The Podcast
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Paddle and Portage’s monthly podcast is the auditory gateway to the wilds of the BWCA and Quetico. The podcast will be hosted by Matthew Baxley and Joe Friedrichs. In 2017, we founded a podcast focused on the Boundary Waters for WTIP, the community radio station in Grand Marais, Minn. Matthew and Joe shifted their efforts to the new Paddle and Portage Podcast. The new platform will allow for expanded storytelling, more voices from our community of paddlers, and the ability to travel deeper and capture more stories in the BWCA and Quetico. The podcast will have new episodes on the 10th of each month.
The podcast also has a sibling! Known as the Paddle and Portage Bonus Audio, we will offer our subscribers a variety of additional content in audio form. This will include interviews with DNR, Forest Service, and other agencies and organizations who do work in and around the Boundary Waters. The podcast will also offer audio diaries from guest contributors who paddle the BWCA, Quetico, and other locations. Matthew and Joe will also share seasonal conditions, fish reports, news and other information from the wilderness in the bonus audio edition of the podcast.
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Podcast Episode Four – A Greater Meaning to a Winter BWCA Trip
Episode Four – A Greater Meaning To A Winter BWCA Trip
Three friends, Chad Roy, Mike Larson, and Glen Bruchmann, come to the Boundary Waters every year for an extended winter camping trip. They are quick to reference some of these same common threads, but they also know it runs deeper than that. It’s about connection, reflecting on the year gone by, and looking ahead at what’s to come. It’s also a place for processing. Even topics that go beyond general reflection of the day to day of life. It’s a place to process death, and deep loss. In 2022, the group’s dear friend, Tim Lee, passed away. Tim was there when Mike and Glen first started coming to the Boundary Waters as youngsters. Those were family trips. Tim was older by a few years, but he was included in those family adventures, most of which took place on East Pike Lake on the eastern side of the BWCA.
In late February and early March 2024, the trio started an annual winter adventure on West Bearskin Lake, crossing the wilderness line as they schlepped over the portage to Duncan Lake in the Mid-Gunflint Trail area. They spent the next six days traveling a collection of border lakes, including Rose and Mountain, and down toward Canoe Lake, and then back out at Daniels nearly a week later. Below is a map showing their route from West Bearskin to Canoe.
The group recorded some of their adventure along the way and share them on this episode of the podcast.
This episode is sponsored by:
Tuscarora Lodge & Canoe Outfitters
Episode Three – Going Off Trail in the Boundary Waters
Episode Three – Going Off Trail in the Boundary Waters
Not every lake in the Boundary Waters has a portage trail leading to its shores. Many of these lakes are gifted with the absence of humans.
Similarly, the grueling grind of a long portage can be viewed as an obstacle to prevent some people from traveling deeper into the canoe-country wilderness. Others embrace such portages, knowing fewer people are likely to be on the other side.
The next level is to go off the trail completely. Bushwhacking in the Boundary Waters is about going off-trail. It’s exploring the unknown. It’s testing the ability to read terrain, maps, and navigate without following a trail.
In this episode, M Baxley, Buck Benson, and John Oberholtzer go off-trail in the BWCA. Baxley also talks with Dan Disch, wilderness operations leader for the Tofte Ranger District on Superior National Forest, about the legality of such travel in the wilderness, as well as safety reminders for those who choose to go bushwhacking in the Boundary Waters.
Episode Two of the P&P Podcast – The Other Side Of Wild Ice
It was a season to remember for most who had the good fortune to go ice staking on a frozen lake in the Boundary Waters this winter.
The ice came early, and it stayed clear of snow for many weeks. From November until early January, many lakes across the BWCA were ideal for ice skating.
Some of the ice, however, was dangerous. Ice thickness could vary drastically, not just from one lake to the next, but on the same lake.
Two Grand Marais residents found out how dangerous the ice can be early in the season across the Boundary Waters. Gwen shares her story about falling through the ice on Kimball Lake up the Gunflint Trail. Braidy Powers shares his story about falling through the ice on Rose Lake in the BWCA.
In this episode, we hear their stories.
Episode One – Wind Is The Ultimate Game Changer
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a 1,000 times: Wind is the ultimate game changer on any trip to the Boundary Waters.
In the first full-length episode of the podcast, hosts Joe Friedrichs and Matthew Baxley navigate the complexities and challenges of wind during any given trip to the canoe-country wilderness. Expert guests, including a meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Duluth, and a fisheries biologist from the Department of Natural Resources in Grand Marais, bring science and data into the discussion of how wind can and does impact recreation across the Boundary Waters.
We also hear from Omaha Erik Dickes and his son Justin about how wind impacted their late-season canoe trip to the east side of the BWCA.
Another guest, Adam Mella from the Tumblehome Podcast, previews the January edition of the Paddle and Portage digital magazine and the feature he wrote about how becoming a father reshaped his connection to the wilderness.
It Begins
It Begins
Welcome to “The Paddle and Portage Podcast!
In this first installment of the podcast, hosts Joe Friedrichs and Matthew Baxley share with you stories about the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The stories range from how wind can impact a trip to the canoe-country wilderness, to the joys of traveling off-trail.
The podcast duo also share more about the Paddle and Portage mission and why it’s important to share stories from and about this amazing landscape.
Email story ideas to: joe@paddleandportage.com