My Quality Day: Clearwater

Saturday, October 1, 2022

Clearwater - Day 305

We were expecting an easy morning with a long flat piece of trail that's called The Long Portage. It's on an old rail bed. But we were wrong. This picture is the trail. Beaver flooding has covered the outlet from Daniels Lake. About a football field length to cross. We weren't going to wade that. (We found out later that hikers are just expected to wade, but it wasn't even clear where we supposed to walk toward.) We spent a LOT of time exploring options. There were also a lot of downed trees that were going to make it really difficult to walk across the dam. We found a place where we could cross the river this outlet flowed into, but then we would have needed a place to cross back over once we got past this. Seemed iffy.

We finally decided to bushwhack southeast from here and look for a place to cross the creek above the flooding. Also lots of fallen trees in there.
beaver pond

We did find an easy place to get across the creek on stones.
hiker crossing a creek on stones

After we got around that, we encountered some more flooded portage, but that part was easier to get around. We were sure happy when we made it to the Daniels Lake Spur Trail junction. We knew we were about to climb again, but we also knew that would get us out of the water. The bottom line is that we spent nearly an hour to cover that 0.8 mile of trail.

The day was overcast, so we didn't have sparkling blue water, but the vistas weren't shabby- just softer. This is Watap Lake.

We began to get views of Clearwater Lake. This is a large lake, also not on the Canadian Border. We knew we were headed down to its shore.

But first, we had to go through an area that was hit by a tornado last year. The trail was impassable for several months, but now it has been opened again. Remember, no wheels or power tools are allowed in the Boundary Waters, so this all had to be cut out by hand. I know at least one crew from Michigan helped to clear this. We had no trouble at all getting through. Many thanks to all who helped!
tornado damage

We camped that night near the shore of Clearwater Lake. It was a slightly stressful day because we spent so much time figuring out how to get around that flooding. We made our goal although it was nearly dark when we set up camp.