Following historic fur trading routes used by French voyageurs, Scott Sorenson completed a 558-mile solo canoe trip that circumnavigated the Boundary Waters area of northern Minnesota and the Quentico Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada.
The Traverse City resident spend 37 days on the water, camping nightly, fishing for his dinner and foraging wild fruits while nursing battered feet and overtaxed hands. His motive was not a historical pursuit but a love of adventure and the stark challenge that pits planning, endurwild backcountry. The trip was historic in one dimension: guides in the area told Sorenson that his trip was the first time the route had been completed in one chunk.
"It was really, really a tremendous experience," said Sorenson, who teaches elementary music in the Traverse City Area Public Schools district and is a trumpet player with the Traverse Symphony Orchestra.
"You're testing yourself, obviously physically but also emotionally just to continue on," he added. "And all the meticulous planning that goes into this because once you shove off, you're dealing with an environment that can be quite harsh."
Shaping the trip down to the smallest detail for a year prior to launching on June 27, Sorenson brought along two 65-pound packs and a smaller 50-pound one. He packed only the minimum of food, clothing, camping and personal care items. Completing his fifth 300-mile-or-longer wilderness canoe trip, Sorenson also knew what not to take.
"I'm in obsessive heaven planning and executing a trip like this," he observed. "It's a passion, you just learn all these things and just keep learning more."
As veteran adventurers know, the weight and volume food versus necessary calories is always a complex trade off. Sorenson filled out his seven weeks of supplies by fishing for dinner and foraging wild berries. He stoked his body with as much food as possible but still lost 22 pounds on the trip. He estimated that he burned 6,000 calories a day - a rate hard to replenish in the wilderness.
"I can think of no finer way to stay in shape, canoe trips are a fountain of youth for me," said Sorenson, who penned an 80-page journal during the venture.
Using detailed maps of the region, Sorenson also planned within a five-mile range how far he wanted to go each day. He also wove five days off into his journey to provide much-needed mental and physical breaks.
During the trip, he plotted his progress daily and only twice used his GPS device to determine his position, generating two "No kidding? I'm here?" moments. He also took an extra day off when his feet got so bad it was either pamper them or call a halt.
Wind conditions were favorable many times although he encountered a few intense thunderstorms and also a forest fire, where he saw 300-year-old pine trees explode into flames on an island.
A Minneapolis native who has canoed the Boundary Waters area and Quentico Provincial Park many times before, Sorenson drove to Minnesota with his supplies and rented the We-No-Nah Prism solo canoe from an outfitter there. He launched just west of Ely, Minn., at Lake Vermilion. He paddled the Little Indian Sioux River to the border with Canada, followed the boarder to Prairie Portage. There, he crossed into Canada and entered the Quentico park and followed a route that took him through Kawnipi and Sturgeon lakes, along the Maligne River and to Lac la Croix.
After circling around the northernmost part of Quentico, he headed back north and east as he followed the Pickerel River back to the border and entered the United States at Saganaga Lake. He went as far east as the Grand Portage, which goes to Lake Superior, before turning back and paddling 100 miles back to his end point east of Ely.
Sorenson encountered few humans in this remote wilderness, although he saw wolves, elk, deer and other wildlife in abundance.
"You would go days without seeing people," said Sorenson. "You become so in tune with nature, with the weather."
Sorenson estimates he completed 142 portages, where he carried the canoe and packs around falls or rapids and between two waterways. These overland forays added about 125 miles of legwork to his journey, increasing the daily exhaustion quotient and straining his flayed feet.
'When you get to a portage, it's five trips so when it's a mile, you're walking five miles," he noted of the back-and-forth process of moving his equipment overland.