Sometimes (very rarely) conditions line up just right to explore the wilderness in unique ways.
Take this year’s “no-snow” winter. Conditions were dry in November. As soon as wild ice started to form on lakes, people went ice skating to remote Boundary Waters locations. This isn’t unusual, but then snow didn’t come in December either. Friends of mine started doing “ice-skate camping” trips, pulling their gear in pulks over frozen lakes through the BWCA on skates. Highly unusual.
Then it rained all day on Christmas 2023, and skating continued into early January with no snow. Finally, there was some temporary relief when about four inches fell the second week of January.
Winter then got dry as a bone again, and has continued that way for months.
At this point you have two choices: lament the lack of snow, yell and complain, or use some ingenuity and thinking outside the box to create alternative ways of exploring the wilderness.
I enjoy these opportunities for testing my problem-solving skills at wilderness travel.
Furthermore, this dry winter happened to coincide with my own newfound interest in Boundary Waters backpacking. I wrote two articles the summer before for Northern Wilds and Minnesota Monthly on how the Powwow Trail has been resurrected by volunteers since the 2011 Pagami Creek Fire. I did a lot of research about the Boundary Waters Advisory Committee (volunteer trail maintenance group), and conducted interviews with Martin Kubik, Ken Hupila, and Rod Markin, all BWAC leaders at the time.
As a result, I ended up getting backpacking fever myself, and participated in a lot of BWAC meetings throughout the summer and fall. Specifically, I wanted to try circumnavigating the Powwow Trail.
Precisely at the beginning of my spring break week (March 9-10-11) conditions went from great to IDEAL for backpacking. Temperatures were forecasted to be well below freezing, making for fast walking on hard ground. Furthermore, there had been enough melting throughout the last few weeks that the unplowed Forest Road 377 to entry point #86 was passable for my car. The Powwow Trail itself would be generally ice free due to low snow totals this winter. And there was zero standing water.
Vanessa and I had been dreaming about and planning this trip for a couple months already, seeing the potential for good hiking instead of our usual spring break ski camping trip. We bought her a new down sleeping bag for Christmas, and a pair of insulated winter hiking boots. With all the conditions lining up just right, we set off to seize our opportunity.
Typically, we would drive up on a Saturday morning and spend all day getting deep into the wilderness. But this year, Vanessa and I benefitted from the dry weather in yet another way: Chester Bowl ski area, where I was scheduled to work the evening of Friday the 8th, was closed due to lack of snow. We had an extra evening to work with.
Thus, we left Duluth late on Friday. First, I made a big family dinner, and then it took forever to pack. It seemed like we would never leave. But good preparations are key to a successful trip.
We finally hit the road at 8:30 p.m., and turned on to Forest Road 377 about 10:00. From there it’s a slow slog down a bumpy dirt road that dead ends at the edge of the BWCA. Our reward for driving late at night: we saw two lynx lounging on the side of the road, and got to observe them for several minutes from 15 feet away.
The Powwow Trail starts on an old gravel logging road, with the first campsite being about a mile in from the parking lot alongside the Isabella River. We walked into the open site about midnight, made a fire, and set up the tent.
It was a very cold night, and we had frost on the tent in the morning. I didn’t sleep very well, but Vanessa slept great on the down Exped sleeping pad that we had patched just in time for the trip (it arrived by mail the day we left). It was extremely cold taking down camp in the morning, and I made another fire. We finally set off at 11:00 a.m. We immediately crossed the Isabella River, and continued north from there.
We had bluebird skies for our whole three-day backpacking trip. About half an hour in, we finally started warming enough to take off our down jackets.
We made it to the first “Wye” within 35 minutes – further than I’d ever gotten before on three previous tries on the Powwow Trail. This time, no scheduling constraints were holding us back.
We were on a roll now, making it to the second “Wye” an hour later. We decided to take off the heavy packs and go do a little bushwhacking down the previous Powwow Trail East Loop. It was definitely wild back there.
Then we started up one of the hardest sections of the trail, heading northwest. We were expecting there to be far more tree falls in this section (we had only climbed over a few downed trees to this point), but the trail was totally passable. We were building up an appetite, but made our goal of reaching Pose Lake before stopping for lunch. It felt like forever, but we actually got to the campsite within an hour from the second Wye.
The site was incredibly windblown, located high over the lake, and the wind had a polar feel to it. We retreated behind a rocky knob to make lunch and relax.
We packed back up and left by 2:45, and started the most “rugged” section of the hike. Again, it really wasn’t that bad. There were ups and downs, and some downed trees. Maybe 25-30 trees to climb over altogether for the day. The new forest growth was beautiful, and Vanessa was amazed by the density and intensity of the green jack pines, all under 13 years old following the forest fire.
We had planned to reach North Wilder Lake to make camp for the night, but as time went on, we changed our destination, and headed for the canoe campsite across South Wilder Lake instead. This would make a shorter day, and get us to a water source faster. We had been drinking Duluth water all day, and it was time for refills.
We gathered plenty of water, and proceeded to make an awesome coconut curry soup mix with added coconut milk for the night. Thankfully, the steady northwest wind completely died right at 6:00 p.m. as were setting up camp.
Our second campsite of the trip was on a slab of bedrock with a very small tentpad (no more than a 2-person tent could fit) in a protected spot in thick new tree growth. There was also the option of setting up the tent on the ice.
We went to bed by 8:30 p.m., and I slept almost till 8:30 a.m. on our second full day. When was the last time I slept 12 hours in a night? It felt so good. This time Vanessa shared the inflatable down pad with me. It was luxury.
We played with the tent on the ice, saw a pair of trumpeter swans flying north, and then broke camp about 12:15 p.m. Conditions were again perfect for hiking. We refilled our bottles a second time from the open water connecting South Wilder Lake to the upstream river, and set off on our way.
The first half of our hike on day 2 was about finding our way back onto the Powwow. We managed the quest, then left the trail again before reaching North Wilder Lake, so as to make a shortcut across three other lakes: Harbor, Brewis, and Horseshoe. All three are connected by maintained canoe portages.
Here we got to really explore a remote section of the Boundary Waters. As my friend Martin likes to say about this area, “It’s Alaska four hours north of the Twin Cities.”
We were treated to bluebird skies again, and hiked for about 2.5 hours before stopping for lunch at the far west end of Horseshoe Lake, where we reconnected with the Powwow. We had another fabulous hot meal, and then did a side trip to explore the canoe campsite on Lake Three.
It was already 5:00 p.m. when we finished exploring the Horseshoe/Lake Three area, and it was high time to get going again. The clocks had changed to daylight savings time the night before, but we decided to keep our watches on old time, which meant sunset was about 7:00 p.m. We hiked at a great pace from Lake Three to Rock of Ages Lake, and then again to Mirror Lake.
The hiking felt fluid and fun, despite our heavy packs. Spirits were high.
We saw a beautiful sunset over Mirror Lake, and again walked the ice.
We then made the final push to Superstition Lake in the dark, by headlamp. We ended up doing another 10-mile day, with about 7 hours of hiking. It was good to make camp and eat a big pot of hot wild rice soup with cauliflower for dinner. We knew we had gotten ourselves into position to finish off the circumnavigation on our last day.
I didn’t sleep so well on the last night, as Vanessa again got the nicer down mat. Our second sleeping pad was leaky, and I was a little too exposed to the ice.
I set my alarm for the last day – I wanted to be up by 7:00 (actually 6:00 by old time).
I made a fire in the morning, along with a third breakfast of oatmeal, coffee and tea. We packed up quicker than the first two mornings, and left camp at 9:45, after taking more pictures on the ice.
Soon we were making fast progress, as the southern section of the Powwow loop is the easiest part of the whole trail. We got to Campfire Lake by 10:45, but then accidentally made a wrong turn and took the spur down to Quadga Lake. Although we lost 25 minutes finding our way back to the proper direction, I was happy to get to see the beautiful open canoe site on the north side of Quadga. Definitely want to get back there in summer.
The temperature went from about 15F when we woke up to 55F by 1:30 p.m. on our last day. I hiked with no shirt on for some time, and would have loved to have shorts to hike in.
Thus we were thrilled to make it to Diana Lake, with it’s excellent fresh water source running under the bridge, about 1:00 p.m. We had been drinking water straight out of the lakes all weekend, and gulped down a whole quart of lake water each in minutes on Diana. We filled up two more quarts for the remainder of our hike.
We flew down the trail over the last two hours of our hike. We felt like we were walking on air. Still, when we got to the car, we were very happy to take of our packs for the last time.
The abundant sunshine, the thrilling achievement of hiking 31 miles over land and ice, and our sense of teamwork throughout our three-day trek brought Vanessa and I a lot of satisfaction together. It was a dream hike, and we have this winter’s unusual conditions, and our own initiative, to thank. We may have done the earliest-ever circumnavigation of the Powwow Trail. But that wasn’t the point – we were happy to immerse ourselves in the hike and explore a new region of the Boundary Waters in a brand new way to us.
Thank you to all who supported us in this endeavor, and in particular to Martin Kubik for the inspiration. We are lucky to have you.
Duluthed 