BWCA

Following the Birkie this year I was actually a bit burnt out on skiing, maybe disheartened would be a better word.  The snow was still great though, and the next week presented an opportunity too good to pass up.  Bjorn planned a winter camping trip into the BWCA for the first few days of March.  There were 4 of us on the trip, Bjorn, Kurt (a med school student and friend of Bjorn's), Mike Kosowski, and myself.  The plan was to do most of our travel by ski pulling sleds with our gear on them and to snowshoe through portages where skiing wasn't possible.  Kurt's dad had most of the gear we needed, including some pretty sweet sleds and a canvas tent and TI stove.  Much like the Quetico trip the first day was the toughest.  Learning to ski with sleds, adventuring through untrodden portages, me breaking a pole, and of course the first day there is always the most weight due to food and such.  It was some work, and did I mention the high that day was 5F with 15mph winds?  Once we got to a nice sheltered spot and got the tent set up and warm things were pretty good though.  With the stove there we ate well the whole trip, and Kurt broght stuff for gin and tonics, so that was a pretty nice addition to supper a couple nights.  The second day we had another portage that hadn't been traversed, but the elevation change was less on this one, and we were a bit more prepared for how to handle the sleds.  The temps warmed up too, into the teens, which helped.  The terrain was gorgeous on the portages, snow undisturbed for the whole winter.  There had been a big meltdown and refreeze a couple weeks before (Mora weekend) so the lakes were great for crust skiing and we could make pretty good time.  The portages were deep snow where no snowshoe tracks existed, but when you are in no hurry to get somewhere slow steady progress is just fine.  The next day we went out on a day trip fishing a couple lakes over.  We caught a couple decent sized lake trout to add to one of our meals.  We also went to the top of a bluff near the lake we were camping on and got some great views of the area.  I sadly lost my camera on the way down the slope though, so may need to plan a trip come spring to go find it.  I'm sure the camera will be non-functional, but would like to save the memory card if I can find it.  The last day on the way out we found a great portage that Bjorn and I were able to ski through and finished with a great downhill that we dropped our bags and went back just to ski again.  There was another fun hill on the way where I made it around a corner but my sled didn't and ended up wrapping around a tree and bringing me to a rather sudden halt.  My bike tire elastic system worked well to dampen the sudden stop and all I did was fall down, awesomely.  We stopped at Sven and Ole's for pizza on the way back through Grand Marais, which was a pretty solid meal choice.  Besides the cold feet most of the trip it was really a blast, something I'd for sure try again.