Quetico Wilderness Canoeing - Agnes, Kahshahpiwi Loop

One of my favorite wilderness areas is the canoe country along the Minnesota/Ontario border. The Boundary Water Canoe Area Wilderness and Ontario’s Quetico Provincial Park teem with interconnected lakes superbly suitable for canoe tripping and wilderness excursions. I have traveled and canoed there since the mid 1990s with various friends and family members. This trip report is one of several that I have included in this blog. Please use this site’s search function to see other “Canoe” trip journeys in this and other wonderful wilderness areas.

We are weary, tired, and cranky. We have driven all night and into the wee hours of the morning to make it to the outfitters, get our gear and tow to the Prairie Portage ranger station, to then paddle north across the border and into Ontario Canada's Quetico provincial park border by 11:00 a.m. There are four of us. Mike, Tom, and I, while not anywhere near experts, are veterans of wilderness canoeing in this part of the U.S. and Canada. Rick is a first-timer. We paddle Bailey Bay, Sunday Lake, and then hump the big portage (Big Agony) into Meadows Lake where we camp for the evening. 

We start our first full day with the Little Agony portage out of Meadows and into Agnes. We linger briefly at Louisa Falls so that Tom and Rick could experience their first time at one of Quetico's more renowned sites. We are fortunate to have sunny skies and a good tailwind from the south to help push us the 10 plus miles northward on this giant lake, Lake Agnes. We camp at a four star site on an island at Agnes' north end where there are great views, a easy canoe landing, and spacious tent sites. 

The following day's mid-September morning dawns wet and cold. The rain starts soon after breaking camp and won't stop for the rest of the day. We finish Agnes and then paddle and portage through Keewatin, Williams, Payne, and Hurlburt. A hard copy of a website I was relying on indicates there are two campsites on Hurlburt; a one star site on its north end, and a better three star site on its south end. It is getting late. The rain darkened skies are getting darker due to the late hour. We paddle past the one star camp, prematurely thankful we do not have to stay at this forlorn and unappealing site We continue southerly all the way to Hurlburt's southern end. Upon arrival, the second site at this south end, the one that is supposed to exist according to my web research, is nowhere to be found. We search and search, first into one bay, then the next, behind an outcropping on our right, then another one to our left. Nothing. Our options are to take yet another long portage into the next lake and hope to find a campsite there (the maps don't indicate one way or another whether there are any sites there), pioneer a site on any flat spot we can find nearby in and among the trees in the dark forest, or paddle back to the one star site two miles back to the northern end of Hurlburt. As we weigh these options, the light rain turns heavy and it starts to pour. Tom breaks the impasse on our indecision of what to do, saying that the only one known we have is the camp site back to the north. Off we paddle, the hard rain coming down in sheets, filling our canoes, weighing them down, and making the paddling even harder after a long day of hard paddling. The tent sites at this one star site couldn't be worse. They are located in either mossy puddles or directly on a small slab of flat, hard rock. We are cold, wet, tired, and miserable, but we make do, having no other choice. We dub our site Hell Hole City, population 4. 

The next morning starts with the usual rain that briefly clears by noon only to rain again at the end of the day. Our gear and clothing are not getting a chance to dry out. We leave Hurlburt and portage into Trant then Kahshahpiwi. Newbie Rick is catching the most fish. 95% of the fish being caught are bass. I catch one with a large northern pike clamped down on its backside. At the boat, the pike lets loose, then the bass shakes off my barb-less hook. Mike puts his line in the water and immediately catches the same pike that had my bass. 

We leave Kahshahpiwi via the Yum Yum portage. This portage is one of the few in Quetico that gets its name written on the maps due, likely, to its infamy. It is a tough hump up and down ridge lines, over large glacial erratics and through boot sucking swamps. We confront a large shear granite slab that needs to be shimmied down crab-like while shouldering both canoe and pack. This marks the highlight of this route. Thankfully we have clear skies and beautiful weather for this portage would be extra treacherous in the rain. 

It is only a short paddle on Yum Yum Lake before we have yet another hard portage over to Grey Lake. From here, we have two route options. We don't know it at first, but we take what ends up being the tougher of the two: the "river" route to the south instead of the route over the ridge to the east. Our now out-of-date maps indicate a nice free flowing creek on which we can paddle out to the next lake. However, due to more recent beaver activity, the route is instead a very narrow, muddy, and swamp infested quagmire. This so-called "creek" is barely wide enough to fit our canoes and often not deep enough to keep them afloat. We walk and line the boats for most of its distance through knee deep boulder-strewn water and up and over an occasional beaver dam or fallen log obstruction. 

It is getting late. We need to set up camp before dark. The maps don't indicate any campsites on Dell Lake, which we will enter after getting through this swampy morass. But Providence shines down upon us. We find a very nice site halfway down the lake where we call it quits after our long, tough day. 

The next morning dawns with cold temperatures, overcast skies, and welcoming strong north winds. From Dell, the winds push us as we paddled to Little Isabella, North Bay and finish at an island campsite on Burke Lake. Although windy, it is a decent site with great flat tent sites which are a treat after many nights of lying on slopes. 

The week went by fast. It is now our last day and, wouldn't you know it, we have the best weather of the trip. The sunny skies and light winds make our final paddle a real treat. After two hours since leaving camp, we arrive at Prairie Portage at 10:30 a.m., well ahead of our 2:00 p.m. scheduled pick-up time. Another outfitter is loading up a canoe party's gear for their tow back. He offered to phone our outfitter after getting into cell range, letting them know that we are ready for our tow earlier than planned.  By noon, we are in our tow and on our way back to base, then town, for beer, greasy food, and other forms of sustenance. 

Our six and a half day trip covers 56 miles and many portages. The tough ones include the portage from Trant to Kahshahpiwi, the Yum Yum, and the very difficult Grey to Dell (south end). I make a mental note that in the future, we are to avoid this last one at all costs.