Trip Plan - Paddle west through Bearskin, north through Duncan, and north into Rose Lake. Camp on Rose for 3 nights, paddle out.
Day 1: Wednesday, May 22nd, 2019 -Arrived at Clearwater Outfitters and stayed in Bunkhouse #1. Walked the area before it got dark, settled into the bunkhouse around 9pm.
Day 2: Thursday, May 23rd, 2019 -Woke up around 0700 and organized the gear. Headed down to the lodge for our last warm meal before paddling out. We enjoyed some eggs and a blueberry scone. The cook mentioned that the scone was a "Pilsbury product" and that the trick to getting them just right was to "slightly undercook 'em." We all thought that was a great way to head into the wilderness with no indoor plumbing. Despite the risk, the scone was delicious and made for a good base.
We headed over to the outfitting lodge after breakfast. This was our first trip, so we outfitted almost all of our gear except for tents, sleeping bags/pads, camp gadgets, and fishing gear. The outfitter also provided the bear back and food. The food was the first thing we made a note to scale back on future trips. We were given, steak, eggs, dry meals, pastas, and what felt like 50 pounds of "tray bakes" which turned out to be all of the cookie ingredients (a Monster Cookie) baked into dense bars and individually wrapped. We appreciated the protien, but they were so heavy. Once we got all our gear in order, we packed up the car and drove to the entry point, about a mile down the road on Bearskin Lake. The canoes were already at the EP, waiting for us to load and launch.
We launched a little later, around 1100, knowing that our trip was relatively short into Rose Lake. We anticipated about a 2.5 hour trip, so we had plenty of daylight. We paddled west into West Bearskin, the weather was a bit cooler, with overcast skies, but no rain. On our way out we did pass a boater (since Bearskin is outside of the park) and asked how the fishing was this time of year. He mentioned that the bite was really slow all over the area. We were hoping that wouldn't be the case for us. The paddle across Bearskin took just under and hour and was nice and peaceful. Breeze was minimal and didn't slow us down at all. Then we came to our first portage, #353 (81 rods).
Considering this was our first trip into the park, we decided we knew better than the experts. Big mistake. Not realizing just how rough the terrain could be, and underestimating how heavy our gear was, we thought we could just lift the canoe by the stern and bow handles and carry it 81 rods, full of gear. We quickly realized how wrong we were, but we were committed. We made it the roughly 1/4 mile to the north end of the portage, exhausted. After quickly learning our lesson, we committed to portaging the proper way for the rest of the trip. We then paddled north through Duncan for about 45 minutes to reach portage #327, the Stairway Portage, into Rose Lake. This time, we portaged the proper way, portage packs on our back and canoes on our shoulders. This was a great portage and the wooden stairs gave us a perfect experience for our first BWCA trip. We reached the end of the portage in around 15 minutes, stashed our gear on the side and then made our way back to the falls to take in the view. Spent about 20 minutes just relaxing and taking in the sights before our last paddle to camp. Made our way back to our gear and loaded up to start the trip. We paddled for about 15 minutes and landed at site #650. This site was great! It has great views of the sawtooth cliffs on the north and east sides of Rose Lake. One of the best views in the park. We spent the rest of the day setting up camp, collecting and processing firewood, and adjusting to the wilderness. We knew the weather was going to get a bit colder with some wind and a chance of rain, so we tried to prepare for that as much as possible. Temp was mid-low 50s, a slight breeze with some gusts here and there, but thankfully no rain. Overnight was pretty cold, it got down to around 45 degrees.
Day 3: Friday, May 24th, 2019 -Woke up around 0800 to start choring and cooking breakfast. The weather was still cooperative this day, so we decided it would be a good day for a day-trip adventure. We knew the Border Route Trail ran just to the south of our camp, but we didn't have a clear view of the trail. After we ate and chored for a bit, we decided to pack up lunch and make the hike to the BRT and find the lookout near portage #327. But, we decided to try and take a backwood shortcut to the BRT, so we headed due south into the woods, which was fairly bare due to the season, but still not great for trekking. We ended up having to climb a pretty steep hill and push through some pretty heavy brush. But after about 20 minutes, we made it to the BRT and headed west toward Rose Falls and Rose Outlook. During our hike we came across a couple hiking in the opposite direction that also had their pet dog with them. We stopped and chatted about the trail for a minute then continued on. Eventually we made it to Rose Outlook and enjoyed our lunch overlooking Rose Lake. After a while we headed back east with the goal of checking out Rose Falls, just off portage #327. The scenery at the falls was great. It was noticeably cooler as you got closer to the falls, too. We spent 20 minutes or so taking in the sights and then decided to make our way back to camp by following the shoreline to the east. We located a game trail that took us almost all the way there and made it fairly easily in 15-20 minutes. It was a great way to adventure for the day and see some sites the BWCA has to offer.
We spent the rest of the day choring and keeping the fire alive. After dinner, we had some clear warm weather and were able to relax and unwind without having to work too hard to stay warm. It was a great end to a great day.
Day 4: Saturday, May 25th, 2019 -Last full day in the park. Woke up early and start choring to stay warm. The goal was go fish around camp, test out the water/wind, and explore a little bit. We spent a lot of this day hunkered down in camp due to the wind and rain. Heavy wind out of the north and occasional rain made it hard to predict when the water might be safe. during one small break, we did attempt to paddle west on Rose and see where the channel on the west end might lead. However, as soon as we came around the wind break, the wind from the west whipped us perpendicular to it and threatened to capsize us. We thought better of it and headed back to the camp. We decided shore fishing and choring around camp was going to be most of the day. We did get a lot of time to experiment with different ways to set up a rain fly. We also spent a lot of time staying warm by the fire. Thankfully, we had a ton of food to cook, so prepping, cooking, and eating chewed up a lot of time at each meal. It also required us to keep the fire going almost all day which was a great way to chore and stay warm. The weather cleared up after dinner and we had a great sunset on our last day with some partly cloudy skies and only a slight breeze. It was nice to have a calm last evening before heading out on Sunday. By the time it got dark, we were all ready to sleep. As we were sitting around the fire, just enjoying our last night, we started to see some strange lights in the sky to the east. They looked like a long string of 20-30 lights, perfectly aligned in a row, moving very quickly at very high altitude. They were to bright and too many to be anything that we recognized. We started to panic a little bit since we had no way of looking up what they could be. Eventually we started coming up with scenarios like aliens or global thermonuclear war. We figured that when we paddle out the next day, if we start seeing signs of invasion, we would just turn around and head back into the park and stay there. Without internet available, we had to resign ourselves to not knowing and head to bed wonering what tomorrow would bring. It was another cool night, with temps getting into the mid-lower 40s.
Day 5: Sunday, May 26th, 2019 -We woke up and took our time breaking camp, knowing it was only a 2 hour trip back to the launch point. Weather was cool, but dry, with overcast skies. Once we ate breakfast and broke camp, it was about 1200. We made our way west to portage #327, south through Duncan to portage #353 (this time, we portage this trail the proper way), and then east through Bearskin until we landed at the entry point. We packed all the gear into the vehicle, left the canoes where they were and headed back to the outfitter for a hot shower. One of the first things we did was connect to the internet to try to figure out what the lights were that we saw the previous night. As it turned out, the lights were from a Starlink satellite launch, which none of us had ever witnessed. Unfortunately, that meant we didn't have a valid reason to head back into the park for safety. So we headed to the showers instead. Once we were all cleaned up, we left the outfitter to head to Duluth, with a quick stop at Betty's Pies in Two Harbors.
