Paddling in Voyageurs National Park

Voyageurs is, at its core, a water park — not in the recreational sense, but in the literal one. Nearly 40 percent of its 218,000 acres is lake and river, and the only way to reach most of it is by paddling or motoring in.

The park runs 55 miles along the Minnesota-Ontario border in the far north of the state, and its character is shaped entirely by that water: open crossings, granite islands, boreal shoreline, and the kind of quiet that comes from being somewhere most people skip.

The four big lakes — Rainy, Kabetogama, Namakan, and Sand Point — form the park's spine, stretching across 56 miles of interconnected water. These are large, exposed lakes where wind and fetch matter.

Motorized boats share the water here, but the 655 miles of undeveloped shoreline absorb a lot of traffic, and the 143 frontcountry campsites on these lakes are accessible directly by canoe or kayak from park visitor center boat ramps.

For paddlers who want open water and island camping without portaging, this is the straightforward entry point. The interior lakes of the Kabetogama Peninsula are a different proposition.

Reaching them requires crossing one of the big lakes to a trailhead, then hiking in — sometimes several miles — to smaller, sheltered waters.

The park's 14 backcountry campsites sit on these interior lakes, and each reservation includes the use of a canoe at the site. No privately-owned watercraft may be portaged into backcountry areas, which keeps the interior lakes genuinely quiet.

Mukooda Lake is one of the better-known interior lakes; reaching it requires crossing Crane and Sand Point Lakes first. Locator Lake and Little Shoepack Lake are among the others served by the park's canoe program.

Ice-out on the large lakes averages around May 6th, though late years can push navigable conditions into mid-May. Early summer brings cooler temperatures and fewer people; summer proper, from Memorial Day through Labor Day, is the busiest stretch.

Camping anywhere in the park — frontcountry or backcountry — requires an advance reservation.

One thing Voyageurs enforces that paddlers coming from the Boundary Waters may not expect: aquatic invasive species rules are strict, and privately-owned watercraft cannot be portaged into the backcountry interior lakes at all.

The park is the permit authority for backcountry camping reservations. Check current rules directly with the park before you go. What stays with you isn't the scale of the big lakes or the logistics of the interior — it's the way the park holds its silence.

Loons carry across the water at dusk, white pines reflect on lakes that see a fraction of the traffic the Boundary Waters does, and the old canoe routes of the voyageurs are still there, still readable in the landscape, if you're moving slowly enough to see them.