BOUNDARY WATERS – A stretch of three days in July where thousands of paddlers were evacuated from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was the peak of an otherwise quiet year for search and rescue operations here.

The U.S. Forest Service estimates that as many as 10,000 paddlers were evacuated from the BWCA over the course of a few days in mid-July, when the entire wilderness shut down July 14. The complete closure lasted nearly two weeks. The BWCA reopened in sections over the course of the summer.

Remarkably, there were no significant injuries to any of the thousands of paddlers during the evacuation process that were reported. Paddle & Portage media spoke to paddlers who suffered from heat exhaustion or who were troubled by the air quality during the evacuation, but none required medical attention. Towboat operators served a role in some of the more intense evacuation stories shared this summer, as we previously reported.

Photo of the Camp Fire from Fall Lake hours before the evacuation notice for the Fernberg corridor in July 2026. Photo by Pam Wright

The paddling season is not over in the Boundary Waters region, as exhibited by an unusually warm stretch of weather between Oct. 8 and 10 in northeastern Minnesota, where many anglers, hunters, paddlers, and hikers took to the woods and waters here. Even so, aside from the wildfire evacuation, there were limited calls for search and rescue in the BWCA Wilderness this quota season, which runs from May 1 to Sept. 30.

The most noteworthy call came early in the season, as is often the case when the water is higher and colder than it is during the peak of the paddling season in July and August. That situation unfolded in mid-May near Ely and involved two experienced BWCA paddlers who were attempting to paddle across the entire wilderness. They capsized before completing their objective and were subsequently rescued by a helicopter, as we share in this video report.

About two weeks later, on May 29, two paddlers, a father-and-son duo from Kentucky, were rescued by an airplane after the father sustained a back injury while they were camped on Lac La Croix in the BWCA Wilderness. He was treated at the hospital in Ely and released shortly after.

Another situation unfolded on Grandpa Lake at the end of the Gunflint Trail in late August, which involved an overnight rescue to help someone suffering from a medical emergency.

When calls about people being in danger or dying in the Boundary Waters come in to emergency responders, the initial focus of any search and rescue operation is to locate, access, stabilize, and transport individuals in distress. The scenarios could include a canoeist who capsizes and is now stuck on an island without any gear, a person who severely sprains their ankle on a portage trail, someone who had a heart attack, or someone suffering from hypothermia.

The St. Louis County Rescue Squad is the largest and most advanced rescue team covering the Boundary Waters region. It consists of about 100 highly trained volunteers from northeastern Minnesota. In recent years, the St. Louis County Rescue Squad has responded to nearly 500 calls per year, —an average of more than one call each day of the year. Their coverage area is huge, some 7,000 square miles, an area roughly the size of New Jersey. Some of these calls are emergencies of the highest order, like what took place at Curtain Falls in 2024, and is widely considered the most highly-publicized and complex BWCA search and recovery mission to ever take place.

Beyond the BWCA, on Lake Superior waters on the North Shore, a sailboat captain in distress in July could have been in a much more precarious situation if the Lake County Sheriff’s Department hadn’t taken possession of a nearly half-million-dollar watercraft gifted from the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, according to local officials.

“The sailboat was disabled due to damage caused by strong winds,” Lake County Chief Deputy Timothy Luoma said Oct. 7. “We were able to utilize the boat and towed the sailboat to the safety of the Silver Bay Marina.”

With the boating and open water recreation seasons largely in the rearview mirror, local law enforcement in Cook and Lake counties, which both include large swaths of the BWCA Wilderness, say two marine vessels they took control of earlier this year already showed why they were needed.

Photo courtesy of Lake County Sheriff Department.

The boat Luoma references is one of four custom vessels that Grand Portage commissioned from Lake Assault Boats in Superior, Wisc. The Band acquired four boats last fall with the help of state money, with the Band keeping two and gifting one each to Cook and Lake counties. The need for the boats, local and state officials said, came after the Coast Guard permanently closed its station in Grand Marais in 2022.

Luoma said the boat Lake County received was utilized numerous times throughout the summer, including three separate occasions at Palisade Head, where the vessel served “as a platform to work off of.” Two of those operations were recovery missions, including the July incident where the Lake County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a body on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff at Palisade Head.

When the Coast Guard shuttered its Grand Marais station, it cited a low number of calls and budgetary restrictions as the primary reasons for the closure. Local officials have said previously that the North Shore sees enough emergencies on Lake Superior to make this partnership pertinent, with local distress calls during recent years ranging from large ships to paddlers attempting to reach Isle Royale from the mainland.

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