Spring Pow Wow Hike

By Ben Strege

Dates:April 22-23, 2011
Entry Point:86 - Pow Wow Trail (BWCA)
Type:Hiking
Lakes:Campfire, Diana, Isabella, Marathon, Superstition

For our spring trip this year, Auralee and I decided to try and hike the 27-mile Pow Wow Trail in 4 days. Last year, we both read Lost in the Wild by Cary J. Griffith. It is a true story about Jason Rasmussen getting lost on the Pow Wow Trail. Since reading the book, we both had a burning desire to see the area where the story took place. However, we had no desire to actually "live" the story.

The Plan

The original plan was to start on Friday, April 22nd, and finish on Monday, April 25th. We would stay at Superstition Lake the first night, which we figured would be a hike of about 10 miles. The first part of the trail was supposed to be easier, so we counted on being able to cover that distance. The next two days we would pass through tougher country, so we planned on covering 5-6 miles those days. The last day would be an easy part of the trail again, and we should have no problems getting back in decent time. Things didn't go according to plan...

Getting There

On Thursday night, we stayed at my parents so that we could get an early start Friday morning. We left Wes, our 20-month-old son, with his grandparents for the weekend. We left at 4:20 AM Friday morning and drove up to Ely. It was raining here and there on the way up, but not enough to be concerned about it. In Ely, we turned onto MN Highway 1 and made our way to Tomahawk Trail. Since Tomahawk is a gravel road, we weren't sure what to expect this time of year. The road actually wasn't in too bad of shape. It was a little muddy, but our Prius handled it fine. (As a note, I've noticed that our Prius does not do very well in snow over a couple of inches deep - this will play into the story later.)

We had to drive 19 miles on Tomahawk to reach the trailhead. Everything was going well until just a couple of miles before reaching the trailhead. That is when we saw the roadblocks. There was a diagram on the Road Closed sign. I got out of the car and read it. It had this map on it:

Well, we though it would be no problem getting around - it would just take some more time. Then we started down the detour...

The detour was not plowed as well as Tomahawk Trail was. At one point, we almost got stranded trying to go up a snow-covered hill (and these roads are not well-traveled and have spotty cell phone coverage). The car got stuck, and I actually had to back up (luckily I still could) and gun it to get up the hill. There were a lot of rocks and downed trees that I had to avoid. Also, the roads are not well marked. I had written down the road numbers (incorrectly, as it turned out), but we still went down a wrong road. We did not have a road map of the area, and I was thinking, "I wish I had my mom's GPS..." At this point, I slapped my head and said, "DOH!" - I had a GPS in my pack. We pulled it out, found the right road, and made it to the entry point. The detour took over an hour of white-knuckle driving, but we finally pulled into the parking lot at 8:00 AM.

Starting Out

We were grateful to finally get to the trailhead. I was already exhausted from driving on the detour. My hands were in the shape of the steering wheel. I was able to loosen up a bit, though. We took some pictures of the entry point. I tried filling out a self-issue permit, but there weren't any forms in the box. I guess the Forest Service hadn't been out this way yet. We got everything out of the car and started down the trail at 8:40 AM.
The trail was clear, the day was beautiful, and we were happy to be out in the woods together. The beginning of the trail followed some old logging roads, so the trail was very wide and easy to follow. Before long, we reached the sign that said we were officially entering the BWCA. We followed the trail to the bridge at Isabella Lake. There was a group of hikers camping at the campsite there. Our first indication that we weren't alone was the lab that started barking at us. He actually turned out to be very friendly. We would see the group one other time on our trip. The view from the Isabella bridge was gorgeous. We took a few pictures and moved on.


A little ways past the Isabella River we stopped because I was starting to get a blister. I made sure I took care of that as soon as possible because a blister could make the trip horrible. We then proceeded across a narrow strip of land in a swamp/pond. There was a massive beaver dam and lodge there. It was quite a feat of engineering. Finally we reached the fork in the trail. Since this was our first time on the trail, we knew we had to go left instead of right so we wouldn't get lost (too many people have gotten lost going right, including Jason Rasmussen in the book). The scenery was very pretty along the trail. We stopped to take pictures of a river we went by.

Wildlife

Snow covered a few parts of the trail. At one of these spots, we saw some moose tracks that were as big as my hand.

While Auralee was in front, she suddenly stopped and whispered, "There's a grouse." Sure enough, only about 10 yards in front of us, a male spruce grouse was showing his colors. He was trying to impress a "lady" spruce grouse that was just in the trees. I got several pictures and even a short video. (I actually took two videos - one of him on the ground and then of him in a tree. However, it appears that the first video got deleted somehow.) We saw the female in the woods as we started moving again - she was much harder to find.

Getting Tired

We passed the Marathon Lake campsite. It was still covered in snow. We hadn't been planning on stopping here, though, so the snow didn't concern me. We kept going and crossed Diana Lake. Up to this point, because the trail was fairly wide and open to the sun, the snow had only covered the trail in places. The trail started narrowing, making the sun exposure much less, which meant that the snow had not melted on pretty much any of the trail. Every stretch of snow on the trail wore us out. Sometimes the snow was two feet deep, making us cold, wet, and tired. We were determined, though, to reach Superstition Lake today, so we kept going. We passed the Campfire Lake campsite on the way, which was free of snow. Maybe we should have stopped there...it would have saved us a lot of agony later. We passed the Quadga Lake spur trail that went to a campsite, and the trail turned north. Then it got ugly.

Exhaustion

Once the trail turned north, it narrowed even more, and there were no spots free of snow. The trail also had a lot of brush covering it in places, much more than we had had to deal with previously. Every time we came to a part we had to go around, we became more depressed. We both became exhausted from the miles, the snow, and the brush. We stopped talking to conserve our energy. It was all we could do to just put one foot in front of the other and plod on.

Superstition Lake

By some miracle, we finally saw Superstition Lake through the trees. We still had between one half and one mile to go, which was a little depressing, but we could finally feel that the day was almost at an end. We kept walking and walking, navigating some tricky portions of the trail, until we reached the end of the lake. We had never seen the campsite. I took out the map and realized we had passed it about a quarter mile back. We discussed what to do and decided we were too tired to go back. We pitched our tent in the middle of the trail since we highly doubted anyone was going to be coming.

We rehydrated our dinner of chili and peaches. Despite how hungry I was, I could hardly eat anything. After dinner I took the food into the woods away from camp (though I could still see it from camp) so we wouldn't have any critters come looking in our camp for it. I was too tired to hang it from a tree, so I hoped that the "scent-locked" bag it was in would be good enough. We set up camp and went to bed at 6:00 PM - the earliest I have ever gone to bed in my life.

Surprise

We both slept pretty soundly through the night. At some point I woke up and heard snow hitting the tent. I didn't know how much until the morning. We got up at about 6:00 AM to see another 3 inches of snow on the ground. Now we had to decide what to do.

Decision

Once the trail had turned north, it had been a little difficult to follow. We had the GPS, so I wasn't too worried about getting lost. There were some bare patches on the trail that confirmed to us that we were still going in the right direction. After the snowfall, though, the trail was essentially invisible. I also turned on my GPS and discovered that, somehow, the trail waypoints after Superstition Lake had been deleted. We still had maps and compasses, but I wasn't confident enough to be able to continue. Auralee and I decided that the best course of action would be to turn back. We at least knew that we could find the trail that way. I figured it would take us two days to get back because of the snow and how tired we still were.

Heading Back

As we wove our way back around Superstition Lake, I realized that, had I not been so exhausted and depressed, the scenery would be pretty. I took some pictures so I could see the beauty at a later date, but right now I just could not appreciate it.

We slogged through mile after mile, over the same terrain as the day before. One thing we both noticed is that no matter how much we ate, we couldn't seem to get enough calories to keep us going. We had to stop every 15-30 minutes to eat something. We realized that the food we had packed didn't have enough calories to sustain us for long. We longed for energy bars instead of the small granola bars we had brought.

During one of our frequent breaks, we took some pictures next to a lake and a beaver dam. The snow was still coming down, so it made a pretty scene.

When we stopped after crossing Diana Lake, we saw the party we had seen at Isabella the day before. They had camped there the night before. We stopped and talked for a bit. One of the guys said that he had hiked the Pow Wow numerous times, and this was the first time that he had ever been "denied." Hearing that made us feel a little better about not being able to complete it.

Home Sweet Home

At some point we decided to just try to get all the way back to the car. We would have to stop early if we were setting up camp, but if we got back to the car, it didn't matter if it was already sunset. We reached the wide, clear portion of the trail, which was clear again because the sun had already melted the snow from last night. This made it much easier to walk, which was a good thing because we could barely pick up our feet anymore. We still had to stop every 15 minutes to eat something, the breaks becoming more and more frequent the further we went. The last few miles were agonizing (and agonizingly slow). The car was a wonderful sight to behold. We got back to the car at about 4:00 PM.

The drive home was interesting to say the least. The roads were wet and muddy. A small tree had fallen over part of the road since we had traveled it the day before. The tree was small enough that I was able to bend it back long enough for Auralee to drive the car past. We were relieved when we finally came to the paved road north of Isabella.

For our first hiking trip, I was just glad to get back alive. It will probably be a long time before I "forget" enough to want to do another hiking trip. Auralee may convince me to try again...but we'll see. I'm content to stick with canoeing for now.