Canoe (not backpacking) Travel

This is in reply to Adam's inquiry re backpacking, but posted separately so as not to hijack his thread.

As kids we backpacked to trout streams in the neighborhood. I started with friends when I was 10, and was going alone by the time I was 12 years old. It wasn’t very technical and we didn’t have nice equipment. We just took the stuff we had, dragged it into the woods, ate brook trout, and went home in a couple of days.

The terrain and vegetation have a lot to do with backcountry travel. In the Upper Midwest we have lakes and rivers and bogs and forests. The indigenous peoples traveled by canoe. The early white men traveled by canoe. By the time we had driver’s licenses and the strength to carry a canoe across a short portage, we traveled by canoe also.

Canoe travel is the backpacking of the Upper Midwest. The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is the premier canoe country.

http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/forests/superior/bwcaw/

It’s significant that Camp Widjiwagan, a YMCA youth wilderness tripping camp near Ely, MN, sponsored canoe travel first, and when they got into backpacking they went to western states.

http://www.campwidjiwagan.org/pages/page_145.htm

Widji sponsors backpacking trips to Isle Royale and the Lake Superior Hiking Trail, but these are recent developments.

http://www.nps.gov/isro/index.htm

http://www.bwca.cc/activities/hiking/su ... trail.html

There are plenty of canoe tripping opportunities outside of the popular and sometimes crowded BWCAW.

Our best backcountry stream or river fishing trips are by canoe. Think upper Mississippi, St. Louis River, St. Croix River, and others. This is mostly for warmwater fish like smallmouth bass and muskies.

Most of our trout streams are too small for canoe travel, but floating the larger rivers will bring you within reach of trout streams that have no easy overland access. Some of these streams are never fished, and they can hold surprises.

The upper Namekagon offers an excellent two or three day float trip, with big trout, if you can catch them.

http://www.nps.gov/sacn/index.htm

Like skyphix, I walk to streams and ponds, and then sleep in my own bed at night. If I was going to walk in to a remote campsite at my advanced age, I’d consider borrowing a pack animal, maybe a llama, to carry my tent.

Well I certainly appreciate the separate post, it was not necessary.

I like what you wrote, not easy overland but accessable by canoe, suprises...

Very interesting Ernest.

Just curious, you guys make your canoe? or aluminum, strip or skin? If I'm not mistaken, doesn't your area have a type of canoe that is designed or has a unique configuration? Flat back, narrow but flat bottom really pointy in front? I forget but I think I remember reading years ago about a certain type of canoe or boat that was developed or often used type in the area.

Anyway, thanks for that.

I don’t know which canoe may have been developed in this area. There are many canoe shapes, depending on what the designer wants it to do. I understand that some of the canoe styles came here from Maine. Our lakes and rivers are like theirs.

For many years the workhorse tripping canoe was the aluminum Grumman 17' Standard. It was inexpensive, stable, and low maintenance. At about 75 pounds, it could be carried over the portages, and it was rated for a load of 700 pounds, which meant it carried two adults and a whole lot of gear, with room to spare. There are bigger and smaller ones. On the down side, aluminum is noisy, it sticks in the water rather than glides, and it catches on rocks when running a stream. I don’t think Grumman is in business anymore, but there are thousands of these canoes hanging in garages in the Midwest. There are other aluminum canoes. The Alumacraft is common. It seems flatter and wider than the Grumman. It’s stable, but a bear to paddle.

The better canoes for lake use are relatively narrow, with a good keel to keep on track, rigid, and slippery in the water. Fiberglass is good, but it scratches easily if you run against a rock.

Kevlar canoes like those made by Old Town are better for running rivers. They have less keel so they can be slipped sideways in a current, and are flexible and bounce off the rocks without much damage.

The gold standard is the canvas canoe. It’s wood covered with canvas, and then painted to make it water resistant. They are heavy, but once you have the canoe moving down the lake, it just glides. No one wants to paddle an aluminum canoe if there is a canvas canoe in the party. Many of these were made by individual craftsmen. Joe Seliga of Ely, Minnesota was one of the best builders, and his canoes are coveted by many. He made canoes until he died in 2005, at the age of 94 years.

A more modern iteration is the wood and fiberglass canoe. The shell is made of cedar strips tacked to forms, and then sanded and covered with fiberglass on the outside. The fiberglass cloth disappears into the resin, and the result is a beautiful wood grain finish. The forms are twisted out of the inside of the canoe, and then the inside is sanded and painted with the resin. The keel, gunnels, seats and thwarts stiffen up the whole thing. We see a lot of these on the tops of cars headed for the BWCAW. They are built in small canoe shops, and a lot of them are built by hobbyists.

I have just two canoes, a 17’ Lund aluminum, which has the same dimensions as the Grumman Standard, and a one man, 40 pound Old Town Kevlar canoe that I think is 12’ long. The Lund is for bigger water and for two people. The Old Town is for solo trips to small lakes and ponds.

I could try to wax poetical about canoe tripping, but instead I’ll refer you to “The Maine Woods” by Henry David Thoreau.