Thanks for watching! I live for these days in paradise. Do you have an upcoming trip in your calendar?

@@MamasBasecamp just a couple of camping trips in the mountains. It's my happy place.

Hike Camp have a great summer!

Thanks for watching! I believe your most recent video you said you planned to start working on a BWCA video. Will definitely look forward to seeing that!😊

@@MamasBasecamp yeah, I was planning to have it out by now but other, mostly fun, things keep getting in the way 😜

Thanks for watching, actually we are getting out quite regularly but I find myself falling far behind on video making.

Such great memories, that trip! Didn’t notice the cabin foundation. Thanks for watching!

That’s around 60. We lightened up our cook set since this trip, now we’re doing single portages, but still using the barrel. That way we get more days of food squished into the barrel so our family can have enough meals for longer trips.

Let’s all get out there and enjoy another beautiful summer in our gorgeous wilderness areas!

Getting nicer every day, looking forward to this years paddling season!

@@MamasBasecamp Yes ! Can’t wait ! Have a great weekend !

Really do love to take photos! Thanks for the watch and the comment!

Thanks for watching!

Nope, boundary waters is still frozen

@@MamasBasecamp Yeah i figured it was too early.

It was a fantastic day! So much fun to enjoy those memories. Thanks for watching!

Thanks for watching!

Thanks! Been enjoying your BWCA vids on your channel. Looks like I had missed a few, but getting caught up!

Depends what you like to do in a trip. I like to park by Crooked and make a little circle from Crooked to Mountain to East Bear and West Bear then Kerr and High then back to Crooked. All of those lakes have campsites except for Kerr.

@@MamasBasecamp thanks so much. I don’t like how most campsites have you share the thunder box. Have you had any issues? Also, have you had any issues with the campsites so close?

@@ThePastorPiper in Sylvania the campsites each have one. Sometimes they are a little hard to find.

@@MamasBasecamp oh that’s good. I was told they share. Thanks so much and very sorry for bothering you. My MS is too bad to go to bwca right now :0(

@@ThePastorPiper a couple of the campsites with a 1 and 2 you can see the other people on their site and the landings are side by side and others not. Also some of the campsites are singles. You can reserve online in advance and in the winter you don’t have to reserve.

Have a great trip! Would love to see it in springtime.

I can’t imagine how you carried your canoe up that steep part. Did you also do Frost River from that direction? A lot of beaver dams to climb over in the more difficult direction!

First of all thank you so much for commenting. Seems like we belong to a small but wonderful community of wilderness trip lovers. I wish I had memories as a kid of such adventures but that is not how it began. I was always a Backpacker and not a paddler until I married my husband. He prefers the canoe trips and talked me into it but after only one trip to the BWCA when our daughter was small maybe 11 years ago I loved it and wanted to go back each year for a 10 day trip. Would be longer if I had more time off work. We go in smaller trips elsewhere for Lin weekends but the BWCA is to me heaven on earth and there is no place I’d rather be. BTW our teen said the Frost River day was the best day of the trip because she wasn’t bored, so there you go. A kid needs a challenge sometimes.

@@MamasBasecamp Thanks for the great reply. Over the years, my wife and extended family have done many paddling trips here in Virginia on the various lakes and rivers. The James River float trips are now among our favorite and we mostly do the slower flowing sections as we gracefully age into our 60s. We started out in canoes and transitioned to kayaks through the years. Like many folks, I got my start in canoeing by earning the canoeing merit badge in scouting back in the mid '70s. I fully understand that your daughter thought the best day of the trip was the one that presented the most challenges. As a former, longtime volunteer and paid Scouter, the hardest, most challenging trips were the ones that the scouts recall and remember the most. The sense of accomplishment gained from the harder outdoor challenges is so rewarding to the young ones and older ones alike. Your photography is cool, and I enjoy seeing your still images at the end of the videos. Keep up the great work! Gordon

Thanks for watching, I love the BWCA! Can’t wait to get back there again.

Dehydrated a bunch of recipes from your book Backcountry Eats, can’t wait to roll them out in camp this summer! Really enjoying having a few things a little different from my old standby recipes. I use the ones with veggies, meat and either rice, pasta or potatoes.

Thanks so much for watching!

Wayne Moreau we sure did do the Frost River west of Frost Lake, made friends with a lot of beaver dams that day!

@@MamasBasecamp If my memory serves me right, I think we crossed over 12+ beaver dams on our trip.

@@wiseoleowl5154 yes there were about 25 but half were paddle throughs. We climbed about 13.

Gordon Miller - thanks for watching! Can’t wait to do a 2023 trip!

Yes, she really is a great girl. I will miss her in these trips when she is grown and gone.

Sounds like a fantastic trip. You covered a lot of ground! Was it busy or quiet?

Have a great time! Was a wonderful spot!

Thanks for watching! It really was the highlight of our summer!

Nibimocs, I guess I didn't do my research very well. Didn't know about the plane wreck. My daughter would have enjoyed looking for that for sure.

September is a long time to wait, but some things are worth waiting for!

The season is right around the corner, Ican't wait to go on the next canoe trip!

Hike Camp, we make spreadsheets with every ounce accounted for to try to make sure we can get it in a single portage LOL

@@MamasBasecamp Wow!

Thanks for watching!

Oh gosh, I can't recall, there has been a number of trips since that time. Last 10 Day trip barrel weighed 45 pounds.

@@MamasBasecamp LOL....I guessed at least that much but you heaved it well.....LOL...thanks for responding...

I loved that campsite on Little Sag and also the one on Boulder

Yes, it was a hot day so we were ready to be done. It took us about 4.5 hours single portaging if I recall. Boulder to Ledge, in that direction starts out decent, but the part were it's sometimes a float through was rough due to the mud factor. Both my husband and daughter postholed in the mud up to their knee. Then right after the part were they sunk, we couldn't see where the trail went. Turned out it goes up a short but steep hill. If we hadn't read the complaints about that hill we wouldn't have known to go that way. But we remembered the complaints on the forums and that's how we found which way to go. After that little steep part the portage is decent again. When we got to Ledge it was very sinkable in the mud again, but it's not always like that. The water was low because of the drought so we weren't able to get away with stepping from vegetation to the boat, had to step in the lake muck.

mamasbasecamp.blogspot.com/2021/11/together-in-bwca.html?m=1 I have more detail about the route in this write up. It's kind of long, if you just want to see the Boulder to Legde day skip ahead to day 7

@@MamasBasecamp Excellent, thank you so much!! The water will be higher in June than in August, provided we don't have an absurd drought, so we should hopefully have less trouble going from Adams to Boulder, but the dried up portion of Boulder-Ledge might be too wet to just keep portaging (which I'd probably rather do than do a little load-unload float through). Probably the same story with Vee-Fee too... but it sounds like it wasn't too hard to follow. Thanks again for the great video and photos; they'll certainly help with my trip and hopefully we still make it from Adams-LilSag while double portaging without killing ourselves or each other. :) I look forward to it.

@@TechnicallyRugged vee- fee was no problem for us.

@@MamasBasecamp Just had to add... the Ledge portage landing is muddy whether the water is high or not. At least that was my experience when I went through there (the other direction).

Depends how much ground you want to cover, the physical abilities of the group, and how hard so you want to work? Also depends if you want to Basecamp and fish, trip around, etc.

Thanks for watching!

Thanks for watching, because of the drought Ledge was lower than usual. Sure was a fun day!

Hike Camp - thanks for watching, hope you are well!

Thank you for your awesome comments. I am glad you liked the videos. The best of times are in the BWCA, precious memories each and everyday of every trip.

I do appreciate the weather radio, it's a good friend for wind and storm warnings.

When I saw it swimming in our direction I thought for sure we'd see it up close and personal before long. But when I hollered for my family to come take a look, it turned back heading in the opposite direction. My daughters eyes were as big as saucers when she saw that bear.

Thanks for watching. Yes, I weigh everything and keep a spreadsheet figuring out what I can bring because I have my limits to about 50 pounds I can carry on a long portage. I carry the food/kitchen stuff and on a 10 day trip for the 3 of us the food starts out pretty heavy.

When I vacuum seal foods with sharp ends I put them in a small baggie, wrap in a half sheet of paper towel, and then vacuum seal and then the sharp ends don't poke through. I vacuum seal because I dehydrate and store in the freezer.

@@MamasBasecamp I have always stored my dried food in the freezer but I ran out of freezer space and stored about 40 meals in a dark cabinet in the basement. Chilli Mac, Shepherds pie, Seven layer casserole and Chilli all in vacuum bags. Over a year later I took all these meals with me to Montana to our lodge at the very beginning of the Covid crisis. All the meals were fine. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I appreciate it!