The Fire and us

I have used our actual Fisher & Co. route map from our canoe trip to show our route and the location of the Cavity Lake fire (note - Fisher maps are great!).




We entered Boundary Waters through the Cross Bay Lake entry point. That requires you to paddle down Ham Lake and Cross Bay lake before entering BWCA itself. Our outfitter, Tuscarora Outfitters, located at Round Lake, gave us a ride to the landing.

We camped at Long Island Lake all three nights we were out, making day trips from there. Our route in is the yellow dotted line; our route out is the green line. The black oval shows about where the fire was when we first noticed the smoke plume on Friday, 7/14. The red and yellow line shows the advancing fireline. We left BWCA 7/15 in the afternoon. The squares on the map are 1 mile each; if you can't see them on your screen, the letters "Camp" in campsite cover about a mile on the map.

We were never in any danger, but it was a relief when we finally encountered somebody who knew where the fire was when we were on our way out. We hadn't run into anybody from the time we first saw the smoke until we were most of the way out. On the news last night we saw a picture of the landing where we went in with a "closed" sign on it, so they are starting to worry - though I think it's still 3 miles from the fire line.

Related:

Link to updated fire map (pdf)

Dan's first post on the canoe trip
Dan's second post

My prior post on the canoe trip