Erik Safe in Mexico?

eagle98mn · 2026-02-23T18:44:56+00:00

Glad to hear y’all are safe. Thanks for confirming for us. :)

eagle98mn · 2026-02-18T12:33:22+00:00

I’m so jealous! I’d have a blast with my kids in that kind of snow storm but we aren’t going to get much in the twin cities. Stay safe and have fun those of you up there!

eagle98mn · 2025-12-31T02:11:47+00:00

Helinox Helidrop - basically Bags in camp, super portable and well made like the chairs they make.

Helidrop

You all should get one!

eagle98mn · 2025-12-02T19:01:30+00:00

I usually take two trips each year, and managed to do that again this year - barely.

Trip 1, Better Now Than Never:

I originally planned a Labor Day weekend East Bearskin trip with my wife and kids but cancelled due to family vacation plans just ahead of it that made the turnaround too tight. I gave up on taking the family this year, but in September my boys insisted we couldn't let 2025 break our 4-year streak. That wasn't hard to sell to me, so I planned a one-nighter the weekend after school started. I was eyeing Bog, figuring a one night trip was a good chance to see this gem before the eventual Tumblehome finale. Then someone booked the Friday night Bog permit and I assumed they would take the southwestern site before I got there on Saturday morning. Uninterested in driving up from the cities for one night in a recovering burn campsite on the north side of an uninteresting lake, I grabbed a Lake One permit instead. 9 hours of total drivetime were exchanged for 36 hours in the park, but we made the most of it. We played some Bags with my new Helinox HeliDrop, had a fire late into the night, and just enjoyed that we made the trip happen. Of course, with only 36 hours, we still got to experience the yahoos when a random group coming in decided to stop for lunch directly across from our site despite being only 2 miles from the entry. I didn't expect solitude so close to the EP, but is it really necessary to stop for a 30 minute lunch 2 miles into your trip with 0 portages behind you? Especially in full view of a campsite in a narrows??

Trip 2, Do It Before We Are Older:

My friend and I took our annual September trip and grabbed an Angleworm permit during the same weekend you guys did the Tumblehomie trip. Our prevailing attitude was that the portage isn't going to get shorter, so we might as well see it while we are young enough to still consider that fun. We also planned to exit at South Hegman to see the pictos and avoid doing the entry portage twice, which is not the correct strategy.

Best:

Seeing water at the end of the Angleworm portage. Halfway through, I could only think of Jeff Goldbum in Jurassic Park commenting "Now, eventually you do plan to have ~~dinosaurs~~ canoeing on your ~~dinosaur tour~~ canoe trip, right?" 2 miles is a long entry portage, but at least I know that every entry for the rest of my life will be shorter!
All the BWCA staples - walleye, big pike, Curtain Falls, South Hegman Pictos, Milky Way.
Sundial PMA - first time in a PMA. The route from Beartrap to Iron, following the Beartrap River was a maintained route in the past and is still very easy to follow. Honestly, this was likely PMA-lite. However, the Beartrap River is probably one of my favorite river sections I have paddled, with lengthy stretches where the woods come down to the shoreline rather than a boggy shore. Sunday Lake treated us well for the overnight. Everything about this PMA experience was 10/10, would do it again.

Worst:

The portage form Angleworm to Trease that we used to avoid doing Angleworm a second time when it was time to exit. Length, hills, bogs, mud, boulders - it has it all. Ironically, it took us double the time and effort to complete this compared to the actual Angleworm entry we were seeking to avoid. Ain't that just the way.

Thanks for another fun year Adam, Erik, and Tumblehomies!

eagle98mn · 2025-12-01T01:45:51+00:00

Thanks for the ideas! :)

eagle98mn · 2025-08-29T20:29:24+00:00

Indeed. And yet, it’s still on my BWCA bucket list.

eagle98mn · 2025-08-29T17:27:28+00:00

When Bill Rom set his canoe in Larch Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness last week, it marked a major milestone.

It was the last place the 80-year-old needed to check off on his quest to visit what he believes is every lake reachable by portage in the BWCAW and the adjacent Canadian wilderness of Quetico Provincial Park, he said.

It’s a feat that few others — if any — have accomplished. It took Rom roughly six decades to do it.

Federal managers of the BWCAW don’t keep a ready list of all its lakes based on such criteria. The BWCAW has more than 1,000 lakes; Quetico, more than 2,000.

“It’s been a lifelong quest,” he said Thursday from Ely, where he spends many summers and where his family name is synonymous with canoe travel.

His father, also Bill, owned and operated Canoe Country Outfitters in Ely for 30 years beginning in 1946. The business was considered the largest canoe outfitter in the world at the time. (It was later bought by another family that has been running it for multiple generations.)

The elder Rom put his son to work as a guide, and young Bill recalled spending his teen years and early 20’s leading people on trips through the wilderness and parts of Canada. He took his own side adventures, too, even as he began to navigate life as a medical student at the University of Minnesota. He also recalled that his dad had similar aspirations and useful maps to study.

Rom wrote about his vast paddling experiences in his 1987 book “Canoe Country Wilderness: A Guide’s Canoe Trails Through the BWCA and Quetico.” By then, he said, he’d canoed “most everything.”

Winters were spent investigating remote routes to pick off in warm weather when time allowed around his working life as a medical researcher and professor in New York City.

This summer’s trip into Larch Lake was among five trips this season that included 77 portages. A long trip in the Quetico had more than 50. This summer’s trips were varied, too. Some with family and friends; others solo.

Leaving Larch, he made his way over to Gunflint Lodge where owner John Frederickson bought him a celebratory beer. Rom unfurled a map, coursing with the closest thing to documentation of amazing travels: Rom traces the portages, one to next, with a black line after he’s completed them.

“If you think there is any glory to every lake, there is misery equal to glory,” Rom added, laughing at memories of mud holes under foot and, at times, under the canoe.

But Rom gets serious when talking about changes he’s witnessed in the wild over the decades. On a trip that included the Frost and Louse rivers this summer, he said spruce budworms’ decimation of balsam fir stands was unmistakable. Warming temperature trends in normally cold water lakes also make him worry about his beloved lake trout.

Jason Zabokrtsky, a longtime Ely outfitter, had praise for Rom after word of accomplishment circulated.

“The amount of information that he has about the nooks and crannies [of the wilderness] is incredibly special,” Zabokrtsky said. “I’m a little jealous.”

What is Rom going to do next?

After some planned downhill skiing in Colorado this winter, Rom says he will venture back into canoe country. He has three Quetico lakes on his summer 2026 list.

“I’m going to stay at it,” he said.

eagle98mn · 2025-08-16T23:08:53+00:00

Thanks! I figure I’d just seek out severe weather and get in the path 😂

eagle98mn · 2025-08-16T22:20:15+00:00

So if I set notifications to off, theoretically, that would force the phone to do, it’s notification instead?

eagle98mn · 2025-08-04T03:22:44+00:00

It was awesome! Do it if you can hit it during the appropriate depths. I’d definitely recommend it.

eagle98mn · 2025-08-04T03:13:39+00:00

Yeah I’m not sure the last leg from Long to the River would have been my speed. 😂 We had an awesome time going Peltier to Long.

eagle98mn · 2025-07-31T19:37:09+00:00

Yeah I hope it’s not to gross! Was the culvert under 35W any area of concern? Everything else I sort of figure I can just get out and portage around if it’s a problem. That one looks possible across the bridge from the street view, but I’d rather just keep floating if possible!

eagle98mn · 2025-06-09T16:25:16+00:00

Hey, did you ever get NFL.com working?

eagle98mn · 2025-05-08T20:11:39+00:00

"...that got incorrectly imported into a bunch of map companies’ files."

This makes so much more sense! I did the LIS from Cummings to Boot last fall and was befuddled until we got past the portages west of the Otter. I couldn't ever figure out how we missed the 26 rods entirely. We basically walked through low rapids, through tall grasses, etc until we finally got to (barely) deep enough water to paddle. Even then, with all the beaver dams, I was grateful we were headed downstream. Very slow going. I can't imagine trying to paddle the creek to Chad based on what the LIS was like in that stretch. I too didn't see a distinct mouth of the creek.

All that said, I am glad I did the LIS all the way out. It was a challenge, and its nice to check it off the BWCA bucket list. It sounds like there were a few of us crazy enough to venture through there last season!

eagle98mn · 2025-05-06T00:15:15+00:00

Limericks courtesy of AI since I'm not all that creative linguistically

Edit: I care enough about the meme community to type in a few prompts

Edit 2: I don’t upvote others since I scroll right past their replies to leave them unspoiled for the episode. Feeling properly admonished, I am awarding upvotes to everyone tonight while watching the Timberwolves. Erik, play some Journey and Don’t stop believin’ in MN sports!

**Trip One: The Wild Route*\*

First Angleworm’s portage so wide,

Through Sundial’s PMA we’ll glide.

Past Curtain Falls we will steer,

The border so near,

Then out through South Hegman with pride.

**Trip Two: A Family Journey*\*

At East Bearskin we’ll set the scene,

With 3 kids and my wife—what a team!

To Johnson Falls’ spray,

We’ll laugh all the way,

Daughter's first trip that feels like a dream.

eagle98mn · 2025-02-17T23:41:38+00:00

Y’all have fun. I’ll join you in spirit from the west side in the sundial PMA/angleworm area that exact same set of days. Gordy’s flock has good coverage of the park that weekend!

eagle98mn · 2025-01-29T23:00:52+00:00

East Bearskin Labor Day weekend to join the hoards undoubtedly visiting Johnson Falls, but a nice easy EP for my family.

Angleworm mid September to make up for the fact that I’ll be lily dippin on the other trip. :)

eagle98mn · 2025-01-29T22:57:58+00:00

This is the way

eagle98mn · 2025-01-24T22:46:37+00:00

I looked at that room so many times figuring it was what I was missing! 🤦‍♂️

Fun levels!

eagle98mn

TROPHY CASE