BWCA Day 4 – Swampwhacking, Part II
One guarantee about a fall BWCA trip is that at least one day per trip is going to be rainy. This trip was no exception – it started raining well before dawn. It let up just long enough for us to make a breakfast of pancakes and canadian bacon at the campsite. Fortunately, Wally’s back had recovered enough overnight to allow us to make this journey.
Our plan for the day was to make a day trip to the most beautiful lake in the BWCA – JAP Lake. JAP Lake is a small lake that is on the only direct route south out of Seagull Lake. It’s a rough route to get to JAP – several small lakes with no campsites and some rough overgrown portages lie to the south, a monstrous 515-rod portage goes to the north. You don’t see JAP Lake without some effort.
(NOTE: Recent maps list JAP Lake as Poulsen Lake. I immediately dismissed this as PC nonsense. I later came to find out that JAP isn’t a reference to the land of Sushi – it’s an acronym for James and Ann Poulsen! Who knew?)
We packed for the day trip, bringing with our lunch, cameras, fishing gear, and our rain gear. As it turned out, we’d need the rain gear almost immediately. As we crossed from Gillis to Bat Lake, the rain started to come down. We pushed through Bat and Green Lake and over our favorite nasty portage to Flying Lake.
We canoed north across Flying Lake in the driving rain and made our way to the “70 rods, my ASS!” portage to Fay Lake. It was raining hard enough that I was hesitant to pull out my camera to get any pictures. This finally let up a little while we took our snack break on the portage to Glee Lake. Even traveling light – you still build up a big hunger!
In about 1995, Kermit and I made the same trek to JAP Lake in very similar weather conditions. At one point, it even hailed on us as we tried to portage through a swamp. This trip wasn’t as severe, but the conditions brought back memories. The BWCA has a strange beauty in bad weather – and in this remote corner of the BWCA, it adds to the desolation.
I was amazed how much things had changed since the last trek through the area – the massive blowdown in July 1999 hit this area especially hard, sweeping some ridgelines clean. Forest fires finished the job started by the blowdown. Signs of the forest making a comeback were already in evidence, though.
We paddled across Glossy and Elusion Lakes and climbed down the last short portage to JAP Lake. JAP looked nothing like I remembered it – The 150-year-old cedars were mowed flat, and the island campsites were stripped clean. My favorite island campsite was nearly destroyed – the giant pines and cedars were completely uprooted.
We pulled up and had a hot lunch of tortilla soup and sandwiches. We had to eat and turn back quickly since it was 2:30 PM and it took us almost three hours to get up to JAP Lake. This would put us back in our campsite at 5:30 – which is getting late in the short fall days.
Nobody felt like goiing back across “70 rods, My ASS!” on the way home, so we took an alternate route that lead us across Bingshick Lake and down part of the Chub River to Flying Lake. Again, this was a swampwhacking route that I had never taken before. But, given the choice, I might do that route again. It certainly seemed easier!
The rain cleared up somewhat on our second trip across Flying Lake, allowing us to take some pictures along the black cliffs:
It turned out to be the nicest night of all to enjoy the campfire, in spite of the difficulties we had gettiing the wet pile of wood to ignite. The Tufvanders made a big pot of Chicken and Rice for dinner and we relaxed until about 10 PM.
All pictures from the trip can be found at:
