Border Route Hiking Trip Report -- May 1995
Tuesday, 5/23/95
While the trip didn't really start until Wednesday, we set it up onTuesday
evening. I finished hiking the Sioux-Hustler
Trail Tuesdayafternoon. After a couple stops in Ely, I head for
the North Shoreto meet a couple friends. I was running ahead of schedule,
so I stopat Cascade River State Park. My friends happen to drive by
and seeme alongside the road. They stop as well. After a dinner
stopat the DQ in Grand Marais, we head up the Arrowhead Trail to drop off
mycar at McFarland Lake. We jump a couple deer along the way.
I accidentally leave my fishing license, BW permit and liner socks in the
car. We get back into Grand Marais and it's pretty late. We decide
to geta cheap motel room for the night just south of town.
Wednesday, 5/24/95
We wake up at 6am and eat in a downtown Grand Marais restaurant and headup
the Gunflint for the trail head. We found Loon Lake and unpacked our
stuff and began hiking by 8:55am. The trail followed a road for the
first couple miles and was fairly level. It was different hiking with
other people. My only other experience hiking with others were ad hoc
meetings with people I'd never met before, but appeared to be going the same
direction as myself on trails outside the BWCA. We talked and made
noise - so much for seeing wildlife.
After Crab Lake things change some as the road stops but we still travel
on what appears to be an old narrow gage trail. Before South Lake we
run into a solo hiker - about 50 yrs old. He came in by Mayhew Lake.
Along the southwest shore of South Lake we get our
first views of the landscape we'd become familiar with by trip's end.
Just before Topper Lake, we ran into an unhappy
young couple who had stayed over night. They complained about bad conditions,
but it looked more like poor equipment. She had on fake hiking boots
and he had on goulashes. Topper Lake was totally tranquil and beautiful.
The trail ran along the lake for awhile. It was weird...we were almost
stepping in Topper Lake on right and thru the trees we could make out South
Lake 250 feet below us on our left. Much of the trail was non-distinctive,
but one place the trail takes a 90 degree right where one might keep going
straight. We saw our first grouse at this point in the trail.
When looking for the Partridge Lake campsite trail we ran into a nice overlook
and a boatload of downed trees, but no trail heading south to the campsite.
The trail is further along than the map shows...after the overlook.
While set further away from the water than some later overlooks, you can
look back to the west with a nice view of South, Rat
and western Rose. You have everything from the west to the
NE where you are still looking at the western portion of Rose and Canada
. Once down to the lake we couldn't find the campsite, but to the right on
a small peninsula of where the trail first meets the lake, we found camp.
Didn't really find a trail leading to it, but got there nonetheless.
The campsite was cedar with some huge white pines. Beautiful as long
as you have no lightning storm...even then I'm hoping the
hill across the lake might take the hit before the white pines on my
site. The entire NE side of the lake is lined
with cedars and looks peaceful this evening. We eat venison stakes
and rehydrated morels for dinner, you can't get no better than that, BW,
home or your favorite restaurant. A little rain fell today, but nothing
serious. No fish taking our lures this evening.
Thursday, 5/25/95
We got up late this morning and didn't hit the trail until 9:30am.
Before we got far ran into another great overlook. After spending "too"
much time taking pictures
(2) (3) and relaxing, we headed to Stairway
Portage and ran into the same middle-aged guy we saw yesterday. The
falls were beautiful. What surprised me most was how steep the entire
stream was. It seemed to average 45 degrees. After taking
pictures (2) and relaxing we finally left
just before lunch. We headed along the south shore of Rose Lake to
an outstanding precipice and ate lunch.
We'd done all of three miles by lunch!
There are some nice stands of cedar on Rose Lake shoreline. We met
up with the same guy (now a third time) as he appeared to be staying at the
eastern most campsite on Rose Lake. The backpacking site had the trail
running right thru it with poor water access. The other (the one he
was staying at) was pretty close to the water and pretty nice.
As the trail hooked up with the long portage between Rose and Rove, we inspected
some land that may have been on the north side of the
river. Sometimes you do things just to say you've done them...
The portage part of the trail was flat and quick. We stopped and got
water at the Daniels Lake split because we didn't know where or when we'd
stop for the night.
As we approached Rove Lake we began looking for a campsite. There were
blowdowns everywhere and no place to camp. We traveled pretty close
to the water and after stopping near its east end we noticed on the McKenzie
Map a campsite on Clearwater Lake with a spur trail from the Border Route.
My knee was really hurting and it was getting late by this time. It
looked like quite a climb, but it looked like our only option. We climbed
a chute that doubled as a stream much of the way. When we reached the
top, I realized I'd lost my maps. Since it was so late and we were
quite tired I didn't go back down, but we did send another member down to
check out the Clearwater Lake campsite to make sure it was empty. It
was open! We went down to set up camp and eat just before nightfall.
The lake was calm and the cliff across the lake on
the opposite shore was impressive. I wish we'd have had more time
to enjoy, but we spent our time enjoying the falls and Rose Lake vistas.
Actually spent quite a bit of time just sitting and looking over the lakes
and trees. It got mesmerizing! Dinner was rehydrated chili which
was actually excellent in its dehydrated form as well.
Friday, 5/26/95
Woke up to our first beautifully sunny day
and my first one in almost a week in the woods. We got up a little
earlier after yesterday's late hiking. I left camp a little early to
hike down to Rove Lake to find my maps. I found then in the middle
of the trail where the other guys must have walked right by them yesterday
(I was leading at that time)...they must have been too exhausted, and I understand
that.
We headed up to the first Watap Lake vista.
It was awesome in the spring sun. We watched mergansers swim and just
ate up the day. Unfortunately, they were logging just across the border
in Ontario which detracted from the scene some. After this Watap Lake
overlook, we switch back to some slow slopping overlooks of Clearwater Lake
and then our first look at Mountain Lake.
The vistas of Mountain Lake were the best of the trip with the sun shining
and the colors magnified in the bright day. The
east side vista was a little steeper than the west side. It was
our last look at Canada - and of the logging. Along Mountain Lake,
there were some nice stands of norway (red) pine. We gradually made
it back down to the shore of Clearwater Lake. We carried a canoe for
a couple who seemed a little overburdened but in the process, missed our
trail as it cut off the portage between Clearwater and West Pike. We
were shadowed by a hill to the south and walked thru some beautiful cedars.
We debated trailblazing around Gogebic adn even debated camping there, but
decided to push for Pine Lake. Gogebic was a nice lake with the trail
right along the water much of the way. There was a big birch stand
on the south side of the lake as the trail climbed away from the water.
This predominantly birch forest reminded me a lot of the Foothills State
Forest between Brainerd and Walker, where I spent much of my youth learning
the ways of the woods.
The hike along West Pike doesn't look bad or long, but it was the worst part
of our trip. It seemed incredibly long. My legs, my arthritic
knee and my other knee, from trying to compensate for the other hurting,
were both hurting pretty bad by this time. We all thought it would
be much shorter to Pine Lake. The trail had only one
overlook which we barely enjoyed due to how tired we were (and how late
it was). Our biologist found a black morel just before we met up with
the portage trail. We debated sending only one down to the campsite
or something else to assure the campsite wasn't taken, but we were so tired
we just walked down to Pine Lake. Like the trail to Clearwater Lake
the day before, much of the trail was a creek. We got lucky, the campsite
was empty. By the time we got to camp it was almost dark and my knee
hurt incredibly bad. We ate some pasta & rice dinner and I didn't
even move due to the pain in my knee. The fire was nice as evening
came quickly.
Saturday, 5/27/95
I woke up to sunshine and a knee that didn't hurt. Another
pretty morning. We hit the trail by about
8:30am again and found it much easier going than the evening before.
There really weren't any good views of East Pike. There is an unmarked
(on our Fisher Maps) portage from the far west side of McFarland to the middle
of East Pike. We walked down to the lake and ate an early lunch.
We ran into a party who had just made the steep portage and who were day
tripping it for smallies. After lunch we had a decent East Pike overlook,
though nothing like the Mountain, Watap and Rose Lake overlooks. The
going was pretty easy high up on a ridge that we couldn't really see off
of at this point. About half way along John Lake we heard a bunch of
Canada Geese to the north. Maybe in the swamp north of John Lake...could
that be a geese hangout?
There's a nice overlook on John's southwest side, with the
overlook facing east where the Royal River exits John Lake. We
hung out there for quite awhile realizing our trip was just about done.
Again, the remainder of the trail was pretty easy. We stopped at a
BWCAW sign for a picture and were at the McFarland
Lake boat landing parking lot before we knew it. An earlier thought
of continuing on to the east exploring what is supposed to be a continuation
of the trail was not even discussed. We planned on bathing at the landing
on this our nicest weather of the trip, but when we stopped hiking we realized
the temperature was still probably in the high 50's or low 60's. We
did wash our hair and pits in the parking lot with some pretty cold lake
water.
By about 4pm we were on the road. We jumped a moose a couple miles
south of the parking lot...our first of the trip. We cut cross-country
by the north side of Greenwood Lake. We picked up the other car at
Loon Lake and saw bad bugs for the first time. We didn't get to Grand
Marais until about 7pm and Sven and Ole's Pizza was packed. We ate
at the Bluewater Cafe and decided how we'd split and drive "home".
This was my first trip with others. I found the pluses included safety,
help with camp chores, friendship. On the other side, wildlife viewing,
compromised trip planning and "meditation" or introspection were all negatively
impacted with the presence of others. The Border Route Trail really
pushed our physical abilities in 4 days / 3 nights. It was, though,
by far the most beautiful of the BW trails...and fall would be awesome.
ahmoo@ahmoocreek.com
Posted: 29-Nov-2000
Updated: 30-Apr-2007