Boundary Waters Experience (BWX)

Gone fish'in...

Dave and I had a chance to get out on Ojibway Lake and catch some dinner.  Nice time and day.

News from the Trail...

By: Erin Gilliland

This week on trail for me was pretty exciting, as it was my first. Normally I work as base camp staff, but have guided for a couple years prior, and so when the time came to go on trail I was more than excited. I was given the opportunity to take out a youth group from Eden Prairie Presbyterian Church, from Eden Prairie MN. These kids had a long history with one another. Some had gone to college while some were just on the edge of graduating from High School and so it was a great time for them to reconnect, spend time in the wilderness, and learn more deeply about each other.

We left civilization as we know it from Moose Lake, and launched around 7:30 AM. Our goal was to head up through Moose, into Newfound, Birch and into Knife, and make the loop back through Vera and Ensign. The group was loads of fun, and we spent a lot of the time (When we weren’t paddling 10-16 miles per day) playing games, laughing about inside jokes, or having amazing conversations about random things we were passionate about.

These are things that I loved the most about EPPC: their hard work, positive attitudes, life experiences and faith, and ability to make the best out of all situations. It was such a great time for me as a guide, I felt like I was among friends the whole trip, which made everything easy.  This was a trip that I will never forget, and I hope to see them up here next summer!

BWX Half Marathon...

This was our biggest year for the half ever - seven guides ran out the 13.1 miles from the BWX Base Camp to Ojibway Lake!

News from the Trail...

By: Pat Gores

Between the 11^th and 16^th of July, I was blessed to guide a group of guys from Messiah Lutheran Church in Roseau, MN.  I was excited about this trip because I had been off the trail for too many weeks and this group was a great way to come back.  These guys had a great community already established that I was excited about hopefully being invited into.  And they did accept me with open arms.

 

We traveled from Lake One all the way to north Insula Lake and back.  We spent three days on a fantastic campsite that blessed us with needed rest and relaxation through fishing, reading and swimming.  Then we proceeded to travel through some beautiful narrow water that brought us towards one of the more difficult portage in the area, and the guys stepped up and one person even double packed since our leader was hurt from a fall that he took earlier that day.  One of the things that was amazing to watch was when one of our yokes broke on our canoe and the group provided great ideas on how to fix it so we could continue the trip.

 

The spiritual side of the trip was clearly blessed.  First off, the passion that the leader showed for the kids was amazing to see and watch.  He had an ability to connect with them and bring them into conversations.  Life stories went well, especially the questions.  The guys really enjoyed asking each other ridiculous questions near the end of the trip.  The discussions that we had during the week really seemed to stick with them.  This was noticeable when we were talking about the week and they seemed to have pulled some great things from our discussions.