WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast

Food tastes better during a trip to the Boundary Waters. It's a common sentiment, one many visitors to the canoe-country wilderness can relate to. During a recent winter trip to the BWCA, the podcast team explored the notion that food is about much more than fuel for the body. It's about bringing people together. Superior National Forest Tribal Liaison Juan Martinez returns to the podcast in this...

Welcome to Season Six of the WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast! To start the season, we get to travel once again with the father/daughter duo Scott and Emilie Burditt. Scott and Emilie are Wisconsin residents who make an annual trip to Quetico Provincial Park. In 2022, they took their Canadian paddling adventures to new terrain and paddled Wabakimi Provincial Park. Along the way, the share their storie...

The trip started with 24 hours of cold rain and seemingly endless beaver dams overflowing from a rising creek. Dense fog masked the shoreline in the distance on the occasional lake that broke up the swirling creek. Despite the weather and being mostly strangers, every member of this tripping team was smiling and giddy. Last September, a group of outdoorsy folks from across the country gathered in...

Juan Martinez is the first tribal liaison for the U.S. Forest Service on Superior National Forest. He arrived to northeastern Minnesota in 2021. In late November 2022, during the first week of good ice in and around the Boundary Waters, podcast hosts Joe Friedrichs and Matthew Baxley went ice fishing with Martinez near the Gunflint Trail. They talked with Juan while on the ice about his work as th...

Bear Paulsen has a style of canoe tripping named after him. Simply put, they're called "Bear Trips." A Bear Trip means there will be weeks, possibly months, spent paddling on one specific trip. Paulsen is the general manager of Northstar Canoes. He is also on the short list of the most experienced and well-respected paddlers in Minnesota and across the Boundary Waters region. In this installment o...

Dispersed camping on Superior National Forest is something the U.S. Forest Service has encouraged as the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness continues to draw more people during the peak of summer. In this episode, podcast co-host Joe Friedrichs travels with The Great Josh Dix to a remote lake on the edge of the wilderness. Pursuing brook trout in and around the wilderness formed a theme for Oct...

Bryan Hansel is an outdoor photographer and BWCA enthusiast who lives near Grand Marais. In May 2021, Hansel followed the route of American geologist Newton Horace Winchell and the work he did while surveying the land of Cook County in 1879. Hansel spent nearly two weeks on the solo adventure that took him from Grand Marais to Lutsen via the Iron Trail to Trail Center, then the Border Route to the...

It's episode 75 of the WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast! In this episode, we hear from a familiar voice on the podcast, BWCA enthusiast Erik "Omaha Erik" Dickes. Erik goes on his first solo trip to the wilderness in this episode, with hosts Joe Friedrichs and Matthew Baxley joining him for some fall fishing during a memorable afternoon in the BWCA. Thanks to everyone who helped the WTIP Boundary Water...

A Minnesota woman is safe after spending a rainy September night lost in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness near the Gunflint Trail. 56-year-old Jennifer Fitzer, a resident of Golden Valley, Minn., became lost Thursday, Sept. 8 from her group’s campsite on Rib Lake in the BWCA. This was Fitzer’s first trip to the Boundary Waters, according to her brother, Chuck Fitzer. Chuck spoke with WTIP...

When we think of the Boundary Waters, solitude, quiet and getting away from the hustle of day-to-day life often jump to the forefront of the mind for many visitors to this canoe country wilderness. A quiet retreat is indeed a common sentiment shared by the many thousands of people who visit the BWCA each year. And while solitude is sought, many of these same people travel through the canoe-country...

The WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast team take to the road (and air) for this episode, traveling more than 1,000 miles south to the hills of Kentucky. On the trail of Jordan Grider, a young man from New Mexico who died in the Boundary Waters in 2018, hosts Joe Friedrichs and Matthew Baxley travel throughout Appalachia on their journey to learn more about where Grider spent time camping and living near...

The Barefoot Paddler abides. Mark Zimmer, more commonly referred to as the 'Barefoot Paddler,' makes his return to the podcast in this episode. Mark is in the midst of his tenth season exploring the BWCA. Not your average paddler, Mark typically spends May through October in the Boundary Waters. He catches fish. He forages. He sleeps in a hammock. And he does it all barefoot. The podcast team rece...

Emily Haavik is a Twin Cities based journalist and musician who has a deep love for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Emily and her husband, Phil, chose the BWCA as the setting for their honeymoon in September 2020, for example. The couple also got engaged in the canoe-country wilderness in 2019 on Rose Lake. Emily grew up in Duluth and has been coming to the Boundary Waters for most of h...

It's the 'all news episode' of the WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast! There has been so much news in and around the Boundary Waters in recent weeks, hosts Joe Friedrichs and Matthew Baxley use storytelling and interviews to sum up some of the biggest topics coming from the BWCA and Quetico. Among them are the return of Remote Area Border Crossing Permits, the completion of the Stairway Portage redesign...

Poetry. Process. Paddling. In the BWCA, the natural rhythms of wind and water churn through seasons without concern for human visitors. During the July 4 holiday weekend, five paddlers on a remote lake in the Boundary Waters found themselves sharing new experiences while reflecting on the past. In today’s episode we hear from the poet, Emily Van Kley. Emily and her father, Dave Van Kley, have been...

Human remains were discovered near a makeshift campsite in April 2019 near the Sioux Hustler Trail that runs through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Law enforcement later identified the remains as those of 29-year-old Jordan Grider, a New Mexico resident who was attempting to spend an entire winter camping in the BWCA. Authorities believe he was eaten by wolves, likely after he died fro...

Cell phone use during a trip to the Boundary Waters. To bring or not to bring? To use or not to use? These are the questions some in the paddling community have struggled with for years, with age often being a factor in where one stands on the issue. Many young paddlers, for example, are embracing elements of technology on their trips to the Boundary Waters. Modern cell phones take excellent photo...

Legislation that would essentially block certain types of mining on a large swath of federal land in the watershed of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was passionately debated during a May 24 hearing of the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources. The bill would prohibit sulfide-based mineral development in an area of Superior National Forest near the BWCA. During the hear...

High water levels and lingering ice are making for a treacherous start to the paddling season across the Boundary Waters this spring. Craig Regep, a resident of Hanover, Minnesota, experienced this firsthand at the start of a canoe trip in the BWCA on Friday, May 13. Regep’s trip started at the end of the Arrowhead Trail on the far eastern side of the BWCA. He was paddling from John Lake to the Ro...

It went from fishing opener to lake opener as ice lingered on the east side of the Boundary Waters in the middle of May. Many area lakes, from the end of the Arrowhead Trail to the Middle Gunflint Trail, still held their ice on the day before the 2022 fishing opener in Minnesota. Minnesota’s fishing opener for walleye, bass, trout and pike was Saturday, May 14. As the ice lingered, many groups can...

With one week to go before the Minnesota fishing opener, many of the lakes across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and all of Superior National Forest remain locked in ice. The WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast team drilled a hole in the ice of a 181-acre lake inside the BWCA on Friday, May 6. There was approximately 24 inches of rotting ice on the lake. One week prior, on April 29, there was...

Lake Saganaga at the end of the Gunflint Trail is an easy place to get lost. Sag, as the lake is often called, is both the deepest and largest lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It’s 280 ft. deep in certain pockets, and is spread across nearly 19,000 acres. And while Sag might be challenging to navigate for even the most experienced paddlers, sometimes getting turned around can lea...

Emily Ford is a Duluth resident who skied across the border lakes of the Boundary Waters during the memorably cold, snowy and windy winter of 2021-22. Ford captured national attention when she skied across Wisconsin the previous winter. What motivates someone to embark on solo expeditions during the winter? Learn this and much more about Emily Ford in this episode of the podcast.

It's the end of the ice fishing season for lake trout in the Boundary Waters. The WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast team had a good year of ice fishing. In this episode, Gunflint Trail resident Mike Seim talks with Joe about a variety of topics related to lake trout in the BWCA. Also of interest, a recent study out of the University of Manitoba in Canada shows some lake predators are changing their beh...

Canoecopia, the world’s largest paddling expo, returned in 2022. The COVID-19 pandemic shut down the Madison, Wisc., based event in 2020. It was a virtual gathering in 2021. The WTIP Boundary Waters Podcast was back at Canoecopia this year. Old acquaintances surfaced from the crowd. New friends were made as well. It was a time of connection. This episode was recorded in its entirety at Canoecopia...