themselves and throw the toilet paper into the woods.
[0:37:15 – 0:37:16] Adam: You’re throwing toilet paper in the woods?
[0:37:16 – 0:37:17] Adam: Shame on you.
[0:37:17 – 0:37:18] Adam: You deserve to be talked down to.
[0:37:18 – 0:37:19] Erik: Yeah, sorry.
[0:37:19 – 0:37:20] Erik: Get it together.
[0:37:21 – 0:37:31] Erik: Um, so, you know, those are the, the, the infrastructure, if you will, differences that I think you do get a big feeling on campsite feelings.
[0:37:31 – 0:37:33] Erik: You do feel like you can make them a little bit more of your own.
[0:37:34 – 0:37:42] Erik: They kind of feel like they feel like a little bit more like almost like Alpine camping where you’re, you’re a little bit more at large as it were.
[0:37:44 – 0:37:46] Erik: There are still nice tent pads.
[0:37:47 – 0:37:54] Erik: It’s not as worn down, though, where you get those big 10×10 just packed dirt pads like you do find in the Boundary Waters.
[0:37:54 – 0:37:59] Adam: Yeah, you know there’s a tent on this spot every other night the whole summer, basically.
[0:37:59 – 0:38:07] Erik: Overall, beyond the campsites, before we get to portages, though, I think the overall feeling of the park, besides just that…
[0:38:08 – 0:38:24] Erik: aura that mystique that i don’t necessarily think i could put a finger on to say exactly what feels different it might just be because i know i’m in quatico or i know i’m a farther paddling distance away imaginary line on the map really but there is a distinct feeling
[0:38:24 – 0:38:41] Erik: Yeah, but just overall visual differences, I don’t know if you could necessarily drop me on a lake in the boundary waters blindfolded for a day, and then you put me back up into a helicopter or whatever, and then you fly me up into Quetico, or you just fly me one lake over, if I would necessarily be able to tell.
[0:38:42 – 0:38:48] Erik: But over the course of a day and paddling, I think the lakes feel a little bit more boreal,
[0:38:49 – 0:38:55] Erik: way more sprucey, piney, and they seem like they’re way more connected with waterways.
[0:38:55 – 0:38:59] Erik: Almost every portage up there, it feels like you’re next to moving water.
[0:38:59 – 0:39:00] Erik: Yeah, there’s a lot of that.
[0:39:00 – 0:39:03] Erik: It’s a little bit more connected.
[0:39:03 – 0:39:17] Erik: It feels a little bit more wild, and the folks that put the portages in up there didn’t necessarily feel like they needed to go out of their way to avoid a cliff or a swamp or a bog or getting…
[0:39:18 – 0:39:22] Adam: Going across the creek and then back across the creek for no reason, apparently.
[0:39:22 – 0:39:22] Adam: Yeah.
[0:39:22 – 0:39:24] Adam: Without providing a bridge, mind you.
[0:39:24 – 0:39:25] Adam: No bridges.
[0:39:25 – 0:39:28] Erik: There’s no bridges or boardwalks.
[0:39:29 – 0:39:35] Erik: Or like putting the landing 10 feet away from the lip of a waterfall or something.
[0:39:35 – 0:39:41] Erik: So little things definitely give Quetico more of an edge, for sure.
[0:39:41 – 0:39:41] Erik: Yeah.
[0:39:41 – 0:39:53] Adam: I remember when we were planning our first trip in together into Quetico and like you had me almost like terrorized a little bit prior to the trip because the way you were describing how rough the portages are.
[0:39:54 – 0:40:09] Adam: I was expecting them to just be horrendous messes, and it took until we were a few portages in, heading up to the fall chain, and I was like, well, okay, they’re rough, but they’re definitely maintained, and they’re not all that terrible.
[0:40:09 – 0:40:15] Adam: I was just picturing some truly nightmarish scenario of portages, but…
[0:40:15 – 0:40:18] Adam: They’re not that bad, and they are well-maintained.
[0:40:18 – 0:40:21] Adam: But, yeah, they definitely just, like, they go right through it sometimes.
[0:40:21 – 0:40:23] Erik: Yeah, whatever’s there, straight line.
[0:40:24 – 0:40:24] Erik: Okay.
[0:40:24 – 0:40:25] Erik: Shortest distance.
[0:40:25 – 0:40:26] Erik: No switchbacking.
[0:40:27 – 0:40:28] Erik: Maybe a couple here and there.
[0:40:28 – 0:40:42] Erik: But, you know, it’s not like you’re up in, you know, Wabakimi or just in the White Otter, whatever, provincial park north of Quetico, even beyond there, where it’s like, yeah, these lakes are near each other.
[0:40:43 – 0:40:46] Erik: There should be a path through the woods here.
[0:40:46 – 0:40:49] Erik: There’s not, so let’s just plunge a canoe through here.
[0:40:49 – 0:40:50] Erik: It’s not like that.
[0:40:50 – 0:40:54] Erik: It’s just compared to the Boundary Waters, it’s definitely trickier portages.
[0:40:54 – 0:41:01] Adam: We were talking about the Boundary Waters maps too, and we’ve got our trusty map here for Quetico.
[0:41:02 – 0:41:07] Erik: Which is, yeah, the go-to map for Quetico for us is definitely the Chrismar map.
[0:41:07 – 0:41:08] Adam: The Chrismar.
[0:41:09 – 0:41:12] Adam: We’re sitting here prepping for the show, and I go, I should get out the Chrismar.
[0:41:12 – 0:41:16] Adam: And I look, and it’s literally right on the bookshelf within arm’s reach.
[0:41:16 – 0:41:17] Adam: I just, oh, there it is.
[0:41:17 – 0:41:18] Adam: I got it.
[0:41:18 – 0:41:18] Erik: That’s where it should be.
[0:41:19 – 0:41:22] Adam: You should have that in your house, Chrismar within arm’s reach at all times.
[0:41:22 – 0:41:23] Adam: But it’s a fine map.
[0:41:23 – 0:41:24] Adam: Yeah.
[0:41:24 – 0:41:25] Adam: It’s really accurate.
[0:41:25 – 0:41:29] Adam: Wherever it says the portages are, that’s pretty much where they’re going to be.
[0:41:30 – 0:41:35] Adam: You can usually trust your CRISPR to route you where you’re planning on going.
[0:41:35 – 0:41:40] Erik: Yeah, and if you’re paddling the boundary waters, I recommend the Fisher map.
[0:41:40 – 0:41:41] Erik: There’s also McKenzie’s and Voyager’s.
[0:41:42 – 0:41:46] Erik: If you’re paddling Quetico, you will have to get used to the scale.
[0:41:46 – 0:42:10] Erik: but i would recommend going with the chrismar it’s a huge scale it’s like the whole park is on one map yeah you can get the fishers for them all and we definitely had those two just for reference but yeah you can get by with just the chrismar and the chrismar is like vetted by um some of the outfitters up in attacocan the queen herself yeah actually goes over i think it’s signed by ink the one we have is signed by the queen in ink
[0:42:11 – 0:42:12] Adam: Yeah, it’s a special edition.
[0:42:13 – 0:42:16] Erik: So those are your big differences.
[0:42:16 – 0:42:20] Erik: I’m sure we missed… Next episode, we’ll be fact-checking hard.
[0:42:20 – 0:42:29] Adam: There’s so many things that we could speak about just in this general topic of Quetico versus Boundary Waters, but in reality, it is one wilderness.
[0:42:29 – 0:42:38] Adam: When you do the prairie portage or any of these border areas that you run across, there’s usually this sign, and it says Quetico Superior Wilderness, and it has a little…
[0:42:39 – 0:42:41] Adam: bronze plaque explaining… With the deer and the bear.
[0:42:41 – 0:42:45] Adam: The deer and the bear kind of rearing up and it looks very Game of Thrones-esque.
[0:42:45 – 0:42:47] Adam: Yes.
[0:42:47 – 0:42:50] Adam: It’s quite the plaque and it really just… We should find a picture.
[0:42:50 – 0:42:51] Adam: I have a picture of that somewhere.
[0:42:51 – 0:42:53] Adam: We’ll eventually put it on the Instagram as well, but…
[0:42:54 – 0:42:55] Adam: It really says it all.
[0:42:55 – 0:42:57] Adam: It’s just a great overall place to visit.
[0:42:57 – 0:43:05] Adam: And if you can do a trip where you start in the Boundary Waters and then go up into Quetico for a little bit and then enter, you know, come back down to the Boundary Waters, you’re very lucky to do so.
[0:43:05 – 0:43:11] Erik: Yeah, if you can manage the logistics of putting together two trips like that, that’s where it gets really tricky with the overnight camping.
[0:43:11 – 0:43:22] Adam: Yeah, and I think that’s what makes the Quetico portages a little more difficult too is usually on those trips it’s a longer trip when you have a lot more gear and just food, just in the food pack, extra weight, you know.
[0:43:22 – 0:43:48] Erik: having those bigger extra like heavy packs even uh even a moderately difficult portage can become a real bear and that’s probably why i was terrorizing you with the the sound you’re really getting me ready for it well because we were going out for like a month and i had a royal x canoe and we were single portaging so i had this like dense as a dying sun food pack with a royal x canoe on my back and everything felt way crazier than it actually was when i should have just been
[0:43:48 – 0:43:53] Adam: And we had a Kevlar gel coat boat, and we were packed very heavily.
[0:43:54 – 0:43:58] Adam: And we were single portaging a lot, but then there’s a lot of times where we said, whatever, we’ll double portage.
[0:43:59 – 0:44:00] Adam: It’s not that big of a deal.
[0:44:00 – 0:44:00] Adam: Enjoy the portage.
[0:44:00 – 0:44:01] Erik: It’s a little walk in the woods.
[0:44:01 – 0:44:07] Adam: Yeah, because then you get to walk through again with nothing on your back, and you can kind of look around, appreciate it more.
[0:44:08 – 0:44:10] Adam: And it should be appreciated, but…
[0:44:10 – 0:44:18] Erik: Yeah, and so we’ll leave the differences at that, I think, but it does bring us to, I think, our question of the week.
[0:44:18 – 0:44:19] Erik: Question of the week.
[0:44:19 – 0:44:21] Adam: Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do.
[0:44:21 – 0:44:23] Adam: The sound effect for everything.
[0:44:24 – 0:44:24] Erik: I’m fine with that.
[0:44:24 – 0:44:25] Erik: Party horn.
[0:44:25 – 0:44:31] Erik: Well, we’ll just have to get some cute snoozing sounds from the pup here for eventual sound effects.
[0:44:31 – 0:44:32] Erik: How do you sleep in the boundary waters?
[0:44:32 – 0:44:33] Erik: Get a little pup snoozing noise?
[0:44:33 – 0:44:34] Adam: I’m a pup.
[0:44:34 – 0:44:36] Adam: I just sleep everywhere, wherever I want.
[0:44:36 – 0:44:44] Erik: We’re asking, or we have asked, that is, what is your least favorite portage?
[0:44:44 – 0:44:46] Erik: What’s your worst portaging story?
[0:44:46 – 0:44:48] Erik: We’re talking about portages.
[0:44:49 – 0:44:50] Erik: If you want to tell us about your favorite ones.
[0:44:51 – 0:44:57] Erik: Fair enough, but I think the worst ones, the ones where you have a terrible time on, those are the ones where the good stories come from.
[0:44:57 – 0:44:58] Adam: Right.
[0:44:58 – 0:45:03] Adam: Neither of us have done the Grand Portage, and that one’s certainly the longest portage that you can find up here.
[0:45:03 – 0:45:03] Adam: Yes.
[0:45:03 – 0:45:05] Adam: Does anybody have any stories from this?
[0:45:05 – 0:45:08] Adam: I’d love to hear, but I know one guy who’s done it actually with a canoe.
[0:45:09 – 0:45:12] Adam: It seems crazy, but it’s always in the back of my mind.
[0:45:12 – 0:45:15] Adam: I’d like to try that just as a test, a true test.
[0:45:15 – 0:45:18] Erik: Yeah, just a notch or a badge.
[0:45:18 – 0:45:20] Adam: Imagine all the ghosts you can encounter on that route.
[0:45:21 – 0:45:23] Erik: Mm-hmm.
[0:45:23 – 0:45:27] Erik: If it’s in the Boundary Waters or if it’s in Quetico, wherever.
[0:45:28 – 0:45:31] Erik: But we are going to get to what you guys have to think.
[0:45:31 – 0:45:36] Erik: But let’s start with maybe a couple that come to mind right off the top of your head.
[0:45:37 – 0:45:41] Erik: It’s really only been something that I’ve just kind of started thinking about hard today.
[0:45:41 – 0:45:43] Erik: So I haven’t had too much time to think about it.
[0:45:43 – 0:45:43] Erik: Have you?
[0:45:44 – 0:45:51] Adam: Yeah, you know, certainly the one around Basswood Falls comes to mind just because it’s monotonous and long.
[0:45:52 – 0:45:54] Adam: And we were trying to single portage that.
[0:45:54 – 0:45:58] Adam: And I think that one was the one where I like put the canoe down and then kind of like…
[0:45:59 – 0:46:01] Adam: you know, got my hands on my knees and just breathing heavy.
[0:46:01 – 0:46:02] Adam: It took forever.
[0:46:03 – 0:46:04] Adam: It’s a really long one.
[0:46:04 – 0:46:07] Adam: And I just remember that being just nasty too.
[0:46:07 – 0:46:09] Adam: And it was on a long day too.
[0:46:09 – 0:46:14] Adam: We were like trying to push into Ely to resupply and most importantly, get to the beer store before it closed.
[0:46:14 – 0:46:16] Adam: So we were really hauling it that day too.
[0:46:17 – 0:46:20] Erik: Yeah, we had been out of booze for like three or four days.
[0:46:20 – 0:46:22] Adam: So we had a goal in mind, though.
[0:46:22 – 0:46:22] Adam: It was a goal.
[0:46:22 – 0:46:23] Adam: So we were really pushing.
[0:46:23 – 0:46:24] Adam: Yeah.
[0:46:24 – 0:46:30] Adam: It was like I was at the end of a long trip, too, and I was really pushing my body to the limit and myself mentally at the same time.
[0:46:30 – 0:46:33] Adam: Even though it’s not a hard portage, it’s just incredibly long.
[0:46:33 – 0:46:36] Adam: Like that’s as close as I’ve ever come to doing a grand portage.
[0:46:36 – 0:46:37] Adam: Yeah.
[0:46:37 – 0:46:39] Adam: It’s not nearly seven miles or whatever, but…
[0:46:39 – 0:46:40] Erik: It’s almost two miles.
[0:46:40 – 0:46:41] Erik: It’s a long one.
[0:46:41 – 0:46:41] Erik: Yeah.
[0:46:42 – 0:46:46] Erik: And it is like you said, it’s almost like way too well maintained and well used.
[0:46:46 – 0:46:47] Erik: And it was pretty dry.
[0:46:47 – 0:46:48] Erik: That was the other thing.
[0:46:48 – 0:46:50] Erik: It was like super dry that year we were in there.
[0:46:51 – 0:47:01] Erik: So it was basically like this dirt sidewalk path that, yeah, it’s really nice to walk on, but it also doesn’t give you anything to think about footing wise.
[0:47:01 – 0:47:02] Erik: So you’re just trudging.
[0:47:02 – 0:47:03] Erik: You’re just walking along.
[0:47:03 – 0:47:05] Adam: You’re basically going to be walking down the street.
[0:47:06 – 0:47:11] Adam: Yeah, one that’s more difficult and long on the Boundary Waterside is Missing Link to Tuscarora.
[0:47:11 – 0:47:14] Adam: I’m sure a lot of people out there have done this one.
[0:47:14 – 0:47:16] Adam: I’ve done it a handful of times.
[0:47:16 – 0:47:20] Adam: It always seems way longer than the listed rodage.
[0:47:21 – 0:47:26] Adam: And the worst time I ever did it was in my solo canoe, which was a pretty heavy older boat with wooden gunnels.
[0:47:27 – 0:47:31] Adam: And I was doing it in the middle of the night trying to meet people on Tuscarora at night.
[0:47:32 – 0:47:33] Erik: That’s like a 428?
[0:47:33 – 0:47:44] Adam: Yeah, so I had a full heavy pack and this really heavy solo canoe, and I’m kind of stumbling through this portage in the dark, and then my headlamp was basically giving out.
[0:47:45 – 0:47:47] Adam: It was a real nightmare scenario.
[0:47:47 – 0:47:50] Erik: Your headlamp giving out is never a unique thing, though.
[0:47:50 – 0:47:55] Adam: I literally have only had a good headlamp for like three minutes total in my life with a solid battery.
[0:47:55 – 0:47:58] Adam: But yeah, so I mean, I remember at the end of that one just kind of,
[0:47:59 – 0:48:00] Adam: I fell a couple of times.
[0:48:01 – 0:48:02] Adam: It was really rough.
[0:48:02 – 0:48:03] Adam: Like I was lucky I didn’t hurt myself.
[0:48:04 – 0:48:13] Adam: And I did eventually stagger into Tuscarora and then I look and I can see across like one campfire and I go, well, I hope that’s them.
[0:48:13 – 0:48:15] Adam: And I just paddled out and sure enough, it was them.
[0:48:15 – 0:48:15] Adam: I found them.
[0:48:16 – 0:48:43] Adam: and they were actually still awake i was out there pretty late so that one was bad it wasn’t them and then the they just asked you if you wanted to see a dead body yeah it was a little weird but i just went with it yeah so another one i really don’t like that is actually not that bad it just personally i hate it is uh poplar lake to meads i i lived on poplar lake for a good amount of time and so i’ve done all those portages a lot and i just hate that portage
[0:48:43 – 0:49:09] Erik: it’s listed at 350 but it’s definitely 500 it’s just it’s terrible no that’s a fact it’s not 500 well it feels like 500 the one that does come up that’s got the biggest dispute in terms of what it says on a map and what i hear from people is the one from pine to canoe oh yeah that one looper it’s the only one on a map that i’ve ever seen that actually shows the switchbacks yeah it’s just like we’re kind of wandering through the woods and you’re like
[0:49:09 – 0:49:24] Adam: that can’t be right and then you get on it and it literally is just winding your way up and over this hill and then down the hill and it’s never going if you had a compass on you literally you’re never going in the actual direction of pine and that’s the preferred way to go from canoe down to pine but either way is terrible
[0:49:24 – 0:49:30] Erik: From canoe to pine, there’s a crazy steep climb right away, but then you get it all over with, and then you just slowly drop down to pine.
[0:49:31 – 0:49:35] Erik: But from pine back up to canoe, it’s just like a mountain hike.
[0:49:35 – 0:49:35] Erik: It’s a real march.
[0:49:36 – 0:49:39] Erik: You’re just switching back, back, and forth, back, and forth.
[0:49:40 – 0:49:41] Erik: It’s so crazy.
[0:49:41 – 0:49:44] Erik: I’ve seen it on the fishers as like a 320-rod portage.
[0:49:46 – 0:49:48] Erik: I’ve seen it on the McKenzie’s.
[0:49:48 – 0:49:49] Erik: It’s like over 400.
[0:49:49 – 0:49:52] Adam: Yeah, that one’s pretty famously terrible.
[0:49:52 – 0:49:55] Erik: And then every time somebody comes off the trailer, like, it easily was two miles.
[0:49:55 – 0:49:56] Erik: It was easily two miles.
[0:49:56 – 0:50:03] Erik: And it’s like, yeah, it feels like it, but my promise to you and you and you.
[0:50:04 – 0:50:09] Erik: is I’m going to walk that with a GPS this year and get an exact measurement.
[0:50:09 – 0:50:10] Adam: Ooh, that’s a worthy cause.
[0:50:10 – 0:50:10] Adam: Yes.
[0:50:11 – 0:50:23] Adam: I remember one time we were camped on canoe, and we got into canoe pretty late coming from East Bearskin with the plan we eventually did end up going down to Johnson Falls and then coming back out Caribou, but…
[0:50:23 – 0:50:26] Adam: We pull into canoe really late, and there’s nasty clouds coming.
[0:50:26 – 0:50:31] Adam: And the two sites on the left to the east, or to the west, I’m sorry, were both taken.
[0:50:31 – 0:50:35] Adam: And we kind of look, and that third nasty site on canoe is, we thought, open.
[0:50:35 – 0:50:37] Adam: So we paddle over there, and, okay, it’s open.
[0:50:38 – 0:50:38] Adam: We’re just going to take it.
[0:50:38 – 0:50:42] Adam: We literally get in there and, like, set up a rain fly, and it starts just pouring.
[0:50:42 – 0:50:43] Adam: And it’s getting dark.
[0:50:43 – 0:50:51] Adam: And then this is the part I really, we look over, and from, you can see that portage then to our east, right?
[0:50:52 – 0:51:01] Adam: Uh, and I look over and there’s somebody coming out of there with an aluminum canoe and then another, and then another, it was a three aluminum canoe group of like seven dudes.
[0:51:02 – 0:51:06] Adam: And they were, it was basically dark by the time they all got their boats back in the water.
[0:51:06 – 0:51:09] Adam: And then I knew just there’s nothing, nothing on canoe for them.
[0:51:09 – 0:51:10] Adam: So it was going to be another portage.
[0:51:11 – 0:51:36] Adam: back to alder i’m sure and then there was going to be a site for him on alder but that’s just i really felt for him because it was like i know how bad that that portage was and then to to not be able to just immediately set up camp when it’s dark and a storm coming in it was a terrible storm it really rained on us bad that night and it’s just i the whole time i was like man i wonder what happened to them guys i’m sure they were fine but they’re somewhere yeah you wouldn’t wish that upon your worst enemy
[0:51:38 – 0:51:41] Adam: Our site was very bad, but there was no room for him.
[0:51:41 – 0:51:43] Adam: That was one of the situations where I almost flagged him down.
[0:51:44 – 0:51:45] Adam: Like, you can just stay here.
[0:51:45 – 0:51:47] Adam: I’m so sorry what you’ve gone through.
[0:51:47 – 0:51:48] Erik: Yeah.
[0:51:48 – 0:51:50] Erik: Well, that’s how it goes.
[0:51:50 – 0:51:53] Adam: That’s what happens when you end up in that portage with like two hours of daylight left.
[0:51:53 – 0:51:53] Adam: Yeah.
[0:51:54 – 0:51:54] Adam: Sorry.
[0:51:55 – 0:51:57] Adam: But yeah, that one’s bad.
[0:51:57 – 0:51:59] Erik: The decisions you have made has led you to this point.
[0:51:59 – 0:52:00] Adam: Truly.
[0:52:00 – 0:52:01] Adam: Should have got up earlier.
[0:52:01 – 0:52:01] Erik: Yeah.
[0:52:02 – 0:52:06] Erik: No, that’s always one that I think is on everybody’s list is that Canoe to Pine one.
[0:52:07 – 0:52:11] Erik: One for me up in Quetico, the Eat Em Up Portage.
[0:52:11 – 0:52:15] Erik: I love that the portages up in Quetico do come with names a lot.
[0:52:15 – 0:52:15] Erik: Yeah.
[0:52:16 – 0:52:18] Erik: There’s not really any of those on the Boundary Waters side.
[0:52:18 – 0:52:21] Adam: There is one up there called the Garden Walk, which is very nice.
[0:52:21 – 0:52:21] Adam: Which is actually a garden walk.
[0:52:21 – 0:52:22] Adam: It was a real garden.
[0:52:22 – 0:52:26] Adam: So now we kind of call any nice portage a garden walk based on that one.
[0:52:26 – 0:52:26] Erik: Yeah.
[0:52:26 – 0:52:29] Erik: That’s like from Batchewan to McAlpine, I think.
[0:52:29 – 0:52:30] Erik: I believe you’re right.
[0:52:31 – 0:52:35] Erik: The Tanner down to the Darkie River, though, is the eat-em-up portage.
[0:52:35 – 0:52:35] Erik: Yeah.
[0:52:35 – 0:52:36] Erik: And it was…
[0:52:37 – 0:52:50] Erik: I don’t know if it was the conditions that year or what, but it seemed like you climbed, climbed, climbed, and then the whole plateau before you dropped back down to the river was just like no boardwalk through knee-deep, boot-sucking muck.
[0:52:51 – 0:52:52] Erik: That’s never fun.
[0:52:52 – 0:53:03] Erik: No, and it was, again, on that trip where I had like an overweight Royal X canoe and food pack that we were trying to single portage, and it probably had a lot to do with the fact we were trying to single portage.
[0:53:03 – 0:53:05] Adam: Yeah, that always amplifies the difficulty.
[0:53:06 – 0:53:24] Erik: The Edomup Portage, and then just to shout out one more on Quetico, and it wasn’t necessarily because the portage itself was so bad, but it was because between when the map we had was printed and the beaver dam had blown out, which did not allow for any paddling…
[0:53:25 – 0:53:28] Erik: Uh, we were basically creating our own portage.
[0:53:28 – 0:53:31] Erik: We were literally, we had unfolded the Svensa’s.
[0:53:31 – 0:53:35] Erik: We were cutting down little balsams to try to make lanes for our canoes.
[0:53:36 – 0:53:37] Erik: Doing good work.
[0:53:37 – 0:53:38] Erik: I guess.
[0:53:38 – 0:53:40] Erik: I was not, we were not expecting to go through that.
[0:53:40 – 0:53:41] Adam: Friends of Quetico appreciate that.
[0:53:42 – 0:53:47] Erik: And fortunately it was the first portage of the day, but it was from, uh, Trant to Casha Peewee.
[0:53:47 – 0:53:50] Adam: It’s always frustrating when you have to get the saw out on a portage.
[0:53:50 – 0:53:52] Adam: It happens.
[0:53:52 – 0:53:56] Adam: I think the worst example of that is when you’re basically just creating a portage.
[0:53:56 – 0:53:57] Adam: You’re not just clearing one.
[0:53:57 – 0:54:05] Erik: Yeah, the worst example is having to create a portage or clear those early spring trips, blow down from the winter, or when branches come down.
[0:54:06 – 0:54:09] Erik: We’ve been on plenty of those, too, where you’re just like, oh, well, this happened.
[0:54:09 – 0:54:13] Adam: Those May trips when you’re the first one through, like, yeah, it could happen.
[0:54:13 – 0:54:21] Erik: There’s the potential for moose antlers, and there’s also the potential for waist-size white pines to be leaning over the trail as well.
[0:54:21 – 0:54:22] Adam: It’s going to be a fun challenge.
[0:54:23 – 0:54:29] Adam: Yeah, I want to leave some for our friends on Reddit, but I have one more I must mention.
[0:54:29 – 0:54:31] Adam: And this kind of goes back to our whole…
[0:54:31 – 0:54:33] Adam: On the Laos river trip we did last year.
[0:54:33 – 0:54:34] Adam: Oh yes.
[0:54:34 – 0:54:40] Adam: And we were on the whole trip cause we did the little, the Zenith to little Janu portage, which is incredibly long.
[0:54:40 – 0:54:44] Adam: And we had a lot of weight on us and there’s a couple of boardwalks that were like flooded.
[0:54:45 – 0:54:50] Adam: You’re wiggling across slippery boards and shin deep water and it just goes on and on.
[0:54:50 – 0:54:55] Adam: And so that guy was talking on that trip about like the, uh, a rating system.
[0:54:55 – 0:54:57] Adam: for portages, which we were then jokingly.
[0:54:57 – 0:55:02] Adam: And I think now seriously calling the Danielson scale for you, it was your idea.
[0:55:02 – 0:55:05] Adam: And we kind of developed it together on that trip, but basically you’d like,
[0:55:06 – 0:55:09] Adam: The rodage of a portage doesn’t really tell the whole tale.
[0:55:09 – 0:55:16] Adam: You need a difficulty scale to truly describe it, and maybe we’re overthinking it, but it’s kind of fun to think of these things sometimes.
[0:55:16 – 0:55:17] Erik: Well, that’s what we do.
[0:55:17 – 0:55:18] Erik: We overthink it.
[0:55:18 – 0:55:18] Adam: Yeah, why not?
[0:55:19 – 0:55:29] Adam: So, yeah, it’s like you could have a green, a yellow, and a red to denote the difficulty scale, and then a number or a rod number to describe the length, and that’s just a minimum of what you could do.
[0:55:30 – 0:55:32] Adam: There’s a few other factors you could have in play, but…
[0:55:32 – 0:55:34] Erik: You can have a really long portage that’s still green-rated.
[0:55:34 – 0:55:35] Erik: Yeah, like a really long garden walk.
[0:55:35 – 0:55:37] Erik: A really short portage that’s a red-rated.
[0:55:37 – 0:55:43] Adam: Or that one that just is a ladder of steepness and terrible footing, and that could be a red one.
[0:55:44 – 0:55:46] Adam: You know, it’s short, but incredibly difficult.
[0:55:46 – 0:55:50] Adam: But we were on one on the Laos River that really threw a hole.
[0:55:50 – 0:55:51] Erik: Threw it for a loop.
[0:55:51 – 0:55:54] Adam: Because it was really, like, it wasn’t that long.
[0:55:54 – 0:55:59] Adam: Maybe it was listed at 90 or 70 rods, and we were moving along, really, and we had just come off a couple really tricky ones.
[0:56:00 – 0:56:03] Adam: So we’re moving along really nice through there and go, see, this would be a green one.
[0:56:04 – 0:56:10] Adam: Literally, after he said that, you come around the corner and the trail just disappears into this deep crevasse.
[0:56:10 – 0:56:16] Adam: It’s like a V. A V shape, very steep V shape into this crack in the rock.
[0:56:16 – 0:56:21] Adam: which is not, it was far enough where you’re definitely not going to try and jump across, especially with a canoe on top.
[0:56:22 – 0:56:22] Adam: Yeah.
[0:56:22 – 0:56:24] Adam: And it was kind of wet that day.
[0:56:24 – 0:56:24] Adam: Kind of.
[0:56:24 – 0:56:25] Adam: And there’s no branches.
[0:56:25 – 0:56:25] Adam: Very wet.
[0:56:25 – 0:56:32] Adam: We basically had to take everything off and slide all down into this crevasse, then kind of heave stuff up the other side.
[0:56:32 – 0:56:34] Erik: And there was moving water through the crevasse.
[0:56:34 – 0:56:38] Adam: Yeah, it was like, this should definitely have some sort of suspension bridge over it.
[0:56:38 – 0:56:39] Adam: This is incredibly dangerous.
[0:56:40 – 0:56:42] Adam: And we’re, like, tall people.
[0:56:43 – 0:57:10] Adam: and in in pretty good shape and even for us it was like a real challenge to get across that in one piece and there was the that one sad pine tree that you could tell just people had been grabbing onto it for years and somehow it was still holding into the roots and if there if that tree wouldn’t have been there it would have probably been impossible route and cut a whole new portage somehow which is probably what needs to happen there so you do run into stuff weird things like that where you’re just motoring along and all saying so it went from like basically uh
[0:57:11 – 0:57:16] Adam: a 90 rod green portage to then we reclassified it as almost unclassified.
[0:57:16 – 0:57:22] Adam: We had then developed, it’s not even just a red difficulty because of this one feature that we had to overcome.
[0:57:23 – 0:57:33] Adam: It almost went from red to unclassified or beyond classification, like a black rated, very dangerous, beware on your top game when you’re going to hit this portage.
[0:57:34 – 0:57:39] Erik: Yeah, I would have to go through that route specifically to see if I could actually remember where that was.
[0:57:39 – 0:57:40] Erik: I don’t know if I could point it on a map right away.
[0:57:40 – 0:57:41] Erik: I’m sure we could figure that out.
[0:57:42 – 0:57:45] Erik: Because that’s like Little River Portage.
[0:57:46 – 0:57:55] Adam: If you’re going with the current on the Laos River, it was like the second or third main portage in the river section itself before we got back to Lake Country going west.
[0:57:56 – 0:57:57] Erik: Yeah, but it was just shocking.
[0:57:57 – 0:58:00] Adam: I think that’s just one where not a lot of people are in there.
[0:58:00 – 0:58:01] Erik: The lack of footing.
[0:58:01 – 0:58:07] Erik: And I think, fortunately for us, we were actually trailing some rangers who had just cleared it.
[0:58:07 – 0:58:10] Erik: Because you could, like, smell the sawdust of people that had cleared trees.
[0:58:11 – 0:58:16] Erik: And even with that in our favor, they can’t do anything about a huge crevasse.
[0:58:16 – 0:58:18] Adam: Yeah, but how did that portage end up there in the first place?
[0:58:19 – 0:58:22] Adam: Was it more filled in and then got washed out by a flood or something?
[0:58:22 – 0:58:22] Adam: Yeah.
[0:58:23 – 0:58:24] Erik: Maybe there’s no other way to get around it.
[0:58:24 – 0:58:31] Adam: I don’t know why that one was there, but that was one of the craziest individual features I’ve ever come across in the middle of a portage.
[0:58:31 – 0:58:35] Adam: How are we supposed to get across this without some sort of rope and pulley system?
[0:58:36 – 0:58:37] Adam: Baffling.
[0:58:37 – 0:58:43] Erik: Although it was in the middle southern section of the Bonjou waters, it felt like we were in the heart of Quetico.
[0:58:43 – 0:58:45] Erik: This is a challenging portage.
[0:58:45 – 0:58:49] Adam: To get to that portage, I’d say even for us with a light pack, it would be hard to get there in one day.
[0:58:50 – 0:59:02] Erik: All right, and with that, before we give away all of the portages that we hate and our fun portaging experiences, let’s see what some of our listeners who have been kind enough to reach out have to say.
[0:59:02 – 0:59:05] Erik: Let’s start with the Facebook folks.
[0:59:07 – 0:59:26] Erik: Scott has a comment about a portage that I have actually not done, which is kind of a travesty considering how close it is to where I’m at, but it’s always just been one of those that’s just never been in the realm of possibility on a trip I’ve been on.
[0:59:27 – 0:59:28] Erik: Yeah, I’ve never been there either.
[0:59:29 – 0:59:34] Erik: But he has done the Pine Lake to Stump portage.
[0:59:35 – 0:59:35] Erik: Wow.
[0:59:36 – 0:59:37] Adam: Hats off to you, Scott.
[0:59:37 – 0:59:38] Erik: Yeah, for sure.
[0:59:39 – 0:59:41] Erik: I mean, I always look over at that stump lake.
[0:59:41 – 0:59:42] Erik: I’ve done a little bit of research.
[0:59:44 – 0:59:52] Erik: And I was surprised on your comment to say that there was an abundance of walleye and sauger because I had always just heard that it was a pike lake.
[0:59:54 – 1:00:19] Adam: with uh that weird campsite that’s like on that little i’ve always just wanted to see the campsite can you see both sides i assume you can yeah it’s like stump slash long lake but it’s pretty much all the same body of water yeah it’s kind of east of crocodile on the sticks there yeah from the from the clear water side that’d be kind of a long trip to go in there i guess but i guess if you’re going to stump you’re probably going through mcfarland
[1:00:20 – 1:00:32] Erik: yeah but yeah i don’t know that portage definitely doesn’t look appealing so it looks like we’ll take your word for it yeah and it looks like it’s really hard to find too because it’s just right on a random long flat shoreline you should get some sort of merit badge for going to stump
[1:00:33 – 1:00:35] Erik: Merit badge bequeathed.
[1:00:36 – 1:00:42] Erik: Brian, also on Facebook, definitely seconds the Zenith to Luginita that we talked about.
[1:00:42 – 1:00:43] Erik: Amen, brother.
[1:00:44 – 1:00:48] Erik: He has aspirations to do the Grand Portage this year, which is also admirable.
[1:00:49 – 1:00:50] Erik: Let us know how that goes if you do.
[1:00:51 – 1:00:54] Erik: And if there are buttless chaps involved, please, picks.
[1:00:54 – 1:00:55] Erik: I think you have to now.
[1:00:56 – 1:00:56] Erik: Yeah.
[1:00:57 – 1:00:59] Adam: See our Instagram feed for example.
[1:00:59 – 1:01:00] Adam: Yes.
[1:01:00 – 1:01:01] Adam: On how that’s supposed to look.
[1:01:02 – 1:01:05] Adam: It helps to let your butt breathe on those long portage, I guess.
[1:01:05 – 1:01:05] Adam: Yeah, 11 miles.
[1:01:05 – 1:01:08] Adam: You get bit by a lot of mosquito, I guess.
[1:01:09 – 1:01:14] Erik: What’s worse, a little bit of crotch rot or mosquito bites on the butt?
[1:01:14 – 1:01:19] Erik: He also says Ada, the scoop was a mess back in 2015.
[1:01:19 – 1:01:20] Erik: Probably still pretty bad.
[1:01:22 – 1:01:23] Erik: Had some issues with the caribou portage.
[1:01:24 – 1:01:29] Erik: We’ve talked about that in the past with the different turns that are not on the map.
[1:01:30 – 1:01:41] Erik: One of the things that he brought to mind, which we kind of had a conversation over a couple of days on Facebook about, was the portage, which is horribly marked on multiple maps.
[1:01:41 – 1:01:43] Erik: Almost every one I’ve ever seen, actually.
[1:01:43 – 1:01:48] Erik: The portage from Daniels to Rove, which is… That’s a bear.
[1:01:48 – 1:01:56] Erik: It’s a weird portage in general because it shares, you know, it’s technically the border route trail.
[1:01:57 – 1:01:59] Erik: It’s technically the long portage.
[1:01:59 – 1:02:02] Erik: It’s technically the portage between Rove and Daniels.
[1:02:02 – 1:02:08] Adam: And certainly if you’re going to the west there, it kind of follows the creek and it’s quite beautiful.
[1:02:09 – 1:02:13] Adam: And you get in some really big cedars in there, and then you pop out on Rose.
[1:02:13 – 1:02:21] Adam: But when you turn back to the east on it going towards Rove, it doesn’t quite follow that, I guess, would be the Arrow River.
[1:02:22 – 1:02:27] Adam: I don’t know what you would call that, but there’s definitely some moving water, some bog, some…
[1:02:27 – 1:02:29] Adam: I’m going to say it’s the Arrow River, Upper Arrow River.
[1:02:29 – 1:02:30] Adam: Yeah.
[1:02:30 – 1:02:32] Adam: Unlabeled river between Rove and Rose.
[1:02:32 – 1:02:39] Erik: But every map I’ve ever seen has that portage basically running right through there like it follows the border.
[1:02:39 – 1:02:42] Adam: Like it follows the river or creek the whole way.
[1:02:42 – 1:02:43] Adam: But it doesn’t.
[1:02:43 – 1:02:44] Adam: It certainly does not.
[1:02:44 – 1:02:45] Adam: No.
[1:02:45 – 1:02:48] Adam: And it’s really long, too, and pretty difficult.
[1:02:48 – 1:02:56] Adam: And so you get this derangement where you feel like you should be there like 30 rods ago and no lake even in sight.
[1:02:56 – 1:02:58] Adam: And you’re kind of way more hills than you’d expect.
[1:02:58 – 1:03:02] Adam: Because, yeah, on the maps it just shows it should be pretty flat following the creek.
[1:03:02 – 1:03:02] Adam: Yeah.
[1:03:02 – 1:03:03] Adam: Not so.
[1:03:03 – 1:03:08] Erik: It veers way off into the woods to the south of where that little meandering creek is.
[1:03:08 – 1:03:14] Adam: I’ve only done that one once, and I had a pack and a canoe on it, and I don’t think I ever want to go back through there.
[1:03:15 – 1:03:19] Adam: But it is a neat route then once you get into Rove and then into Wattop.
[1:03:19 – 1:03:22] Adam: I mean, that’s a nice way to do it, but very difficult portage indeed.
[1:03:23 – 1:03:30] Erik: I’ve been involved in hiking it more than I have actually been involved in portaging gear and canoes from any one direction, so…
[1:03:31 – 1:03:44] Erik: I’ve kind of come from all different angles there, and if there is a trail that is marked on both McKenzie’s and Fisher’s that shows it following the actual border, I’ve never found it.
[1:03:44 – 1:03:47] Erik: Wouldn’t be the first time that…
[1:03:48 – 1:04:07] Erik: the trail is just not there yeah no it’s it’s not there and the fisher one is hilarious like it’s so confusing like i don’t even know what’s going on they show multiple trails there’s there’s really only one trail with a t and there’s only one way to get there there’s a sign at that t there is a sign at the t yeah that’s the one thing that’s gonna say border route trail
[1:04:08 – 1:04:34] Erik: That’s the one thing it’s got going for it there Is that the only signage that’s left in the park nowadays Is border route trail signage Pretty much I know there’s another sign east of there too Where it goes down to that first campsite On the Clearwater campsite There’s a sign up there I think there’s maybe a sign in the Rose Falls area Maybe the South Lake Trail intersection But yeah those are really the only places You’re going to find signs anymore Um
[1:04:35 – 1:04:44] Erik: Let’s go over to the other place where we are fortunate enough to get some people responding to the questions of the week, which is RBWCA.
[1:04:45 – 1:04:51] Erik: And Leroy218 leads off the comments with…
[1:04:52 – 1:05:05] Erik: Kind of echoing what we were saying earlier in the BWCA versus Quetico conversation, which I think we agree with, which is that Quetico has the most memorable portage.
[1:05:05 – 1:05:07] Erik: Yum Yum, yes.
[1:05:07 – 1:05:12] Erik: Delay Heat Economy, I believe, also referred to as one of the Death March portages.
[1:05:12 – 1:05:32] Adam: portages yes which uh you know quetico is great because it has the uh i love the fun names on the portage you get some of that on the just on the border out lakes um but not so much in the actual boundary waters park but yeah i like the i like the fun names yeah they’re not just like zenith to luginita they’re like death march the have a smoke
[1:05:32 – 1:05:33] Erik: Have a smoke.
[1:05:34 – 1:05:34] Erik: Eat them up.
[1:05:35 – 1:05:38] Erik: Yeah, the Portage names in Quetico definitely add a little bit more.
[1:05:38 – 1:05:39] Erik: Garden Walk.
[1:05:40 – 1:05:42] Erik: And then there’s the Garden Walk, which is aptly named.
[1:05:42 – 1:05:43] Erik: Yeah.
[1:05:43 – 1:05:51] Erik: He also says the hands-off approach to Portage maintenance makes everything interesting, which is definitely true.
[1:05:51 – 1:05:51] Erik: Indeed.
[1:05:51 – 1:05:52] Erik: Indeed.
[1:05:52 – 1:06:04] Erik: Also maybe hypothesize that some of the portages were put in as a closest two points without taking into any account of like hills or boulders.
[1:06:04 – 1:06:08] Erik: It just is like, here’s where the lake ends and this is the closest point to the next part of a lake.
[1:06:09 – 1:06:10] Erik: That’s where the trail is going.
[1:06:10 – 1:06:14] Erik: Whatever comes in between those two points is what you’re going to run into.
[1:06:14 – 1:06:16] Adam: Take that portage like a bull moose.
[1:06:16 – 1:06:17] Adam: Yeah.
[1:06:17 – 1:06:42] Erik: yeah uh and uh he also or she again trouble user this user uh has some uh our friend our friend leroy our friend leroy uh also comments about the the b-dub i love the use of b-dub yep i like their park their favorites i’m a fan of the park as well the uh he’s uh they’ve got some favorites on the frost river loop oh i’ll be going there in may i can’t wait
[1:06:43 – 1:06:47] Erik: Yeah, there are some crazy rock walls on that loop.
[1:06:48 – 1:06:56] Erik: I know that there is specifically mentioned here the crazy rock wall thing going out of Afton Lake.
[1:06:56 – 1:06:58] Erik: Yeah, that’s about the best description for it.
[1:06:58 – 1:07:03] Erik: It’s a very short portage, but there is a crazy like aggro crag.
[1:07:03 – 1:07:10] Erik: You basically have to have somebody like kind of handing you the canoe as you’re up on top of this like cliff thing and then you pull it up.
[1:07:11 – 1:07:18] Erik: It’s kind of comparable and a little bit more extreme even than the Silver Falls portage in Niquetico.
[1:07:20 – 1:07:20] Adam: Yeah.
[1:07:21 – 1:07:23] Adam: There’s a couple of little helpers in there.
[1:07:23 – 1:07:25] Adam: You may want to stick close to your partner on that.
[1:07:25 – 1:07:26] Erik: Yeah, definitely.
[1:07:26 – 1:07:29] Erik: That’d be a tough one to solo without scratching up the canoe.
[1:07:29 – 1:07:36] Adam: San Temperance to Cherokee is the highland between Superior and Hudson Bay.
[1:07:39 – 1:07:47] Erik: Yeah, the Cherokee Portage is a high-to-land portage.
[1:07:47 – 1:08:00] Erik: I think it might be a high-to-land between Lake Superior and Hudson Bay in a way, but I know the most famous one is the high-to-land between North and South Lake.
[1:08:01 – 1:08:02] Adam: That one is named Height of Land.
[1:08:02 – 1:08:03] Adam: Yeah.
[1:08:03 – 1:08:09] Adam: And you have to do the ceremony on it, which involves whiskey, a shotgun, and a… Paddling?
[1:08:09 – 1:08:10] Adam: A pine bough.
[1:08:11 – 1:08:12] Adam: Oh.
[1:08:12 – 1:08:17] Adam: There’s some sort of… You’ve got to use a pine bough to sprinkle water on the new recruit.
[1:08:17 – 1:08:19] Erik: I thought it was some kind of a thrashing.
[1:08:19 – 1:08:46] Adam: maybe it’s yeah the there’s a gentle version and there’s a rough version depending on how how well you’ve been paddling to get there some kind of a promise that you wouldn’t sleep with other voyagers that’s what the old sign used to say which is odd i guess but it seems uh ripe for a fact checker we’ll get back to you on the i have a picture of that old sign somewhere in my uh catalog we’ll have to dig that up but
[1:08:46 – 1:08:52] Adam: There’s a ceremony involved, and I love the idea of the named portages, but also of different ceremonies for different portages.
[1:08:52 – 1:08:53] Adam: Why not?
[1:08:54 – 1:08:59] Erik: I was thinking more along the lines of fact-checking the divides, because there are definitely a few.
[1:08:59 – 1:09:06] Erik: I think there’s all four, east, west, north, south, basically within the whole arrowhead of Minnesota.
[1:09:07 – 1:09:08] Adam: Yeah, I love looking at it.
[1:09:09 – 1:09:12] Adam: I could just stare at maps for hours trying to figure that out.
[1:09:12 – 1:09:16] Adam: Like, yeah, if you go this way, everything starts going downhill.
[1:09:17 – 1:09:26] Adam: I love to look at the elevations on the lakes as we’re doing a trip, you know, because it does go up and down on you, but then generally you’re either going up or you’re going down.
[1:09:26 – 1:09:31] Adam: And then when you notice the change, it’s always kind of a refreshing thing.
[1:09:31 – 1:09:31] Erik: Yeah.
[1:09:31 – 1:09:37] Erik: Though the height of land portage, with the name as it is, you would expect something, and it’s relatively benign.
[1:09:37 – 1:09:39] Adam: That’s a real garden walk, that one.
[1:09:39 – 1:09:39] Erik: Mm-hmm.
[1:09:39 – 1:09:41] Erik: It’s a little muddy, but it’s flat.
[1:09:41 – 1:09:47] Adam: It’s got that beautiful beach when you get to north, and that’s a really nice spot for a ceremony of any kind or a picnic.
[1:09:47 – 1:09:49] Erik: I imagine where the ceremonies would happen.
[1:09:49 – 1:09:49] Adam: Absolutely.
[1:09:49 – 1:09:52] Adam: You can feel the energy there.
[1:09:53 – 1:09:53] Erik: Yep.
[1:09:54 – 1:10:04] Erik: Do042, again, echoing, hardest portages are all in the Quetico, even saying that we have it easy in the BWCA, which…
[1:10:04 – 1:10:06] Erik: I would say generally is true.
[1:10:06 – 1:10:14] Erik: There’s definitely some tough portages in the Boundary Waters, but he mentions a couple of ones that we’ve never actually done but always have had our eyes on.
[1:10:14 – 1:10:15] Erik: Yeah.
[1:10:15 – 1:10:19] Erik: In the Bonhomme and Sauvage portages.
[1:10:19 – 1:10:23] Erik: And they apparently almost killed him and his brother in the late 90s.
[1:10:24 – 1:10:30] Erik: Waste high water, downed wood every 50 feet, two-person lifts of the canoe, totally miserable.
[1:10:31 – 1:10:34] Erik: Sounds awesome.
[1:10:34 – 1:10:36] Adam: Some good team-building exercises there.
[1:10:37 – 1:10:46] Erik: Yeah, no, whenever we’re out or just generally looking at the big-picture Quetico map, those two portages always stick out because they’re like…
[1:10:47 – 1:10:50] Erik: Two 3,000-meter-plus portages with a little lake.
[1:10:51 – 1:10:52] Erik: That’s like your only respite.
[1:10:53 – 1:10:56] Erik: It’s just a tiny little lake, and then you’re back at it.
[1:10:56 – 1:10:59] Adam: Yeah, you might as well have just kept portaging instead of putting that little lake there.
[1:11:00 – 1:11:01] Erik: Yeah, exactly.
[1:11:01 – 1:11:04] Erik: I like this story at the end here.
[1:11:07 – 1:11:09] Adam: We just have to read this entire passage.
[1:11:09 – 1:11:14] Adam: The portage from Sturgeon into Halliday beat us once on a day trip.
[1:11:14 – 1:11:16] Adam: We came back the next year to defeat it.
[1:11:16 – 1:11:25] Adam: The initial attempt was crowned by a grown man running down the trail back towards us, the rest of the crew, a waterline halfway up his chest and a crazed look on his face.
[1:11:25 – 1:11:28] Adam: He uttered, we have to go back, as he rushed past us.
[1:11:29 – 1:11:30] Adam: It was not discussed further.
[1:11:31 – 1:11:32] Adam: That was the last sentence.
[1:11:32 – 1:11:33] Adam: That is perfect.
[1:11:33 – 1:11:35] Adam: Well written, Duke.
[1:11:35 – 1:11:37] Erik: Yes, that definitely paints a picture.
[1:11:37 – 1:11:40] Erik: I can imagine the thoughts going through your head.
[1:11:40 – 1:11:42] Adam: That really puts a smile on my face.
[1:11:43 – 1:11:45] Erik: Crazed-looking man.
[1:11:45 – 1:11:46] Erik: We have to go back.
[1:11:47 – 1:11:48] Erik: I want to know.
[1:11:48 – 1:11:50] Erik: With a water line over his chest.
[1:11:50 – 1:11:52] Erik: Yeah, we better go back.
[1:11:52 – 1:11:55] Erik: I’d be voting for that, too.
[1:11:56 – 1:12:03] Erik: We’ve got somebody here with a very unique username, Reddit0224, who surprisingly…
[1:12:04 – 1:12:07] Erik: Has never been to the BWCA, but has been to the Quetico.
[1:12:08 – 1:12:09] Erik: First trip in 1974.
[1:12:11 – 1:12:21] Erik: Also has some good mentions of tough and memorable portages from French Lake through Baptism, Trousers, and Cash.
[1:12:22 – 1:12:25] Erik: I think those are kind of over in that Bonham and Savage.
[1:12:25 – 1:12:26] Erik: I think so.
[1:12:26 – 1:12:32] Erik: area where lots of land in between medium-sized lakes.
[1:12:33 – 1:12:45] Erik: The Upper Sturgeon and the youngsters that they had along were getting into Lonely and Walter, which I have definitely been up through.
[1:12:46 – 1:12:52] Erik: Halliday and Elizabeth, those are some definitely lesser-used portages.
[1:12:53 – 1:13:05] Erik: Um, and, uh, I mean, these, uh, were probably, I mean, I would imagine there may be a little bit better, but, uh, some of those trips sound like they were back in the seventies and eighties.
[1:13:05 – 1:13:08] Erik: I can’t imagine what some of those portages looked like back then.
[1:13:08 – 1:13:10] Erik: Um, and, uh,
[1:13:11 – 1:13:14] Erik: Got just a couple of comments here down towards the end.
[1:13:16 – 1:13:22] Erik: ThrustoBot, there are definitely a series of portages coming down from Thursday and Friday Bay and Foretown.
[1:13:23 – 1:13:32] Erik: Yeah, I mean, they’re definitely not like some of those nasty, unused, rugged point A to point B Quetico routes, but I’ve done those myself.
[1:13:32 – 1:13:34] Erik: And yeah, they’re definitely…
[1:13:36 – 1:13:46] Erik: Kind of some of those crazy rock wall descriptions where it’s not a cliff, but yeah, they say that they had to relearn how to carry a canoe.
[1:13:47 – 1:13:48] Adam: I like the term.
[1:13:49 – 1:13:51] Adam: It was a billy goater straight up and down.
[1:13:51 – 1:13:53] Adam: Yeah, that’s a great term.
[1:13:53 – 1:13:55] Adam: I’m going to have to borrow that one.
[1:13:55 – 1:13:56] Adam: Props to Thrust-O-Bot.
[1:13:58 – 1:14:03] Erik: Um, we’ve got, uh, Recess Theory.
[1:14:03 – 1:14:07] Erik: Uh, dad, brother, and I took a trip to Quetico in 2000.
[1:14:08 – 1:14:09] Erik: Bad storm.
[1:14:09 – 1:14:16] Erik: And the week before we got there, domed trees every 20 feet or so from Fern to Oliphant.
[1:14:17 – 1:14:27] Erik: And, yeah, that’s one thing I don’t think we necessarily touched on, but, like, couldn’t even imagine being out there regardless of how bad a portage is during, like, a blowdown event.
[1:14:27 – 1:14:28] Erik: Yikes.
[1:14:28 – 1:14:29] Erik: And trying to manage that.
[1:14:29 – 1:14:35] Erik: We’ve been in some of those early spring trips where we’ve had to clean up after some…
[1:14:36 – 1:14:42] Erik: Little blowdown, just the branches and kind of lighter things that come down over the course of a winter.
[1:14:42 – 1:14:45] Adam: Or the ice storms can really wreak havoc on the small stuff.
[1:14:45 – 1:14:49] Adam: You get a bunch of alders over the trail from ice and nobody had gone through in the winter.
[1:14:49 – 1:14:53] Adam: That can be nasty in the spring, but big blowdown trees, yikes.
[1:14:53 – 1:14:54] Erik: Yeah, that’s crazy.
[1:14:54 – 1:15:03] Erik: Or even just like, I mean, this sounds like, yeah, they say it was in 2000, which was just the year after the big 99 blowdown.
[1:15:03 – 1:15:03] Erik: I couldn’t imagine.
[1:15:03 – 1:15:05] Erik: I assume that’s what they were in there.
[1:15:05 – 1:15:07] Erik: Trying to get out after the blowdown of 99.
[1:15:08 – 1:15:10] Erik: I mean, you probably just had to sit and wait.
[1:15:10 – 1:15:12] Erik: There’s no getting through some of that stuff.
[1:15:12 – 1:15:17] Erik: There was people that weren’t even able to drive out of parts of the Gunflint Trail with chainsaws and stuff.
[1:15:17 – 1:15:18] Erik: So, yeah.
[1:15:20 – 1:15:20] Erik: Two more here.
[1:15:20 – 1:15:24] Erik: We’ve got BDob73.
[1:15:25 – 1:15:32] Erik: My spouse and I took a last-minute trip going to Angleworm one summer, and it had two of our worst portages on one trip.
[1:15:33 – 1:15:37] Erik: Going in wasn’t bad, mostly a long walk, which, yeah, that Angleworm portage I think is two miles.
[1:15:39 – 1:15:41] Erik: Going back for the second pack made it doubly long.
[1:15:41 – 1:15:44] Erik: Yeah, that would, I think, make it four miles long.
[1:15:44 – 1:15:46] Erik: And then you get into Angleworm.
[1:15:46 – 1:15:48] Erik: I think that’s double, two, four.
[1:15:48 – 1:15:49] Erik: Yep, we’re good.
[1:15:49 – 1:15:49] Adam: Yep, ding.
[1:15:50 – 1:15:55] Erik: Every campsite on Angleworm was occupied and was the next lake.
[1:15:55 – 1:15:55] Erik: Wow.
[1:15:56 – 1:15:59] Erik: Yeah, the Long Portage turned into a long, long day for sure.
[1:15:59 – 1:16:00] Erik: That’s the worst.
[1:16:00 – 1:16:05] Erik: Those portages definitely get exacerbated when you don’t find that light at the end of the tunnel.
[1:16:07 – 1:16:10] Erik: Just a quick add on a story about the Angolan Portage myself.
[1:16:10 – 1:16:16] Erik: I was doing a trip one early August with a friend of mine where we were planning on going in.
[1:16:16 – 1:16:17] Erik: August trips.
[1:16:17 – 1:16:18] Erik: August trips.
[1:16:18 – 1:16:19] Erik: They’re tough.
[1:16:19 – 1:16:20] Erik: You never know.
[1:16:20 – 1:16:25] Erik: And we foolishly thought we would just be able to get a campsite on the Fenske Lake campground.
[1:16:26 – 1:16:28] Erik: Drove in there at about 9 o’clock at night on a Friday.
[1:16:28 – 1:16:28] Erik: No dice.
[1:16:30 – 1:16:31] Erik: Yeah, they were all booked.
[1:16:32 – 1:16:36] Erik: So we just kept driving up to the Angleworm parking lot and…
[1:16:38 – 1:16:41] Erik: Had a couple of beers that we had planned on having around the campfire that night.
[1:16:42 – 1:16:50] Erik: And at midnight, when technically our permit kicked in, we started down the two-mile portage into Angleworm.
[1:16:50 – 1:16:52] Adam: Yeah, I’ve never done the midnight in.
[1:16:52 – 1:17:00] Adam: I think on a previous show I discussed going into the long portage into Tuscarora in the middle of the night.
[1:17:00 – 1:17:03] Adam: But that was, I had the, we had the permit for that day.
[1:17:03 – 1:17:04] Adam: For that day.
[1:17:04 – 1:17:05] Adam: It was just really late getting in.
[1:17:06 – 1:17:07] Adam: But yeah, going in right at midnight.
[1:17:08 – 1:17:08] Adam: Bravo.
[1:17:08 – 1:17:13] Erik: Yeah, the Angle Worm Portage has got a lot of twists and turns.
[1:17:13 – 1:17:17] Erik: One section where you’re up on like a six foot high boardwalk over a swamp with like a 90 degree turn.
[1:17:17 – 1:17:18] Adam: I don’t like that.
[1:17:19 – 1:17:20] Erik: No, that’s not nice in the daytime.
[1:17:20 – 1:17:22] Erik: Doing that in the dark with a headlamp.
[1:17:24 – 1:17:24] Erik: Pretty nerve wracking.
[1:17:24 – 1:17:28] Erik: And then we lost the trail because there’s also just a hiking trail around Angle Worm.
[1:17:29 – 1:17:32] Erik: We ended up, we didn’t lose the trail, but we took a wrong turn.
[1:17:32 – 1:17:34] Erik: So we were just on the hiking trail for a while.
[1:17:35 – 1:17:41] Erik: The one silver lining is when we got down to Angleworm and we were paddling out looking for a campsite.
[1:17:41 – 1:17:48] Erik: After we had gone by the one that was clearly occupied by the loud snoring, which is a really weird noise to hear while you’re paddling down a camp.
[1:17:49 – 1:17:51] Erik: While you’re paddling down a lake in the middle of the night.
[1:17:51 – 1:17:52] Adam: The majestic snoring human.
[1:17:52 – 1:17:56] Erik: Yeah, the Northern Lights came out, and then we found a campsite and got to bed.
[1:17:56 – 1:18:00] Erik: But last comment here I really liked just from Hopalicious.
[1:18:00 – 1:18:10] Erik: They said that the hardest porridge that they’ve ever had to do, or at least one that comes to mind for them, is the 30 rods from Newfound to Splash.
[1:18:11 – 1:18:18] Erik: Not that it was long or hilly, but they had to carry someone else’s sea kayak, which, oh, my God, I couldn’t even imagine.
[1:18:18 – 1:18:21] Adam: It felt like it was made out of concrete and stuffed with iron skillets.
[1:18:22 – 1:18:23] Adam: That’s how they feel.
[1:18:23 – 1:18:29] Erik: I’ll never, if anybody ever asks me, I’m thinking about going on to the Bonge waters, but I want to take a kayak.
[1:18:29 – 1:18:33] Erik: That’s what I’m going to, I’m going to just quote this story because this is exactly what I imagined.
[1:18:33 – 1:18:34] Erik: Yeah.
[1:18:34 – 1:18:40] Erik: They are not, especially a sea kayak felt like it was made of concrete and stuff full of iron skillets.
[1:18:41 – 1:18:41] Adam: Yeah.
[1:18:41 – 1:18:47] Adam: An easy portage can turn into a, a red difficult or black uncategorized.
[1:18:47 – 1:18:49] Adam: If you are forced to carry a sea kayak.
[1:18:49 – 1:18:49] Adam: Yeah.
[1:18:50 – 1:18:51] Adam: That’s what happens.
[1:18:52 – 1:18:55] Erik: As long as you’ve got the Nalgene full of Buffalo Trace bourbon.
[1:18:55 – 1:18:57] Adam: All is well at the end of the day.
[1:18:57 – 1:18:57] Adam: Yeah.
[1:18:58 – 1:18:59] Adam: That was fun.
[1:18:59 – 1:19:00] Erik: That was fun.
[1:19:00 – 1:19:02] Adam: I love talking about bad portages.
[1:19:02 – 1:19:05] Adam: We have to do like a show every year just on bad portaging.
[1:19:06 – 1:19:07] Adam: We’ll have to make it an annual show.
[1:19:07 – 1:19:08] Adam: Definitely.
[1:19:08 – 1:19:11] Adam: There’s so many bad portages out there and so little time.
[1:19:11 – 1:19:19] Erik: So I think we touched on a little bit of what we heard from the folks out there.
[1:19:19 – 1:19:26] Erik: Hopefully we’re not going to start turning people away with these well over an hour podcasts.
[1:19:26 – 1:19:30] Erik: I think we’ll go ahead and wrap this one up.
[1:19:30 – 1:19:32] Erik: We’re going to be talking about what next week?
[1:19:32 – 1:19:55] Adam: pine lake we’ve had a couple a couple questions and comments that we’ve seen and also it’s just been a couple weeks since we’ve done a just a straight lake review episode and pine lake certainly is deserving of its entire episode i was thinking maybe we could do two episodes for pine lake but we will try and keep it to one we’ll talk about johnson falls the campsites
[1:19:55 – 1:20:15] Adam: just the great paddling and vistas you get out there on pine and it kind of is just natural you’ve covered clear water and then the caribou and little caribou so if you’re on that loop the next one there is pine and a truly beautiful lake so we’re gonna have some nice camp we’re gonna do an entire episode just on pine lake next week and i’m really looking forward to it an expose if you will
[1:20:16 – 1:20:31] Adam: on pine lake and we’ve already talked about stump now so we’ll probably have to talk about gadwall and veil as well oh yeah the other two uh tiny lakes off of off of big old pine side trout lakes off a pine i’m sure we’ll talk about those but uh
[1:20:32 – 1:20:34] Erik: Yeah, oh boy, an hour and 20 minutes.
[1:20:34 – 1:20:43] Erik: I used to think that we’d never be able to crack an hour, but the conversations that we were getting from our friends on RBWCA and Facebook have been great.
[1:20:44 – 1:20:46] Erik: Keep any comments or questions that you have coming.
[1:20:46 – 1:20:53] Erik: Obviously, RBWCA is now becoming a pretty good way to get in touch with us.
[1:20:53 – 1:20:53] Erik: Yeah, it’s a thing.
[1:20:54 – 1:21:00] Erik: If you want a more focused and direct method, tumblehomecast at gmail.com.
[1:21:00 – 1:21:06] Erik: We’re also on Facebook at Tumble Home, a Boundary Waters podcast.
[1:21:06 – 1:21:08] Adam: And on Instagram as well on tumblehomecast.com.
[1:21:09 – 1:21:10] Erik: Tumblr homecast.
[1:21:10 – 1:21:10] Adam: Tumblr.
[1:21:10 – 1:21:12] Adam: I think it’s.
[1:21:12 – 1:21:13] Erik: No, it’s Tumblr home.
[1:21:13 – 1:21:14] Erik: That was the last time you said Tumblr.
[1:21:14 – 1:21:15] Erik: Tumblr homeway.
[1:21:16 – 1:21:19] Erik: And besides that, Clearwater Canoe Outfitters.
[1:21:20 – 1:21:23] Erik: But that’s not really the best place to listen to us.
[1:21:24 – 1:21:25] Erik: iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play.
[1:21:26 – 1:21:29] Erik: I think everybody at this point has got all that figured out.
[1:21:29 – 1:21:32] Erik: Subscribe, like, do all those things that everybody else says.
[1:21:32 – 1:21:33] Erik: It’s cool.
[1:21:34 – 1:21:35] Erik: Yeah, it’s cool.
[1:21:35 – 1:21:36] Adam: It’s a cool thing to do.
[1:21:37 – 1:21:37] Erik: Yeah.
[1:21:37 – 1:21:39] Erik: Hour and 22 minutes.
[1:21:39 – 1:21:40] Erik: Until next time.
[1:21:41 – 1:21:41] Erik: Happy paddling, folks.
[1:21:42 – 1:21:43] Adam: Thanks for listening.
[1:21:43 – 1:21:43] Adam: See you.