single-color background

The Boundary Waters Wilderness

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is one of the last true wilderness areas for canoe paddlers to explore.  The BWCA stretches nearly 200 miles along the Canadian border of northeastern Minnesota.  At over a million acres, it is the second largest unit of our National Wilderness Preservation System, containing the largest virgin forests remaining in east of the Rocky Mountains. 

The wildlife in the BWCA and surrounding areas is spectacular.  It is not unusual to see moose walking next to the lodge in the spring and fall or a lynx in a tree just watching the happenings.  In the winter, wolf hunt on the lake ice at the top of the Gunflint Trail.   Seeing Bald Eagles dive for fish in the lakes in a common sight up in this part of Minnesota. 

There are many ways to explore the BWCA.  You can stay in a cabin and enjoy, for a short time, a lifestyle of times past; no phones, no internet and no TV.  The birds wake you up in the mornings and you catch your dinner in the lakes.   From Clearwater Lodge you can take wonderful day trips in the BWCA.  You can explore the high bluffs, visit Canada or swim in the cool pool of a waterfall.   Whether your desire is fishing, birding, photography or just solitude, you can find it all here. 

You can also take a canoe trip into the BWCA.  With 1,000 lakes and over 1,500 miles of canoe routes, you can load up your canoe and take off into the wilderness.  These routes were originally used by the Sioux and Chippewa Indians and by early French Canadian Voyageurs for travel and later, fur trading.   The area is very much unchanged from the time the Voyageurs conducted a thriving fur trade business.