Hike to Kelso Mountain via the Kelso River October 2000.

By Angela Anderson, Minnesota DNR

The American Hiking Society celebrates Trails Advocacy week in early March promoting trails nationwide. This is a perfect opportunity to make a pitch for the 'Kelso River and Mountain Trail'. This very special trail, offers a combination of travel on water and on land all in one package and easy to do in one day. A perfect campsite is situated along the rocky shore of Kelso Lake.  This trail would make a great addition to the selection of water and land trails offered in the BWCAW.

I spent the weekend of October 20th through the 22nd, 2000 with four other BWCAW enthusiasts exploring this beautiful area off the north-end of Sawbill Lake. Here is my account of that trip.

Lynn Riggs, Norm Kagan, Martin Kubik, Pat Duerr, and I met up at Sawbill Landing Friday night, and camped along the southern shore of Sawbill Lake. It turned out to be a chilly night, I had decided to sleep under the stars, too lazy to put up my tent, but towards morning I woke up freezing as dew had settled on my sleeping bag making it wet.

Fog shrouded the lake Saturday morning, promising a beautiful fall day. After breakfast and packing up we met with Bill Hansen the owner of Sawbill Canoe Outfitters at Sawbill Landing. He generously loaned us two very nice Kevlar canoes, for Norm, Lynn, Pat and I, Martin had brought his own kayak. We paddled north on Sawbill Lake around several islands and then northwesterly through a narrows which brought us to a short portage. At the other end of the portage we put our canoes into the Kelso River. This river is beautiful. Our canoes were slicing through the still water surrounded by bog vegetation. Looking at the diversity of plants, only seed heads in various shades of brown left this time of year, I could imagine how beautiful this area must be in late spring and summer when bog flowers are in bloom. I could recognize sphagnum mosses, sundew, pitcherplants, blueflag, sedges, bog laurel, Labrador tea, leatherleaf, bog rosemary, cranberry and sweetgale. After about one mile northwest of the portage the river widens into Kelso Lake. Two campsites are located at its northern end. We checked them both out and decided to pitch our tents at the first campsite because it was much more scenic and had good tent sites. We set up camp and had a heck of a time hanging up our food bag. Pat our expert rope thrower tried and tried and finally the rope took.

In early afternoon, after eating lunch and practicing map and compass, we took off from our campsite and paddled about one half mile up the river to the start of the trail. This stretch of the Kelso River was even more beautiful than the first part. I remember especially one area where our canoes only had a narrow path around lichen covered rocks, opposite an open bog skirted by dark spruce forest. Where this water trail meets the land  trail Martin pointed out a large round boulder sitting on 3 small rocks as if put there miraculously by someone long ago. Doug George one of the DNR archeologists I work with called it a ‘culturally placed rock’. He was certain that a glacier did not put it there. 

We pulled our canoes on land and hiked the 1 1/4 miles up Kelso Mountain. The path was rugged and narrow, traveling in a southwesterly direction towards Oriole Lake where we had to cross a large beaver dam.  Martin had to take several pictures of us lined up making our way across the dam. On the way to the summit we passed ‘the meadow’ as Martin called it, where the trail makes a 90-degree turn at the edge of a spruce forest. From there the climb to the top led us through aspen and birch interspersed with pine.

Reaching the top of Kelso Mountain was not much of a highlight for me, but interesting nevertheless. The summit was crowned with the foundation of a lookout tower, the remains of an outhouse visibly clawed up by bears, a dilapidated shed, and many other signs of human occupation some time ago, rusty cans, bottles and bedsprings. Martin cooked tea for us to celebrate the moment.

When we returned to our campsite it was almost dark. We cooked up some soup which was greatly enhanced with dried mushrooms Martin had brought back from his visit to the Czech republic earlier in the year. Sunday morning greeted us again with sunshine and the paddle back was delightful. Arriving back at the landing around noon left us plenty of time for a leisurely ride back to the cities. The images of that river paddle are still with me.

Angela Anderson