7/17/24 – July 5th, Owen and I pack for our trip down the Granite River. The Granite River runs from Saganaga (big Sag) Lake at the end of the Gunflint Trail to Gunflint Lake 10 miles south as the crow flies. Owen has never been up the Gunflint and I have never been to the east of big Sag. That night we had a site at Trail’s End campground. After much lollygagging and slow packing up, we finally head out towards the end of the Gunflint Trail. We drive separately so we can drop off one of our cars at our exit point at the Gunflint Lake public access. The Poplar Haus was our choice for dinner and we rolled into our site around 7 pm. Due to the bugs, we played cribbage in the tent for a while before heading to bed to get one last good nights sleep for our trip the following day.
We woke up between 8 and 8:30 am and hit the water shortly after. What luck we had on our paddle north on Saganaga Lake! The lake was so calm which is not always the case on big lakes like that! Owen and I got to our first portage between 10:30 and 10:50 am The first portage was short but was overgrown a bit. It was still easy to follow though. After another 20 minutes of paddling, we go to our next portage. This portage was on the Canadian side of the border and ran along the Horsetail Rapids. Due to the higher water levels, getting to the portage landing was a little bit trickier than in other normal years. As we had learned before we left that morning from an outfitter that we stopped at to ask questions, we were paddling against the current. The rapids moved fairly quickly but we were able to land without trouble. This portage was a beautiful walk through some red cedars. The far side of the portage put us into Maraboeuf Lake. Maraboeuf Lake runs north to south for about 2 miles. All of the BWCA sites are in the southern third of the lake. The 2007 Ham Lake fire burned through this area, so there are a lot of bright pink granite rock faces visible on the hills surrounding Maraboeuf. Even 17 years later, the destruction of the fire is still visible. I wish I had been able to see what that area looked like beforehand and a year later. As we paddle along about to exit Maraboeuf, we come along a narrow section of the river. There are small cliffs that run into the water along both sides.
Just north of this area is labeled Devil’s Elbow on the map we had. We couldn’t figure out why it was called that. This is a very pretty section which is not what the name “Devil’s Elbow” would imply. After a quick paddle through the edge of Gneiss, pronounced “nice”, we made our way through a couple more short portages broken up by some longer sections of paddling. The high water level added a third portage in between the two 25 rod portages. It was a bit of a struggle to land due to the moving water, but we powered through! Owen did a great job steering. The next portage we came to is known as Swamp Portage on some maps. It’s about 70 rods and the start of it walks up through a small, cold stream.
We had been paddling in the sun for around 6 hours at this point, so the cold water felt nice on my feet. After catching up to some other groups, we decided we would try to get a site on Clover Lake. We paddled over to the northernmost site and pulled up on the sandy beach. We were checking the layout of the site when we noticed that the site was already occupied! On the small hill up towards the latrine, there lay, what we assume, was a female snapping turtle prepping to lay her eggs. Upon seeing the turtle, we decided that we would move on. It was 3:30 pm by then. Our options were either portage over to Larch Lake and grab one of the three sites, or paddle on to our exit. We decided to exit. Up and over the 100 rod portage we went, which is the longest one on this route. When I planned this trip over the winter, and in the days leading up to the start, it never crossed my mind that this was going to be a day trip. I had planned for two nights! We could have packed so much lighter! So on we went. It’s amazing how quickly long distances of paddling pass. Eventually we got to Little Rock Falls and portaged around it. From then on it was just paddling through Magnetic and Gunflint Lakes respectively. Up until getting onto Magnetic Lake, the weather had been perfect, but the wind was picking up at this point. We took 45 minutes to paddle two miles. At about 5:45 pm, we finally landed at the public access parking lot on Gunflint. We decided to stop at the Gunflint Lodge for dinner. I had a BLT on cranberry and wild rice bread, and Owen elected to have walleye tacos. After picking up Owen’s car that we left at Trail’s End, we made our way back to Sawbill, pulling in the crew house driveway at 9 pm. Coolest day trip I’ve ever done.
Sawyer
