A year and a half ago, my husband and I signed up for the Dorothy Molter Museum trip to the Isle of Pines on Knife Lake to visit where Dorothy lived most of her life. The trip was for three days and two nights of winter camping in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Because of the lack of snow and ice, the excursion was canceled last year and rescheduled to leave Feb. 28 this year.
Jess Edberg, the museum’s director, was coming on the trip, but she managed to do something to her knee and had to bail at the last minute. No one else was signed up for this year’s trip, so it was just myself, my husband Sean, and Paige May, the White Wilderness Sled Dog Adventures guide. This outfitter, with their kennel in Isabella, contracts with the museum to provide the guide services for the yearly winter trip into Dorothy Molter land. It was daunting that by the time we left, it was just three of us since this was the first time winter camping for Sean and me.
The adventure left the Moose Lake parking area next to the Scouting America Northern Tier Adventures camp sometime after 9 a.m. Friday morning was windy with moderate snowfall, which gave me some concern, but we layered for winter weather. We bought Wintergreen two-layer parkas at the end of 2023 when we started planning the trip. The parkas had the windbreaker outer jacket and a fleece jacket inside. It was a good choice for upper wear. Despite the nasty crosswind on the trip out, we were both comfortable.
Mushing there
Paige drove what he called a freight sled with a team of eight dogs. Sean and I followed in a lighter sled with our gear and a six-dog team. We recorded a GPS track heading out to the Isle of Pines. The 13.6-mile trip crossed Moose, Newfound, Ensign, Vera, Portage, and Knife lakes took two and a half hours. We arrived at our campsite in time to chow down on lunch.
I determined that mushing might not be my thing. The one time I drove the sled, I was driving through deeper snow. We had to break a new trail to avoid some dangerous ice across a beaver dam. At one point, I went to push off with my foot to help the dogs pull through the snow and sank in up to my thigh. I stopped the dogs but fell on the claw brake with the snow hook out of reach, hanging on for dear life because the dogs wanted to keep running. That twisted my knee enough that I let Sean do the rest of the mushing for the trip to the Isle of Pines.
I felt better about almost losing the sled on Friday when Sean fell completely off Sunday afternoon.
The west half of the trip traveled Moose, Newfound, and Ensign lakes, all long, straight lakes that are similar in character. The trail to the Isle of Pines was more interesting on the eastern end. After passing Ensign Lake, we crossed a passage through bogs and ponds, with the aforementioned beaver dam blocking a creek. It was followed by a winding path over Vera Lake and a stretch of woods and bogs before leveling out onto Portage Lake. The trail then popped over a little ridge and dropped onto Knife Lake with the Isle of Pines in front of us to the northeast. The eastern half of the trail with its bogs certainly wasn’t a route any canoe would take.
Making camp
Arriving at the Isle of Pines just after noon, we got to work getting the dogs staked out and setting up the hot tent. Paige was great. He had previously camped around the Isle of Pines and knew the perfect spot to avoid the wind. He also knew a few good fishing spots. We were on the ice right up against the southeast shore of Dorothy’s Island, watching the swirling, blowing snow as we stood in a place of calm air leeward of the island.
As Paige set up the first holes for ice fishing, I grabbed a camera to see if I could capture some views of the Isle of Pines, walking across Knife Lake. The island that once hosted a resort was smaller than I expected. When I took pictures from BWCAW campsite #1249, a fifth of a mile away, the island dwarfed the hot tent and our dog sleds. If the drifted snow on the ice hadn’t been so nasty in spots, it would take less than 15 minutes to walk around it. On a map, the perimeter is only a half mile, not counting the two little satellite islands off the Isle’s northeast tip where Dorothy had some of her resort cabins.
The walk back from campsite 1249 left me wondering about my sanity. I shouldn’t have waited to take my first winter camping trip in my sixties. The quads above the turned knee decided they wanted to share the knee’s misery. This left me rationing the amount I wanted to walk through the snow. Not for the first time on the trip, I wondered what Dorothy Molter would have thought. And immediately, an older woman’s voice spoke from inside my head, saying, “Kwitchurbeliakin.”
Dorothy in winter
During the more than five decades that Dorothy Molter lived on Isle of Pines, she cut and stored ice packed in straw every winter. She used that ice the rest of the year to keep her foodstuffs cold. Looking at the steep slopes on almost all the sides of the island made me appreciate just how much work that was. A hand-cranked winch hauled the ice blocks up that steep slope from the frozen lake. It and the icehouse were at the highest spot on the northeast side of the Isle of Pines. I watched the blowing snow blast through the trees where the winch and ice house were once located. I tried to imagine turning that winch handle, pulling up ice block after ice block until the ice house was full, in a winter wind like Friday’s snowstorm.
Over a shrimp and steak dinner Friday night, we talked about trying to find Dorothy’s famous ribbon rock. We decided we might be unable to locate it, given the thickness of the drifted snow, especially downwind of Canada less than a half mile away. Instead, we would start the day with ice fishing, which was just good enough to suck up the whole day, but we managed to tolerate catching all those lake trout without an excess of suffering. The fresh fish chowder for Saturday’s dinner was worth the learning curve on winter camping. And I want the lemon bar recipe.
Sleeping
We didn’t keep the stove going during the night. We were in our sleeping bags well before 9 p.m. on both evenings. Paige, who was doing most of the work running the camp, zonked out immediately and slept until daylight. I regretted not bringing a book to read, which is my usual relaxation before bed. I played a puzzle game on my cell phone, which had a signal on and off all weekend, and fell asleep after 10 p.m.
The first night in the -40 degree-rated sleeping bag was tolerable. Both Sean and I observed uncomfortable toes and some back stiffness. The hoarfrost around the opening of the mummy bag was a revelation. It was something I didn’t expect, given that most of my camping experience has been in the deserts out West. Sean and I both added padding underneath and an extra pair of socks on Saturday night, which made a big difference in comfort.
I woke up at 6 a.m. and played games on my phone both mornings. I brought my tablet into the big sleeping bag on Saturday night, thinking I could start working on this article while waiting for the stove to get lit. I discovered that I didn’t have room to type without opening the top of the bag to the cold morning air. I was glad when Paige started the stove sometime after 7 a.m. It was -5 degrees on Saturday morning and not much warmer on Sunday morning.
Winter Cabin
The day of ice fishing on Saturday was restorative, especially after fresh fish chowder. After dinner, we walked onto Knife Lake to look at the stars. Even with a sliver of a crescent moon providing a bit of light, it has been a long time since I’ve seen the stars so thick. Venus and Jupiter were prominent. Canis Major was too low to be seen, but Taurus, Gemini, every one of the Pleiades, and all of Orion were wreathed in the glow of the Milky Way. Sirius was almost as bright as the planets. The international designation of the BWCAW as the world’s largest dark sky sanctuary is well-earned. We were disappointed we saw no northern lights, but the starry sky Saturday night had its own appeal.
By Sunday morning, Sean and I concluded that locating the boat house and winter cabin site was practical, given the patterns of wind-drifted snow we had observed. The boat house and winter cabin faced east, looking out on a cove. That cove was just around the point east of our campsite. The drifted snow was a chore to get through, but the location of the boat house was easy to determine from the map of the shoreline.
The location of the winter cabin was a climb upward from the shoreline through deep snow. The cabin site looked out over the top of the boathouse. The view is northeastward up Knife Lake, with numerous little islands dotting the view toward the spruce-studded horizon. The snow-blanketed clearing where the cabin was is now populated by a few birch trees and brush invading the space. Not only did the bowl of the cove protect the cabin from the worst of the wind, but the view four decades ago must have been amazing. I don’t think the photos I took could match the view Dorothy must have seen every winter night before she died in 1986.
I know I will never look at the winter cabin, now on the grounds of the Dorothy Molter Museum, with the same eyes again. In the future, I’ll be looking out the cabin door and seeing Dorothy’s view up Knife Lake.
Knife Lake highway
One surprise was the traffic of travelers in the Boundary Waters. We passed groups of ski campers, both traveling out and back. We also watched an impressive sixteen-dog team with a freight sled pass our camp as we were fishing, followed by a kick sled pulled by a pair of sled dogs. Paige knew all these folks, who were all sled dog guides. Troy Vega had hired the freighter team to take him and his two black-and-white dogs up Knife Lake for some winter camping and fishing. The two dogs, Grommet and Ziptie, were both retired dogs from White Wilderness. The freighter left Vega somewhere northeast of us and passed our camp, heading back to the landing at Moose Lake later Saturday afternoon.
Vega was followed by another friend of Paige’s, Rawley Crow. He was pulled on Nordic skis by a big yellow, fluffy, friendly sled dog named Chance.
Learning experience
While everything is stiff and aching, don’t ask me if I’d do this again. I suspect my fondness for ice fishing will win over my intrinsic slothful and indolent nature in just a few months. Once my knee and thigh are happy again, I might suggest mushing again in a spot where the snow isn’t quite so deep.
I now know to wear two pairs of dry socks to sleep with extra padding underneath. I have also learned my lesson on trying to type on a tablet inside a mummy bag. Next time, I’ll remember to bring a book – or at least download one onto my phone.
I also will be changing my Idaho ice fishing habits with the lessons Paige gave me for catching trout in Minnesota. I realize now that my ice fishing habits, fine-tuned for catching rainbows and kokanee salmon in Idaho, aren’t right for ice fishing here, which might explain some of my less-than-great days trying to fish for trout in Miners Lake.
I also will be looking at the cabins at the Dorothy Molter Museum with new eyes now that I have seen where they were placed on the Isle of Pines.
Sled dogs
The dogs were the true stars of the trip and did all the heavy work. Helping with the dogs was one of my favorite parts of the trip. Each dog got a frozen brick of meat and kibble for food in the morning and evening. After the dogs melted the snow down to ice where they were sleeping – and they had a lot of nap time – we gathered balsam branches to line the depressions and made them balsam-lined beds.
Every time another sled dog or skiing party passed us, the 14 dogs would go off, barking and howling. Of course, one of the dogs was a real chatterbox, and he made noise whenever he was awake. I knew his voice well before Saturday night when he started up the rest of the dogs for a five-minute howling session around 10 p.m. Sean and I were amused. Paige slept through it.
None of the dogs ever refused all the attention we gave them. I nicknamed one of the dogs on the freight sled “Ilene,” since that’s what she did against me every time I walked past.
Now I can tell all my friends that I went winter camping with me as the only gal in a group of 16 guys – and 14 of them were real dogs.