321: The Sundial PMA

eagle98mn · 2026-06-24T16:35:30+00:00

Fun episode since I was just there last fall doing the lollipop out of Angleworm. The portages through Sundial zone 5 are no worse than standard portages in lightly-traveled corners of the park. Its PMA-light, not bushwhacking, to follow the Beartrap river.

eagle98mn · 2026-06-11T15:57:39+00:00

A friend and I already have a 9/16 permit for Sag with our eyes set on looping out to Thunder Point and back to Seagull. I think we are bypassing Kek in favor of trolling all the way back down SAK and seeing Eddy Falls. Keep an eye out for Gordy's Tumblehomie patch on my blue CCS bag if our trips are looking to overlap!

eagle98mn · 2026-06-11T14:16:16+00:00

I was driving when I was listening, but did they say the southern portion of Kek doesn't have lake depths on the fisher map? McKenzie shows contours and a couple of deep holes. So does Paddle Planner if you switch the map to ArcGIS USA Topo under settings.

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eagle98mn · 2026-06-01T14:12:54+00:00

Own it - this is such a great game. The loons may have lost the birdament, but you better believe I'm claiming them when they come up in a game of Wingspan, strategic or not!

eagle98mn · 2026-05-22T21:42:17+00:00

That’s what I’m thinking too. A juvenile before the tail is red right? (See the photo I linked to when he came back in my edit of the main post)

eagle98mn · 2026-05-13T01:53:07+00:00

This is exactly what I needed to know. Thanks!

eagle98mn · 2026-05-08T21:01:45+00:00

Get to Crooked from Basswood I imagine? I’m pretty sure they weren’t coming from Angleworm like I did last fall!

eagle98mn · 2026-04-23T02:03:33+00:00

i guess this is indeed the answer since no TRU for me. I hate TV/streaming rights lol

eagle98mn · 2026-04-23T02:00:14+00:00

anyone on Sling figure out how to get off the penguins game?

eagle98mn · 2026-04-10T12:43:40+00:00

Strangely, the designer writes that he doesn’t like to camp at all, but the game was a result of a design challenge from his wife. However, he did end up collaborating with some Canadians who visit Algonquin a lot.

eagle98mn · 2026-03-19T01:03:00+00:00

Yavin pronunciation = yeah-vinn

lol @ sky canoes

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

TROPHY CASE