If you’re a fan of canoe country, you’ve probably stumbled across some photos of our buddy, Andrew. Last year, he served as the poster boy for the first annual Boundary Waters Canoe Expo. Over the years his photo has also appeared in numerous other advertisements for Visit Cook County and Tuscarora. You’ve also seen him in our post about 20-somethings going on canoe trips.
But who is this man of mystery so often spied in the bow of a Souris River Quetico 17?
Andrew, Andy, and I all worked together at Hungry Jack Outfitters back in the “Aughts.” He comes from “canoeing stock” – his mom worked on the Gunflint Trail as a young adult – and as a teenager, he did many canoe trips through Camp Menogyn, including a five week trip through the Canadian wilderness. Since our Hungry Jack days, the three of us have covered a lot of miles together, from roaming around Portland, OR to running Chicago’s Shamrock Shuffle this past spring (FYI: Andrew can run 8 km 14 minutes faster than I can), and, of course, he and Andy have gone on lots and lots of trips through Quetico Provincial Park.
Right now, Andrew is a biology PhD student at the University of Michigan where he focuses on the venom systems of mollusks. The end goal of his research is to create a way that the venom of mollusks can be used as human medicine, particularly as a side-effect free anesthesia. He spends a portion of each summer collecting cone snails for research from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean off Japanese or Samoan coasts.
Despite research that takes him around the world, back at the end of May, Andrew and his girlfriend, Clara, managed to carve out a week to spend in the Quetico. As you can see from the map below, they just did a teeny, tiny, little trip:
Andy and Andrew are known for their high mileage Quetico trips and Clara wanted to be sure that Andrew didn’t take it easy on her just because it was her first canoe trip. A quick gander at the map shows that Andrew did not let Clara’s lack of canoe trip experience impact the trip’s distance. In six days and five nights, they paddled 80+ miles. Oh, did I mention that Andrew and Clara had both run marathons two days before the start of their canoe trip? Obviously, these are not two people who are afraid of high mileage!
After a towboat ride from the Tuscarora dock on Saganaga Lake up to Hook Island on the Canadian side of Saganaga, Andrew and Clara paddled over to the Cache Bay Ranger Station to pick up their permit for the Man Chain. From Cache Bay, they headed up past Silver Falls, into Saganagons, and into the Man Chain which they followed down to Carp Lake and the International Border.
Loons rafting on This Man Lake
After paddling a few miles west on the border, they went over Prairie Portage and then cut back up into the Canadian interior via Sunday Bay in Basswood Lake. As they headed east back towards their starting point, they passed through Agnes, Louisa, McEwen, and Wet Lakes, before finally heading south via Saganagons and Cache Bay.
Despite a wide variety of temperatures and weather that characterizes this spring, they had a great trip. In her first visit to Superior/Quetico country, Clara managed to see more of canoe country than some people see in years of BWCAW and Quetico canoe trips. A trip of this magnitude certainly isn’t for everyone, but these two, it worked just fine.
What’s the longest canoe trip you’ve ever done?
The longest canoe I trip I ever took was a little over 900 miles. It took us 54 days as we paddled from The Pas in Manitoba to the community of Churchill on Hudson Bay. It was a trip of a life time. We paddled up the Saskatchewan River and the Tearing River to get onto the Churchill River drainage.