There are no hard-and-fast rules to ensure protection from a bear, since bear behavior differs under different conditions. The bears you may encounter while visiting the BWCAW are wild animals and they could be dangerous; always remember that. With a few precautions, however, you should have no problems with these fascinating and beautiful creatures.
Avoid camping on the most popular lakes where there are numerous, frequently occupied campsites located relatively close together. A small island located well away from the shoreline and away from other islands offers a degree of safety. But don’t let an island campsite lull you into a false sense of security. Bears are very good swimmers.
When you are away from your campsite (even just fishing nearby) and at night, always hang your food pack off the ground. It should be at least 10 feet above the ground and 6 feet away from tree trunks and large limbs. Bears are good climbers, so the food must be a safe distance away from the trunk and from any limbs large enough to support a bear’s weight. Hanging a food pack can be a frustrating process without some forethought and practice. Take a look at the wide selection of hanging systems available through outdoor specialty stores and practice using them before you take your trip. Never store food in your tent. And if food was spilled on your clothes, leave your clothes outside your tent at night. Remember that strong-smelling items like toothpaste, deodorant, and soap should be stored away from your tent.
Keep a clean campsite. Thoroughly burn or safely bury all food scraps and leftover grease, or seal your garbage in an airtight plastic bag and carry it with your food pack. Do not dispose of leftovers in the latrine. Bears will find them and destroy the latrine in the process.
Never get between a mother bear and her cub(s). If you see a cub, its mother is probably nearby. Female bears are extremely protective of their young.
If a bear does wander into your campsite, don’t panic. Bears are usually frightened off by loud noises; Try yelling or banging some pots together. Don’t charge the bear; it may become defensive. If a stubborn bear does not back off or acts strangely, move to another campsite.
Finally, don’t let a fear of black bears detract from your enjoyment of the wilderness. Use good common sense, observe the tips above, and you should have no problem with bears—or any other wild animal.
Climate
For paddlers planning a trip to the BWCA, the season lasts just five short months—May through September—and each month can offer a very different travel experience along the same route. Northern lakes are usually free of ice by the beginning of May (always check before heading up) but the forest isn’t completely green for a few more weeks. June can be wet, cool, and plagued by the mind-numbing buzz of a billion hungry mosquitoes. Fisherman often pay the insects little heed and enjoy good fishing conditions in June, knowing that by July and August, when the temperatures are fine for paddlers and campers, the fishing may turn sluggish. Deeper into the summer months, streams that had been gushing with spring snow melt early in the season may not have enough flow to transport a loaded canoe. A shortcut discovered by close scrutiny of a map may be impassible if the streams prove too shallow.
Around Labor Day (when crowds thin out after the start of school) the Boundary Waters can offer a wonderful experience of warm days and cool nights. With the first frost the number of biting insects is reduced, but by the end of September, careful planning and consultations with local resources is important. A paddler taking a last trip of the year late in the season runs the risk of cold, wet, windy weather and even the possibility of opening up a tent flap to find snow.
In an area as large as the BWCA, weather conditions can vary dramatically. Conditions on and near Lake Superior influence the weather across the eastern portion of the BWCA. Temperatures, rainfall, and wind conditions vary, of course, throughout the BWCAW. The following statistics, recorded in International Falls, MN represent historical estimates for the western region of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.
The weather plays an important role in any camping trip. Learning to identify basic cloud patterns and read the wind conditions are skills worth nurturing. Packing to accommodate a wide range of weather conditions lessens the chance of enduring an unseasonably cold or wet week that just happens to descend during your scheduled trip dates.
Geology
The BWCAW contains some of the oldest exposed rock in the world, estimated to be as old as 2.7 billion years. It is part of the vast region known as the Canadian Shield, which underlies almost 2 million square miles of eastern Canada and the Lake Superior region of the United States. In Minnesota, this belt of ancient exposed rock extends west from the area of Saganaga Lake on the international border through Ely and International Falls to the northwestern part of the state, where the old rocks disappear beneath younger sedimentary deposits. Included in this expanse of ancient rocks are the metavolcanic Ely Greenstone formation, the metasedimentary Knife Lake Group, and great granitic masses like the Vermilion and the Saganaga batholiths.
Lunch on Basswood Lake
A mountain-building period began about 2.6 billion years ago, during which the rocks became metamorphosed and strongly deformed, and the granites were intruded from below into the older rocks. The rocks that had been formed or altered deep within the earth’s crust became exposed at the surface and were then subjected to erosion.
Inland seas covered what we now call the North Woods. Layers of sedimentary rocks were deposited at the bottom of that enormous sea. Called the Animikie Group, these rocks lie in a belt extending westward along the border lakes from Lake Superior to just south of Saganaga Lake, and then reappearing in the Mesabi Range south of the BWCAW. The Animikie rocks include the Pokegama quartzite, the Biwabik iron formation, and a sequence of shales and sandstones. Flint, too, is found in abundance in the vicinity of Gunflint Lake. Rich deposits of iron ore are scattered throughout northeastern Minnesota, upon which mining communities sprung up in the early 20th century. Iron ore became the economic basis for many communities in northeastern Minnesota and it is still one of the most important industries for the state of Minnesota. Iron ore is so concentrated in some places that it will cause a compass needle to be deflected from magnetic north. Magnetic Lake, in fact, received its name because of just such a phenomenon.
The inland seas had long since disappeared and new mountains had risen on the continent when the great ice sheets of the ice ages advanced from the north to cover northeastern Minnesota, eventually turning this mineral-rich region into the world’s best canoe country. During four major periods of glaciation, which began almost 2 million years ago, the glaciers altered the landscape considerably. Evidence of the last glacial advance and recession (the Wisconsin Glaciation, which occurred from about 100,000 to 10,000 years ago) is everywhere in the Boundary Waters today. Parallel grooves, called striations, are visible on many rock ledges that were scoured by the ice. Glacial debris, from small pebbles to huge boulders, is widespread. Here and there, you will see erratics, large boulders that were carried by the glaciers and left off in new locations when the glaciers melted.
Perhaps the greatest distinction of the border lakes area is the presence of exposed bedrock. This region is unlike the rest of Minnesota, which is almost completely covered by glacial deposits. This domination of exposed bedrock in the Boundary Waters resulted in distinctive patterns of lakes and ridges, which reflect the underlying rock structures. In the eastern third of the region, the lakes form a distinctive linear pattern. Long, narrow lakes give the terrain a notable east-west “grain.” These lakes appear in two major types of rock formations. The lakes on the Duluth Gabbro formation, which is exposed over an area from Duluth north and east to the Canadian border, developed their particular pattern because alternating bands of less resistant rock and more resistant rock are oriented east-west. Erosion
