Sylvania Wilderness, Watersmeet, MI, September 5-7, 2015

The Sylvania Wilderness is a small but beautiful Federally designated wilderness in the Ottawa National Forest with 18,000 acres of pristine lakes, old growth forests and spacious campsites. The campsites are available only by reservation either in advance or from the ranger station, so unlike the Boundary Waters, you can guarantee yourself a campsite even on holiday weekends. Having a reserved site on a lake without motor boats makes Sylvania an ideal holiday weekend getaway, so we reserved a site for Labor Day weekend. The sites were most interested in taking were either reserved or not reservable in advance, so I booked Perch 1 on Whitefish Lake.

May 23-25, 2015, Sylvania Wilderness, Watersmeet, MI

Amber and Lorraine at the campsite marker

If you haven’t been to the Sylvania Wilderness, I highly recommend it. It’s nice to have a long weekend to enjoy the outdoors, but we often find the easy-to-reach destinations in south-central Wisconsin to be extremely crowded on holiday weekends. Fortunately, the Sylvania Wilderness is not overly crowded as we found out last Independence Day weekend, and you can reserve campsites in advance, ensuring you get a spot. Last year, we had a wonderful site (Birch) on Clark Lake, and you can read the trip report here. I heard good things about the eastern side of Sylvania, so I thought we should give it a try. I wanted a site on High Lake, but it seems neither of them are reservable, so I booked Ermine 1 on Mountain Lake.

By the end of last season, packing for camping trips was practically second nature, and I really didn’t even need a list. It’s amazing how quickly one can fall out of habits, so I was glad to have handy the lists I made over the last couple years. We packed up early in the week in anticipation of the trip and loaded everything up on Friday night so that we could make an early start on Saturday morning to avoid traffic, amazingly, we managed to get on the road by 6am.

Crooked Lake Boat Landing

The drive up was uneventful, and we managed to miss any heavy traffic. We made a pit stop at McDonald’s for Amber and me to get something to eat, and we stopped again at Sylvania Outfitters to pick up fishing licenses. I wasn’t really planning on fishing but Amber insisted. Anything to make her trip more enjoyable is worth it, so we brought some minimal fishing gear, which Amber promised to portage. After checking in at the Ranger station and watching the video, we headed to the landing to have lunch before getting on the water. Up arrival at the landing, we were bombarded by mosquitoes, so our lunch break was quite short.

Loon on Crooked Lake

The paddle through Crooked Lake was nice, and the weather was pretty much perfect. The breeze on the lake offered a nice respite from the mosquitoes. Crooked Lake is aptly named, as it is quite irregularly shaped with wide and narrow sections turning in all directions. Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to navigate as most of the bays and sections are small and don’t leave the opportunity to stray too far off path. We managed to find the portage with little difficulty, and were pleased with the nice landings and short distance to Mountain Lake. I was a bit surprised that

Crooked Lake

most of the campsites were not easy to see without paddling right up to them, so I wasn’t able to really tell how many were occupied or get an idea of what they looked like without stopping. Nonetheless, we found our site with no problem, but we did find it occupied with about a zillion mosquitoes.

I think this was the most mosquitoes I have ever encountered. Thankfully, we brought the head nets, but we didn’t bring any chemicals. I really wish I would have brought the Thermacell to give it a try because there was hardly any breeze at our campsite on Saturday, and I have heard the Thermacells work great on calm days. Anyway, we were at our home away from home and had to make the best of it, so we put on the head nets and started about setting up camp.

Portage between Crooked and Mountain Lakes

Mountain Lake

GPS track for day one

We had to twist, bribe and threaten Amber to do camp chores, but she finally relented and “helped” with some of her chores. In the short term, it certainly would be easier to just do all the chores ourselves, but obviously we have a responsibility to instill some values and work ethic into our offspring. At the moment, though, I wished we could have left her to play video games with Grandma. Fortunately, the tension passed, and we all were able to enjoy ourselves.

Headed out to fish

I got a chance to take Amber out fishing in the boat, which was an accomplishment in itself because she has been expressing quite a bit of anxiety about fishing from the boat. After a quick attempt to fish from the densely forested shore, she quickly saw the merit of being out on the water and seemed to forget about most of her anxiety. We paddle around and fished a little, but we didn’t even get a nibble, nor did we even see a fish in the water despite having good visibility. First, I don’t really know what I’m doing or what to throw out there for which kind of fish, and there are

pretty strict regulations on all the lakes except Crooked in Sylvania. All hook barbs must be crimped and no live bait (or even scented bait , if I remember correctly) is allowed. Also, Amber gets nervous when we get close to shore as I guess she thinks we’re going to “crash”, so it’s difficult to fish the shoreline and weeds when she’s worried about getting too close. Anyway, I think she had fun.

One of the highlights of the evening for me was tortilla pizza! I don’t know if these would taste as good at home, but oh my, it’s a little slice of heaven in the woods to have a double- or triple-pepperoni pizza with crushed red pepper. If you haven’t tried this on your trips, you really should. If you need more info, post a comment and I’ll be glad to talk about it. Mmmmmm.

 
The downside to pizza in the woods during a mosquito hatch is having to eat walking around so the mosquitoes don’t carry you away. After having enough, I built a fire, and it really helped give us a break from the bugs. The fire pit area at Ermine 1 was not flat, and the ground was somewhat soggy, so it made sitting around the campfire in the Helinox a bit of a challenge as the legs kept sinking into the ground. I tried putting flat stones under the legs, but with the slope it made for unstable sitting. I think I might have to give the tennis/wiffle/racquet ball trick a try. Anyway, we enjoyed the fire until bedtime when we were back on mosquito fighting duty. They were bad enough that there was a constant buzz around the tent all night long.

Ermine-1

I mentioned that the fire area was not flat, and neither was pretty much any part of Ermine-1, which I guess brings me to a review of the campsite. All the sites I’ve seen at Sylvania are pretty spacious, and Ermine-1 was no exception. Still, we had trouble finding a flat spot for the tent. There is some area near the water that would probably be my choice but the rules at Sylvania prevent from setting camp right on the water. I thought that I read that Ermine has numerous tent pads, but I would have to disagree. I guess you could find a number of flatish spots for 1-person tents, but event the best spot we could find had us sliding down our pads throughout the night. There are, however, numerous trees for hammocking, so any hammock campers will not have trouble finding trees from which to hang. The real challenge with the topography of the site was climbing the mountain (ok, so I’m exaggerating) to get to the throne, especially after the rain. The canoe landing was OK, but not great. The shore has a number of trees and is slightly elevated (a foot or two) from the water in places, so it limits the landing opportunities. When we first landed, we picked the place that looked the friendliest, but when I stepped out of the canoe, my foot sunk into some muck. No big deal, but we’ve certainly encountered nicer landings.

GPS track of our day trip

The plan for day two of our two-night trip was to day trip over to High Lake, about which I had heard many nice things, especially relating to the water clarity. After having a bacon and hashbrown breakfast, we prepared for the day trip by packing some snacks and the water filter. If I had known we would be gone so long, I probably would have wanted to pack the stove and a meal, but we obviously weren’t going to starve. The day trip involved 6 portages for a total of 306 rods (0.96 miles) and 6 lakes for a total of 7.6 miles. I started out feeling strong and energetic, but the royalex canoe just kept feeling heavier and heavier. By the last portage, I was having a bit of trouble heaving it over my shoulders and my back was getting sore. Come to think of it, this is exactly how I felt on last year’s Boundary Waters trip.

High Lake was really nice, and the water had a beautiful color. I had heard that you could see deep down, but the sun was right overhead causing reflections that made it difficult to see into the water except in the shade. In the shade, we could definitely see how nice and clean the water was. We decided to stop at one of the campsites, Raccoon, to check it out and to filter some drinking water. The site was fairly nice, but like Ermine-1, was not very flat. There was a nice flat tent spot pretty close to the fire pit, which is where I expect most people setup their tent. The real charm to Raccoon, in my opinion is that it is a prime swimming spot. It has a nice gradual slope into the water with a sandy, pebbly bottom. We didn’t swim as I was not about to expose my skin to the mosquitoes, but I imagine as summer progresses, the bugs will get better.

 
We didn’t make it back to camp until about 3 o’clock or so, and we were tired and hungry. Lorraine started on our meal while I took care of the gear and got a fire going. We decided on beef stroganoff dehydrated meal we (ok, Lorraine) made at home. Lorraine also dumped a bag of freeze-dried peas into the beef, and it was a big success. Even Amber was going on about how good it was and wanted seconds. I was so happy to see her eating so well. I hate that we typically have to throw much of her food away (ie, we have to pack it out) when we camp. We capped off dinner with re-hydrated cinnamon apples. Note that Lorraine picked up the peas and apples at Target, so it might be worth looking around your local big box stores for lightweight camping food options.

Dad and daughter

Ermine 1

After dinner, the wind picked up and we got some sprinkles, and amazingly, the mosquitoes nearly disappeared. Finally, it became easy to completely relax and take off the head net, which I was finding to be repressive. Gradually, the rain picked up, and it ended up raining pretty hard throughout the night and into the morning. Fortunately, it slowed down for our paddle out, but packing up a wet tent and tarp is never fun. Plus, some of our gear got wet because the slope of the tentpad resulted in us pressing into the foot of the tent, exposing it to rain. I feel like I need to repeat the lesson to myself (and my handful of readers): don’t shove your clothes into the corner of the tent, especially when rain is expected as the corners are often where water will come in.  Perhaps, I should take Cliff Jacobson’s advice and use an innie.

We were completely swarmed by mosquitoes, got rained on for about 12 hours straight, didn’t catch a single fish, and we still had a great time. In all, I think we traveled about 16 miles over two days. The highlight of the trip was watching and eagle and a loon interact on the paddle out. We suspect the eagle may have gotten to the loons nest or maybe the loon was just warning others about the eagle, but it was way cool to watch the eagle swoop down near the loon and hear the loon call out in response. I look forward to our next trip to Sylvania, and I think it’s a great warm-up for our upcoming Boundary Waters trip. I hope you’ll leave a comment or send me a message.

 July 4-6, 2014, Sylvania Wilderness, Watersmeet, MI

Having spent so much time car camping in close proximity to other campers, I was ready to get out to the relative solitude of the wilderness. Our family’s first trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is all set for August, but I didn’t want to wait so long to get out canoe camping, and the Sylvania Wilderness seemed to be the perfect opportunity for a test run of our gear and packing strategy. Also, campsites for Sylvania can be reserved in advance, alleviating any worries about fighting potential holiday crowds for a campsite, so I reserved campsite Birch on Clark Lake for the July 4th weekend.

My wife repeatedly asked me if I was sure it would only take four hours to get to Watersmeet, and if I knew how bad holiday traffic could be getting “up north”. I took that as a clue to get an early start and promised to wake up around 5 am, which is several hours earlier than my normal weekend waking time. Having packed and loaded the car the night before, we were on the road by 6 am, which I think surprised us all. The early start really made a difference as traffic was light, and we had plenty of opportunities to make some stress-free stops, including breakfast at McDonald’s in Plover, WI. We continued on to Watersmeet with what was supposed to be a brief stop at Sylvania Outfitters for some fishing tackle and licenses. The tiny outfitter was packed with only one or two employees to handle all the rentals and fishing licenses. Fortunately, the crowd at the outfitter was not indicative of our experience in the wilderness.

After checking in at the ranger station and watching the video, we headed to the put-in at Helen Lake. Because the parking lots at Clark Lake were closed for construction, someone would have to drop our gear at Helen Lake, park 1.3 miles away at Snapjack Lake and walk back to the landing. My wife volunteered, and since, unlike me, she gets joy out of walking, I readily complied. After getting organized and waiting for Lorraine, we were on the water by 1 pm, which was an hour earlier than I was hoping to start paddling. Helen Lake was a very short paddle, and the portage to Clark Lake was easy to find, and since it was a temporary portage not marked on any map, I was glad we found it right away. The portage was literally a walk on the beach and was a piece  of cake at supposedly 24 rods (400 ft), which is shorter than many of our trips from the parking lots to the landings. The only part of the portage I didn’t like was walking through the beach sand, but it was easy enough there were really no complaints. For reference, our route from the Helen Lake landing through the portage is shown on the map. By the way, the BackCountry Navigator app is awesome and works like a charm on my Samsung G3. In airplane mode, it doesn’t drain too much battery, less than 10% per hour. I brought along the Goal Zero Nomad 7 and Guide 10 plus, which I successfully used to charge some batteries and my phone. Anyway, we were prepared for double portaging, but being our first portage, we were a bit combobulated and had to go back for the paddles, making it a triple portage, which is about 9 trips fewer than we make back to the car when we’re launching at a boat ramp ;). We’re pretty slow paddlers, especially with a full load, so we covered about 3.6 miles in right at 2 hours including time at the portage. We had no problems navigating Clark Lake, and we reached Birch campsite around 3pm.

I was pleasantly surprised at how nice the campsite was, and immediately knew that I would be comfortable there. There were limited options for placing our 4 person tent, but we found a couple places that were suitable. It would be tight with a large car camping type tent, but I think one could manage a large tent here. As usual, we immediately set up camp by putting up the tent, getting the sleeping mats and bags ready, rigging a tarp and setting up the chairs. I collected a bit of firewood, of which there was plenty. I could have gotten by without bringing the saw or hatchet, but it was nice to be able to saw and split some 3-4 in. logs. The mosquitos were not very friendly, and they seemed to love hanging out under the tarp, so we mostly did not. I had been a bit worried about the water quality, but we found the water to be pretty clean. I went out and got some water later Friday evening and filtered it with my Sawyer 0.02, which I got for Father’s Day. The water came out perfectly clear and tasted good. Amber and I fished from the shore for a little while, but we saw no signs of any fish in the area. We decided we’d try again from the boat after supper, but Amber proved a bit nervous with her first time fishing from the boat. Supper was delicious tortilla pizzas. These are a total success, and I see them on many trips to come. We were out about a total of an hour before she became completely discouraged and didn’t want to try any other locations. I was a bit disappointed as I had heard that there was some decent fishing in Clark Lake. We paddled around alone at first, but we went back and got Lorraine. I was glad to get back to shore because I needed to cover my legs as the black flies were biting me like crazy. Friday was a beautiful day, and everything went incredibly smooth. We went to bed to the sound of fireworks nearby. Happy Independence Day!

Amber and I slept in on Saturday until about 8:30, and it felt wonderful after waking at 5 the day before. We had our usual oatmeal and pre-cooked bacon for breakfast. As long as there’s plenty of brown sugar, I could probably have this for breakfast everyday camping. We couldn’t seem to decide what to do for the day, so I nudged everyone toward exploring the trails that connect our site to the beach, along the west side of Clark. We finally found the trail, but there was a bit of “bushwacking” (well, walking around where we felt there should be a trail according to the map, compass AND GPS). The trail was even buggier than our campsite, so Amber was ready to turn around after 0.6 miles. Based on everything I read about Sylvania, I expected the trails to be like a road, and maybe they are elsewhere, but they aren’t between Birch and Cedar (well, we didn’t quite make it to Cedar, but I didn’t see any wide-open trails ahead). I was game for walking all the way to the beach but was not disappointed to turn around. We had hash browns, apples, and turkey sausage for lunch. The sausage was not very good but I was glad to have some protein. Later, Amber asked if we could go to the beach to swim, so we got changed and headed out in the canoe. We didn’t get very far before the wind was pushing us around, and Amber began asking to go back. It wasn’t dangerous, but there were some 6-12” waves rocking us, and we were expending quite a bit of energy to move incredibly slowly. We decided instead to swim at camp, which wasn’t actually bad. The open area near the landing was fairly small with some weeds on both sides, but once I got out about waist deep, there was some room to move around. Amber swam around with her life jacket on for about 45 minutes, which was enough to satisfy her. We dried off, then I flaunted around naked for a couple minutes in between changing before decided I better get dressed before the mosquitoes found me. Amber seems to love dehydrated meals, so after her begging, we had Mountain House beef stew instead of the planned cheese quesadillas with salsa. Storms began rolling in later in the evening, and Amber became a bit anxious wanting to go to bed. She finally got her way around 8 or 8:30, and her and Lorraine retreated to the tent. I played with the fire for another hour and went to bed with some signs of light still on the horizon.

Lorraine woke me just after six asking what time it was since we were planning to get an early start to beat the predicted storms. Reluctantly, I hobbled out of bed, got started with the morning routine, skipped breakfast and started packing up. The rain started before I could even begin packing, and the mosquitoes were brutal. It always feels like chaos when we’re packing up, but the rain made it even worse. We mostly managed to keep our sleep stuff dry, although some water got into the tent because we left part of the fly open and because we didn’t set up the tent perfectly. Maybe we should use an innie. Although we are incredibly slow at breaking camp, we were on the water by 8:30 am with a wet tent and tarp. My rain gear seemed to work well, but I was pretty wet from sweating, so I need to think about some way to keep dry without overheating. Maybe I need to drop some coin on Gortex, but that won’t happen this year after all the gear we already bought. We got out of the wilderness without incident, had lunch at Brew’s Pub (or something like that) in Land O’ Lakes before running into traffic on our way home. The four hour drive took more like six hours, but we made it back safely with a mess of gear that I had to hose off.

Final thoughts: I had a great time with the solitude in the wilderness and definitely hope to get back to Sylvania Wilderness in the near future. We saw a fair amount of wildlife, although not as much as I had hoped. We saw three eagles, numerous loons, turtles, squirrels, chipmunks, and deer. We didn’t encounter very many people except at the portages. Everyone was friendly and courteous, although we did encounter some guys fishing while carrying metal beer cans, which is clearly against the rules. The area was clean and a nice balance between the wilderness and civilization. I expect, though, that if the campground was open that it would be much busier on Clark. Our gear worked out well, and I can’t think of much we should have left behind, although there are some things we *could* do without. We packed enough food for 5 days, so our food pack (60 L blue barrel) weighed 40 lbs including stove, dishes, fuel and carrying pack. Our gear pack with tent, chairs, first aid, batteries/charger, tools, etc. was 30 lbs, and the bag with clothes, sleeping bags, mats, etc. weighed in at about 35 lbs. I also took a small pack, which I did not weigh, with fishing tackle, reels, a gallon of water, and weather radio. I wet-footed with some old tennis shoes in which I drilled holes. I don’t think they really drain, so I might be on the lookout for some shoes like Quetico Trekkers. I don’t think we would have packed or done much differently for a 5 day trip, so I’m feeling ready for our BWCA trip in August.