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Sea Kayaking Grand Marais’ Harbor
Each summer, I enjoy sea kayaking from Grand Marais’ harbor, exploring up to four miles, including Artist's Point and the campground area. Notable sights include the old Coast Guard station and Hjordis schooner. Accessibility features at the harbor such as a kayak launch, walkway, and changing room were influenced by my suggestions.
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Homer Lake Trip Report
Over the Memorial Day weekend, we took a day trip to Homer Lake. Homer Lake in northern Minnesota is an entry point to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. About half of the lake is in the wilderness and half is outside. The majority of it is outside the wilderness and there’s a short portage into Axe Lake which is just north of Homer. The lake also has offers two campsites. There’s one inside the wilderness and one outside the wilderness. I’ve paddled on Homer a fair number of times and have used it on multiple trips. You can also use it to access the Vern River Loop instead of…
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Upper Iowa River Canoe Trip Report
The first weekend of May is the annual Northstar Experience canoe trip. Each year Northstar Canoes invites people who own Northstar canoes or Bell canoes to come paddle a river somewhere in the Midwest. This year was on the Upper Iowa River in northeastern Iowa. I attended two days of the event to take photos, connect with friends and make new ones and enjoy paddling with the Northstar community. The Upper Iowa The Upper Iowa is a river that I paddled several times when I was living in Iowa. It’s one of the best midwestern rivers and used to make Canoe and Kayak Magazine’s top 20 river trip lists. It’s…
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Kelso River Dolmen: A Boundary Waters Adventure
Paddling from Sawbill Lake to the Kelso River Dolmen is one of the best BWCA day trips that you can take. The route features big lakes, crooked shorelines, narrow rivers, swamps, easy portages, and carnivorous plants. With the Kelso River Dolmen as the goal of the trip, it offers a set destination. That’s something that other day trips in the area don’t offer. The story behind the dolmen is that Vikings explored North America and found copper nearby. To mark the mine, they built the dolmen. Legend has it that there’s a second smaller dolmen nearby that when used as a navigation range points to the mine. Some paddlers claim…
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Following the Winchell Expedition Video Presentation
During the spring of 2021, I retraced the 1879 route taken by Minnesota State Geologist Newton Horace Winchell. The route was approximately 160 miles with over 30 miles of portages. It started on Lake Superior in Grand Marais, MN, USA. Then I followed a route that would have been close to what was called the Iron Trail into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, which is America’s most visited wilderness area. It’s a million acres of wilderness with over 2,000 lakes and 1,200 miles of canoe routes. I paddled through the BWCAW to meet up with the historic Ojibwe canoe route from Knife Lake to the mouth of the Poplar…
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Following Winchell Expedition Trailer
In the spring of 2021, I followed the 1879 canoe route of Minnesota State Geologist Newton Horace Winchell. Winchell was surveying the north shore of Lake Superior and inland waterways near Grand Marais and Lutsen, MN. He started in Grand Marais and followed the Iron Trail Canoe Route from the harbor to the border with Canada. Then he followed the Voyager Route along the border and eventually descended to Lake Superior following the Knife Lake to the Poplar River Mouth Ojibwe canoe route. My route followed his as closely as I could. Where there were missing portages, I either used modern infrastructure, such as roads or the Superior Hiking Trail,…
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Retreat! We Bailed from the Canoe Trip
Last weekend, it looked like the last chance to do a canoe trip before freeze up. It was going to be one of those rare early season snow storms while the lakes are still open. You know the type — they coat the trees with white, and if it is calm, it’s magical, especially if a blue sky shows up in the morning. We decided to do two nights in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. This would be our five-year-old’s first winteresque camping trip. It looked like the coldest it would get would be in the lower 20s, so it would be cold enough to feel like a winter…
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An Ode to Beaver Dams
We paddlers don’t give beavers enough credit. When we come to a beaver dam that blocks our way, we know it’s going to be a haul over. Often in remote canoe locations, paddlers will have tried to break the dam to make it easier to paddle through. But, we don’t give beavers enough credit. Despite the slight inconvenience of maybe getting your feet wet as you pull your canoe over a beaver dam, beavers, a keystone species that important for the health of environment, create these wonders of the world and create helpful habitat for all sorts of species. They create wetlands by engineering a dam and raising the water…
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Free Boundary Waters Guidebook
Stuck inside somewhere waiting to be released, dreaming of adventures on the 1000s of lakes in northern Minnesota after they thaw or just someone who loves paddling? Then there’s a new free Boundary Waters guidebook for you. The Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness released The Friends’ Guide to the BWCA. The new guidebook is a free ebook available for download on The Friends’ website. If you don’t know the Boundary Waters, then you’re in for a treat. It’s a great treat, because these types of books usually run much more. For example, Exploring the Boundary Waters: A Trip Planner and Guide to the BWCAW runs $16. You can get…
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Sag to Seagull Route Trip Report
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness Sag to Seagull route is a short trip that can be broken into an easy multi-day trip or a long day trip. It consists of paddling across two large lakes, through many islands and across three small lakes. There are three easy portages. At higher water levels, you can skip one and maybe two of the portages. The route passes through areas of the BWCA that burned at least once in recent years. We recently paddled the Sag to Seagull route over four days and three nights. Most of the days consisted of short paddles between campsites and then lazy days in the campsite…
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The First Roll Expedition
For Immediate Release: 4/1/2019 Grand Marais, Minnesota: PaddlingLight’s publisher and primary author Bryan Hansel is excited to announce a new world record attempt and a new expedition. Over the next year, he will attempt to roll his kayak in a new pool every day. Not only will the pools be different, but each pool will be newly constructed and have never had a kayak roll in it. “I’m excited about this expedition,” said Hansel. “Each day, I’ll explore a new pool with a roll and discover what it is like to roll in that pool. To me kayaking is about discovery and I’m looking forward to this expedition of discovery.”…
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Bikepacking in Canoe Country
Bikepacking in Canoe Country can be just as fun as paddling in the Boundary Waters. Besides paddling, my other recreational love is biking and I love touring by bike. This year, I’ve gotten a few paddling trips in (canoeing the lower canyons of the Rio Grande, overnight on Lake Superior and an upcoming BWCA trip), but I hadn’t gotten a bike tour in. I decided to bike in my backyard and bikepack on the gravel roads of Cook County, one of the counties that contains the Boundary Waters. There’s something like 2,000 miles of roads in Cook County and much of that is gravel. I ended up riding a short…
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Lake Nipigon Kayaking Trip Report
Dates: Sept. 12 – Oct. 2, 2017 by Hannah Fanney & Rodney Claiborne Reason for Travel Lake Nipigon is a large lake directly above Lake Superior. We were familiar with the lake’s location, but information on it was difficult to obtain. It looked to us like a less developed Superior with smaller seas and more protection available from the myriad of islands and peninsulas. Our goal was to spend time exploring an area we were not familiar with while testing out the carrying capacity of food and equipment in our boats. We chose the fall season due to our seasonal employment schedule and to enjoy rougher seas, cooler temperatures, and…
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How to Take a $H!T in the BWCAW
The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness (BWCAW) is America’s most used wilderness area. Each year an estimated 250,000 visitors paddle its pristine lakes and over 1,200 miles of canoe routes and camp at one of over 2,000 designated campsites. This many people using the million acres puts a strain on the land. While in other wilderness areas if you need to take a crap you dig a hole and bury your poop (as outlined in the book How to Shit in the Woods), it isn’t like that in the BWCAW. In the BWCAW, you take your shit by sitting your arse down on a thunder box (latrine) and letting it…
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Wooden Boat Show in Grand Marais Trip Report
It’s that time of the year when wood boat builders gather in the northern reach of the state of Minnesota and show off their wood boats. This year wooden canoes, both new and restored, stole the show. Without further ado, here’s the pictures. Seliga Wide Plank, 17′, Restored at the North House Folk School Thompson Brother Indian, 16′, restored by Mike Knuth of Duluth, MN. 20th Anniversary Canoe, 18 ft, Based on E.M. White “Guide” Model, Built at the North House Folk School 1928 Old Town Canoe, model not listed. This was up for auction. The starting bid was $300. Skin-on-frame Canoe, 17′ 6″, Based on the Atkinson Traveler The…
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