5/29/2020 – At Sawbill, customers and crew are the heart beat of all the action. As the North Country and Sawbill open to customers, onboarding of summer crew continues. Here are some FIRST time crew members joining the 2020 team:

Hailing from Tennessee, Kirsten Todd is excited to experience the unique area. She is eager to learn and awaits to meet your outfitting needs. Autumn Lauer takes the title of youngest crew member having recently completed high school in Edina, Minnesota. Here she tends to post canoe trip sanitizing and cleaning of our boats.

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From Northwoods Wisconsin, Trinke Alexander and “Chef Ken” a.k.a. Ken Hall bring their passion for working and playing in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area wilderness. At the Sawbill store, Trinke stocks shelves readying to meet a variety of customer needs. Chef Ken is shown preparing dinner, one of two meals eaten communally by the entire crew. Rave reviews followed his first meal of fish tacos made from Northern hooked from Sawbill Lake. Bright smiles abound!

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-Trinke

5/27/2020 – Today the USFS announced that beginning June 1, many developed campgrounds on the Superior National Forest will be opening. Included are the Sawbill Lake Campground, Crescent Lake Campground and the Temperance River Campground. We have developed an enhanced sanitation plan for each of the campgrounds to help maintain the well being of our guests, our staff and campground hosts. We look forward to seeing people in the campgrounds soon.

Other nearby campgrounds that remain closed include Baker Lake and Kawishiwi Lake campgrounds.

-Dan

5/26/20 – As we venture through spring, we’ve seen lots of critters up here at Sawbill. The birds and spring peepers (Chorus frog) fill our days with song. We were lucky enough to photograph a pine marten and a chestnut-sided warbler.

Crew member Matthew captured a video of a pine marten, available on Facebook shortly. Pine martens, belonging to the weasel family, were common in northern Minnesota before the late 1800’s, although due to deforestation the species lost most of their habitat. By 1920 pine martens had almost completely disappeared from Minnesota. The species had a full recovery by 1990 due to the successful actions of the DNR.

-Jaid

5/23/20 – Meet the crew! As the season jumped into action these past few weeks, these crew members fortunately got off quarantine just in time to help. Two returning employees, Sawyer and Matthew, who are both starting their second season up here at Sawbill. As well as two new crew members, Johnny and Jaid, both from Duluth, Minnesota who are ecstatic to start the season. Many more are on the way as we work through this strange, but increasingly familiar, process of quarantining.

Thank you to everyone that has made the trip up here for being so helpful and understanding of our social distancing precautions. We hope to see more of you soon!

-Jaid

5/16/20 – By far the most frequent question we are getting right now is, are we open? The answer is yes and no! The good news is, starting on Monday, May 18th, the BWCA Wilderness will be open for overnight travel. Sawbill will be open at 8am Monday morning ready to help you with canoe and gear rentals. Our store will also be open, operating with a walk-up window staffed by our fantastic crew who will help you procure those last minute trip needs. The bad news is the Sawbill Lake campground has been closed by the Forest Service until at least June 1. We will be refunding anyone with a campground reservation between now and June 1, in full. The Crescent Lake and Temperance River campgrounds that we also manage are closed until June 1 as well, and we will be refunding those reservations in full, too. Dispersed camping on the Superior National Forest is allowed, so if you are looking for a place to camp the night before your trip starts, give us a call and we can point you in the right direction.

Thank you again to everyone who has shown us support through this time – we very much look forward to welcoming you back!

-Clare

5/15/2020 – The USFS has issued a statement affirming that the BWCA Wilderness will be open for both day and overnight use beginning on May 18, 2020. We have also received verbal guidance that the fire ban will also be lifted for the entire Superior National Forest on May 18th. (We have not seen the press release yet, but expect it today)

Wilderness permits will continue to be issued in a virtual manner in most cases. We’ll be in touch with you on these procedures if you have selected us as your permit issuing station.

Sawbill Canoe Outfitters will be open and renting canoes beginning on May 18. We will have new procedures in place to maximize social distancing while still providing what you need for your trip. We will be posting a plan for you to review prior to your visit.

The Forest Service is also encouraging visitors to the Wilderness to be extra vigilant about packing out trash and following CDC sanitation and social distance guidelines.

Additionally, we have received verbal guidance that developed campgrounds are going to remain closed until further notice. Again, we have not seen a written statement on this yet, but we anticipate the closure to last until at least June 1, 2020. Once we see the press release we will advise the cancellation and refund procedures. This closure will affect Sawbill Lake, Crescent Lake and Temperance River Campgrounds, among others.

We’ll update this post once we see the specific release pertaining to the campgrounds.

-Dan

5/13/2020 – This evening Minnesota Governor Tim Walz issued a new executive order that goes into effect at 11:59 pm on May 17th (found here). The bulk of the order is aimed at allowing most businesses to re-open, provided that they meet certain guidelines, have implemented a Covid-19 Preparedness Plan and only allow up to 50% of maximum capacity into the establishment.

More specifically pertaining to us at Sawbill, the State of Minnesota will allow dispersed and remote camping. Dispersed camping is defined as camping in an undeveloped location that does not contain facilities. Remote camping is defined as designated campsites that are accessible by hiking trail or watercraft. Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness campsites fall under the remote camping designation. So, as far as the State is concerned, camping in the BWCA should be allowed beginning May 18. That said, the BWCA is under federal jurisdiction, therefore the Forest Service will ultimately decide when overnight use in the BWCA will be allowed. We are awaiting an update from the Forest Service.

Under this order, developed campgrounds must remain closed until at least May 31, 2020 at 11:59 pm. Again the Forest Service has the ultimate control over the Superior National Forest, so we will await guidance from them regarding the Sawbill Lake, Crescent Lake, and Temperance River Campgrounds.

The State of Minnesota is still encouraging people to stay close to home and avoid all unnecessary travel. They advise that you should be able to complete your round trip journey on one tank of gas.

To date, coping with all of these restrictions and uncertainty has been challenging for all of us. However, there has been consistency between State and Federal requirements as they pertain to our areas of business. With consistency, and the degree of predictability it brings, we’ve at least been able to stake out clear positions and decisions for how we will operate our business . This latest update appears to be the beginning to conflicting policy and we are finding ourselves between a rock and a hard place both ethically and in how to provide our core services. The continued encouragement to stay close to home raises some tricky issues for us, who, primarily serve people who do not live close by. The potential extension of the campground closures creates a complication for us and many of our customers who rely on the Sawbill Lake Campground as a launching pad to their BWCA Wilderness trip.

Whether the BWCA and Sawbill Lake, Crescent Lake, and Temperance River campgrounds will open remains at the discretion of the Forest Service, who will have to weigh many considerations with many stakeholders, and quickly. Please feel free to call or email us if you have any questions. We should know more from the Forest Service by the end of this week.

Hang with us as we continue to navigate this situation. Sawbill’s business mission is to help all people access the Wilderness in a friendly and inclusive way. Caring for our crew as if they are family is in our ethos. Looking out for our friends and neighbors in Cook County is a priority.

-Dan

5/10/20 – We are very sorry to report the passing of Dee (Sampson) Hedman. Dee was a well loved Sawbill Canoe Outfitters crew member in the early 1960s. Before that, her parents, Jim and Fran Sampson, brought their young children to camp in the Sawbill Lake Campground every summer.

First and foremost, Dee was loved for her cheerful and loving personality. She was warm and funny, with a very distinctive and individual laugh. If you were with Dee for five minutes, you received the gift of her infectious laugh.
While working at Sawbill, Dee attracted the attention of a young employee of our neighbor, Sawbill Lodge. Steve Hedman worked at the Lodge, but he spent much of his free time standing in the corner of our store, staring nervously at Dee. She thought, justifiably, that he was “really weird.” 

Steve was persistent and the following summer Dee discovered that in addition to being weird, Steve was also intelligent, fun and loving. Romance bloomed and they were married in 1966. They were the first of many couples who have met at Sawbill and ended up together for life. Their honeymoon, unsurprisingly, was a BWCA Wilderness canoe trip. The ’66 crew decorated their canoe appropriately, creating a story that has passed down through the decades. In 2015, Dee and Steve returned to Sawbill to celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary and the honeymoon decorations were reprised. While they aren’t the only Sawbill couple to wind up married, they are perhaps one of the more inspiring – especially to those of us who are newly married. Their love and happiness always radiated from them, and their children, whenever they visited.

Dee and Steve lived in Duluth, so they, and their three children, were frequent Sawbill campers over the years. In the 1990s, Dee’s parents, Jim and Fran, returned to Sawbill to serve as campground hosts for several years, bringing Dee back into Sawbill life even more frequently. While Dee lived with a diagnosis of Alzheimers for the last several years, she was surrounded by care from Steve, as well as her extended family and friends.
 Dee leaves a virtual army of friends and family who loved her very much. She will be remembered fondly as an integral part of the Sawbill family.

-Bill and Clare

5/8/20 – Sometimes, no news is good news. That’s the case right now as we wait for overnight camping in the BWCA and Superior National Forest Campgrounds to open. Last we heard, the plan is still to open both for overnight use starting on May 18th. We are busy using this extra time right now planning ways to be even better prepared to safely welcome everyone back to the Northwoods. Keep your eyes peeled in the next several days here on our website for an update on how we plan to operate in the time of COVID-19.

In other news, Kit Shirley turned 4 yesterday! While she couldn’t have the party she hoped for with all her friends, we tried to make up for it with a day full of balloons, presents, scavenger hunts, bubbles, pizza, a piñata, cake AND cupcakes. She loves to fish, so it’s convenient that her birthday falls so close to Minnesota’s fishing opener. Last year she landed a big bass all by herself, and this year she tells me she has her sights set on her first walleye.

We’ve gotten several questions about the current fire ban recently. There is a ban on all fires with the exception of liquid fuel campstoves right now. We’ve had a very dry spring, the mud season is not very muddy this year. Additionally, the pandemic puts a strain on bringing in Forest Service fire crews from around the country. To keep our firefighters and first responders safe in this dry spring, a fire ban is the right call. We’ll be sure to let you know if that changes. In the meantime, the newly returned loons are calling and the sunsets have been memorable, creating all the atmosphere we need to feel rejuvenated each evening.

-Clare

5/5/20 – Sawbill Lake was officially ice free as of Sunday, May 3rd. Kit and Dan did a little recon today to see how Alton was fairing. They report lots of open water, but some ice still crowding the eastern shoreline. -Jessica