BWCA: really, really cold, and really, really dark

[Chris] This post recounts my second winter trip to the BWCA with my friend, Jake. This trip was in the middle of December, 2010. I could probably just say that it was really cold and really dark and leave it at that, but I’ll give a few more details…

Our first trip to the BWCA was a lot different than this trip (read the post from the first trip here). Seriously though, it was a lot different. Instead of packs, we took homemade pulks; instead of sun and warmth, we had 16+ hours of darkness and subzero temps; instead of having to walk through a foot of standing water from melted snow, we had to walk into blistering winds; instead of only wearing a light base layer, we had to keep every inch of skin covered and often pulled our hats over our eyes when walking into the headwind. We started out on Brule Lake for this trip and headed west.

I should back up a bit. We drove up north on a morning that was -27 degrees in Ely. When we got to the final turn toward Brule Lake we learned that the last 5 miles of road to the lake are unplowed in the winter. We drove the jeep over the snow bank and made it about 20 feet before we came to our senses and decided that another 4 miles and 5260 feet would be too risky of an endeavor. So, we started our day with a 5 mile walk to the entry point. After the drive up and unplanned additional trek, we only made it a short ways on the lake before we had to stop and set up camp. When I say “stop to set up camp” you may be thinking it’s evening, and maybe it technically is evening, but I’m saying we had to stop at 3pm since the sun set around 4pm. That makes for a short day of moving.

The pulks seemed to work well. I bought the cheapest sleds I could find, some rope, some bungee cord, and CPVC pipe and spent a couple hours putting them together. We didn't have much gear, but with the winter sleeping bags and winter clothes the sleds filled up fast. (Below is a short video of Jake with his pulk starting out on Brule before the wind started abusing us.) If we had done more bushwhacking and hilly snowshoeing they might not have worked as well for us, but for this trip we set up a base camp on the second day and explored from there.

The best day hike we did was to the top of a cliff overlooking Brule. We hiked up the back side of the hill from Wench Lake and ate lunch on top before hiking north from there. This view was worth the whole trip. It also cemented what we discovered when we hiked out: Brule is a fricken huge lake. And I suppose the 20mph, -20 degree headwind on the hike out didn’t make it seem any shorter. We followed an otter’s tracks up and down the hill but we never actually saw an otter this trip.

The hiking was made slower by our frequent stops to avoid sweating for most of the trip. On our hike back we didn’t worry about sweating and covered in 1 day what took us 2 days on the way out with a headwind and frequent stops. The trip was great, as was the company. But, we did learn a few things. First, constant negative double digit temps gets really, really cold after a few days. There really weren’t many tasks that we could complete all at once with mittens off. We had to tie something up, warm our hands, roll up the sleeping bag halfway, warm up our hands, and on and on. Fortunately, we didn’t have a tent or much else to pack up. The second thing we learned, is that 16 hours of darkness gets really, really long if there isn’t anything to do. It was too cold to even sit by a fire so we went to bed at 5pm. That was fine for a night or two, but I started to go stir crazy by the end. If we ever go up at that time of year again we will need to either do some night hiking or bring ice fishing gear to stay up later.

The only disappointing thing about the trip was that the aurora was supposed to be out the first night but it was cloudy. I told Jake that if we saw the aurora and heard wolves howling that first night, we could go home because it wouldn’t get any better. Oh well, maybe on our next winter adventure.