Not a ton of pictures on this one as I was woefully out of shape, and sucking wind most of the time.
This time I was lucky enough to have a friend tag along for his first backpacking trip. For unknown reasons I settled on the Caribou Rock and Border Route Trails again. This is the profile of our route:
Based on all of the rain we had I had assumed it would be super muddy but thankfully that wasnt the case. It was however hot as hell so we were sweating our butts off getting to the campsite.
We eventually made it to Rose Falls, where we stopped for a bit before pressing East to Rose Lake.
We were making decent time then all hell broke loose. On the descent towards the Rose Lake site we encountered some massive blowdown. It was close to a quarter mile of up and over and crawling around downed trees. We could have easily lost the trail had we not had a GPS on us.
After it took us about an hour to go 1/4 mile we finally made it to the Rose Lake site.
As we were looking for places to hang our hammock we heard a shout from the lake. At first we thought it was a canoer, only to discover a guy wading the shoreline in his boxers!
He had taken the Daniels Lake trail and was headed East on the BRT when he encountered another huge area of downed trees. He said that the section was damaged so bad, he was losing the trail, and fearing getting lost or hurt trying to work his way through he decided to hug the shoreline, knowing he’d find a campsite, portage or group of canoers to help orient himself and possibly catch a ride to bypass the blowdown.
We offered to share our site with the hiker, and he was a great guy! Shared some ibuprofen with him and we both shared items from our meals to eat and generally had a really nice night!
He had decided to tag along with us since we had a GPS and he was rightfully worried about trying to find his way through the blowdown without a GPS. We started back up the hill and fighting our way through the blowdown again.
With a good nights rest and some good food for breakfast it didnt feel as tough to go through the second time.
We ultimately started back the same way we came, and stopped here and there for some pictures at overlooks.
Random Notes:
- As pictured above, I thought it would be a bit silly but my Opinel picnic set was awesome! Will definitely use it more moving forward.
- My Sawyer squeeze that worked fine before storage just refused to work on this trip. I had even brought the plunger to backflush it with clean water and could barely get anything out of it. Thankfully my friend had an old school pump filter that we were able to use. Not sure what happened to it.
- Further equipment failures – My alcohol fuel container leaked all over in my cookpot and stove. Will just eat the weight penalty to get a more durable fuel storage container.
- Ate a bunch of different PackIt Gourmet meals this trip. The All-American Works burger with a tortilla is one of the best backpacking meals Ive ate in a long time, highly recommended. The Moonshine Margarita with some packed in Tequila was actually pretty great too!
- My Kupilka and JoGo coffee straw worked out well too. Liking that combo when its not winter and I can sit and enjoy a cup for a while.
- Slept like a baby in my hammock for the most part but was WAY to hot with my 20F quilt set. Need to find some cheap 50F quilt sets out there for summer usage.
- The Caribou Rock trail still hits harder than the mileage would indicate. Its just a relentless trail that doesnt give you any breaks.
- Reported the blowdown to the BRT board, sounds like they werent aware of the extent but that the USFS had gotten some reports recently too.
- I think Im done with the BRT and Caribou Rock Trail for a bit. Want to hit some other areas of the BWCA next.