2020 July Family Trip to Whitefish Lake in the Sylvania Wilderness

Capturing our precious family canoe tripping memories is one of my favorite things to do. As working parents know, finding the time to do the things we want to do isn't always easy. I feel rather anxious finding myself here in June 2021, recording the events of July 2020. But the memories are precious and few due to my having only a sparse allotment of vacation time. Although I come to the party late, I am glad I made it.

On this trip we showed up with single portaging on our minds. Due to the lack of available entry permits in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in 2020, we ended up taking a less desirable entry permit. This permit requires a two mile portage to get anywhere beyond the first lake with campsites. Hence, our sudden desire to whittle away at our gear set and get ourselves down to a load that can be portaged in one crossing.

Video

We arrived to the trail head around noon on a hot, buggy July afternoon at the parking area ahead of the 3/4 mile portage into Whitefish Lake in the Sylvania Wilderness.  As we portaged, we learned that we were about at our limits for load, but that we could do it. This provided great boost of confidence for that 2 mile portage in the BWCA!

There is something about Perch 1 Campsite on Whitefish Lake. We've stayed there a handful of times, and and the campsites in Sylvania Wilderness are by reservation. But when we arrive at this campsite we tend to find unpermitted campers on it. This time, luckily, the people on the campsite were merely late leaving, not as big of a deal as having unpermitted campers squatting on your campsite, and understandable considering storms had come through the night before and it was likely they had wet gear to contend with.

Once we got into camp, a nice breeze came along a cooled us and we enjoyed its blowing away the bugs as we waited. We camped only one night on Perch 1, then moved to Pike 2 due to someone else having the permit for Perch 1. Pike 2 seemed to be less used by it's appearance and we saw more wildlife including a deer on Pike 2.

Storms did come through while on Pike 2, and a bit outside of camp we did hear and see trees and branches fall both before and during the storm. After 2 nights on Pike 2, we paddled out with whitecaps rolling. It was one of the toughest paddles we've done and we felt spent when we reached the portage out. After a 3/4 mile portage, our trip was over and we headed down the highway dreaming happy to know our single portage gearset proved successful. We were ready for our BWCA trip.

That's all for now, let's get outdoors and keep our wild places wild!