Author: Ada

The recent news story about three Isle Royale hikers being airlifted off the island after they became severely dehydrated reminded us that while campers are often hyperaware of the risks associated with getting lost, getting injured, or running into a bear, they often forget about the risks associated with not drinking enough water.  But perhaps the most dangerous thing you can do while camping in the wilderness is letting yourself get dehydrated. 

As our society becomes increasingly urbanized, we’ve become more fearful of a lot of things in the woods and waterborne illnesses rank pretty high on many people’s lists of Boundary Waters anxieties. However, waterborne illnesses are extremely rare in northern Minnesota and while no one wants to get giardia, it takes many days before giardia becomes symptomatic, so you probably won’t even know you have it until you get home. Obviously, you should avoid contracting giardia at all costs, but the point is that it’s not going to cause an emergency while you’re in the middle of the woods. 

On the other hand, dehydration has a lot of unfortunate side effects that can put a powerful and immediate damper on your trip. The irritability and splitting headache that come with dehydration are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes dehydration’s unpleasantness. Let’s say you get dehydrated and you start losing some cognitive function. As a result, you might find yourself lost or having trouble making basic decisions. Or your motor skills start to suffer in your dehydrated state and you slip on a portage and end up with a twisted ankle . . . or worse. If left untreated, dehydration can lead to dizziness, cramps, fever, and loss of consciousness. 

It might seem like an oxymoron to become dehydrated in a wilderness area that literally has “water” in its name, but we see it all the time. People come back from their canoe trips and they just seem a little . . . off. They’re confused and have trouble focusing and articulating. Sometimes they can barely make it up the outfitting building steps to collect their car keys. Get a bottle or two of cold water in them and they snap right back to life. 

It’s kind of crazy that people spend their time in the Boundary Waters with “water, water everywhere and every drop you can drink” not drinking water. The chances of accidentally drinking water that will make you sick in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness are very low. The basic rule of thumb is if it looks water you wouldn’t want to drink, don’t drink it. If you can see tadpoles swimming around in scuzzy green-tinged water, that is not what you should be drinking. But water taken from the middle of the lake where it’s getting sterilized by the sun’s ultraviolet rays all day, every day, is pure, delicious, and perfectly safe. Just dip your water bottle in and have a drink whenever you’re thirsty. 

Still, we hear a lot of reasons why people don’t drink enough water on their canoe trips.

Reason #1: The filter took too long.

If the pump-style water filters are driving you crazy (it can take about 2+ minutes to fill a single Nalgene bottle) consider switching to a gravity filter, which is a great hands-free way to filter a large amount of water.  

Or use the “poor man’s” water method. At the end of each day, fill your largest cooking pot with water. Bring the water to a rolling boil and sustain the boil for 1 minute. Cover the pot and let it cool overnight. The next morning you’ll wake up to cool, sterile water to fill your water bottles with. 

Perhaps the most convenient option if you’re uncomfortable with drinking the water straight from the lake is to use a water bottle with a built-in water filter such as a LifeStraw, Katadyn, or Sawyer. 

Reason #2: I don’t like the way it tastes. 

It’s true, lake water just doesn’t taste like tap water. There’s a fair amount of tannins in Boundary Waters lakes that give the water a taste some people find off-putting. If you find lake water unpalatable, your best bet is to mask it with some sort of powdered beverage mix like Kool-Aid, Crystal Light, Gatorade, Tang, or lemonade. Just remember that any caffeinated beverages you consume don’t count as hydration, so don’t count your morning coffee or tea towards your daily water intake.  

Reason #3: I can’t drink it because it’s not cold. 

Room-temperature beverages are kind of what a Boundary Waters trip is all about and there’s not much any of us can do about it, short of hauling in ice packs or dry ice. If the lake temperatures are still pretty cold, you can use the lake as a fridge – just float your filled water bottles in the lake until cool. However, in high summer, when the surface water is around 70 degrees, this method is not super effective. If you really can’t stomach warm-ish drinking water, you may need to limit your Boundary Waters travels to spring and autumn. 

Your best bet is to make drinking water something so automatic that you don’t even think about it on your canoe trip. Figure out some sort of hydration accountability system, such as making sure everyone drinks water at the end of every portage and don’t be afraid to be a “hydration bully” to your canoe trip buddies. One good rule of thumb is to have everyone pay attention to their lips. If your lips are dry, you’re on your way to dehydration and it’s time to have a sip of water, even if you don’t feel thirsty yet. In fact, the best bet is to drink enough water that you never feel truly thirsty.

Each year, a handful of people get really lost in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In this 1.1 million acre wilderness area lacking both navigational signs and cell phone service, the odds of getting horribly lost are extremely low. Of the 250,000 annual BWCAW visitors, only a dozen or so require Search and Rescue assistance each year. Still, you can make your odds of “staying found” even lower by following these tips.

In the Boundary Waters (and in life) practicing good situational awareness is the best way to avoid emergencies such as bodily harm or getting lost. Simply keeping your map in front of you at all time and actively identifying landmarks on the map as you pass by them is usually all that is needed to successfully navigate in the Boundary Waters. We often tell our guests to imagine themselves in a little canoe icon that’s moving across the map, just like you can follow that blue location dot on your phone’s map app. Another things that really seems to help people navigate in the Boundary Waters is to turn the map so it’s always pointed the way you’re going.

It seems like a high percentage of BWCAW visitors are “map people,” who really enjoy studying maps and are pretty geographically savvy. But whether or not you feel you have an innately good sense of direction, we believe everyone has the ability to be a good wilderness navigator. In this day and age where we have GPS units built into our phones and vehicles, we can become pretty passive navigators, so it’s not a bad idea to “practice being found” when you’re traveling on unknown route or navigating through a new city by being a more active navigator. Look at the full route so you picture it in your mind as you drive before you hit the “get directions” button. When you feel turned around in a city, find a landmark that will help you figure which direction you’re pointed. When you hone these skills in your everyday life, you’ll make it that much easier to navigate with a paper map in the Boundary Waters.

Even if you’re not the primary navigator on your trip, always have a general idea of where you are on the map. On the off chance that your primary navigator becomes incapacitated, you need to be a position where you can pick up the navigation “slack” for your group.

You might consider yourself pretty good with directions, but if you’ve been on a particular canoe route countless times, you still shouldn’t solely rely on your memory. Trees fall down, beavers build dams, hillsides erode. Take a gander at the map every 10 minutes or so to avoid any nasty surprises.

Although there are a lot of great GPS devices that can make navigating in the Boundary Waters infinitely easier, we still strongly recommend that every group has at least one complete set of paper maps that covers your entire route. You can still plan to exclusively use your GPS device during your trip, but a good back-up map is a must in case you run out of battery or drop your device in the lake or on a rock. You can’t go wrong investing in a set of Fisher, McKenzie, or Voyageur maps and they make a great trip souvenir.

No one sets out on their trip planning to get lost in the woods, but it’s good to remember that it’s a fate that could befall any Boundary Waters visitor, regardless of age or experience. When you getting that niggling feeling that something’s not right and you’re not exactly sure where you are, stop at that very moment, study your maps, and figure it out. If you can’t, backtrack to a point where you’re sure you know where you are. If possible, flag down another group and ask for directions. Most people are more than happy to help.

Remember, getting lost on a lake is not a big deal. Sure, it’s not a pleasant experience and you might lose some time, but when you’re lost on a lake, you’re in a self contained area and the likelihood of bumping into other people who can point you in the right direction is pretty high. Eventually, you will figure out where you are and can get on with your trip. However, getting lost in the woods is a big deal, so practice extra careful situational awareness if you ever find yourself off the beaten path in the Boundary Waters forest. Stick to establish portages and trails to make it easy to back track.

Have you ever gotten lost in the woods? How to you get “found”? What advice do you have for navigating in the Boundary Waters?