I was curious and decided to make a list. How many BW lakes have a dipped a paddle in, not including rivers and named creeks. I listed out the routes from 35 trips and came up with 98 individual lakes.

55 lakes I've only been to/through once.
My most visited lake was tie at 5 times. There are two lakes I've been to on five separate trips. No surprise, these both were EP lakes.
My most camped on lake - also a tie at 4 times.

I have done 32 lakes.10 have been repeat lakes, with only 3 being lakes we camped on more than once. Can't wait to add another dozen my next trip in 2025, all being new lakes and a new EP! Sad I can't make it out this year

I did a quick route recap and actually counted the lakes.
Looks like I am around 130. 70 of those new lakes were from the summer of 2023 in the Gunflint and Tofte Ranger Districts.

This got me curious. I use to keep track in a notebook but I fell behind, so I updated it. I came up with 28 trips and 219 different lakes. More to do yet!

So I geek out big time on this one. I have a spreadsheet where I do out math including lakes visited, lakes camped on, percentage of total lakes visited, and on and on. After 69 trips, I have visited 435 different named lakes, which is still only about 39% of the total BWCAW lakes which is about 1114 give or take. My most visited lake is Rove which I have visited over a dozen times now from a wide run of entry options: Daniels, Duncan, E Bearskin, Daniels Spur trail, Clearwater, and Crane.

This post inspired me to track down all of my trips and their mileage + lake totals. I have travelled to 113 unique lakes. What's interesting to me is that I have never done very long trips, especially after working at an outfitter for a couple seasons where you only get off so many days. I am hoping to fit in 70+ new lakes this summer including a 7 day+ long trip into the Quetico hopefully.

TreeBear: "So I geek out big time on this one. I have a spreadsheet where I do out math including lakes visited, lakes camped on, percentage of total lakes visited, and on and on. After 69 trips, I have visited 435 different named lakes, which is still only about 39% of the total BWCAW lakes which is about 1114 give or take. My most visited lake is Rove which I have visited over a dozen times now from a wide run of entry options: Daniels, Duncan, E Bearskin, Daniels Spur trail, Clearwater, and Crane.


"

I want to be that Geek.
I need help... been to over 500, I think, but so many lakes, that I don't want to double list.

What a fun exercise!

After 18 trips I'm at 117 lakes, 19 of which I have paddled on 2 separate trips, only 1 that I have paddled on 3 trips (Brule) and 3 that I have camped on twice (Brule, Canoe, Basswood). I'm not counting unnamed lakes and I counted the Kekekabic Ponds as a single lake. The most lakes I have visited on a single trip is 32, the least, 2.

*edit I had forgotten all about camping on Basswood on two different trips

I'm at 32 since the beginning of last year when I first visited BWCA. Some repeats in there. I'm adding a couple more this weekend if walking on hard water counts the same as dipping a paddle. I feel like a newb!

AlexanderSupertramp: "I'm at 32 since the beginning of last year when I first visited BWCA. Some repeats in there. I'm adding a couple more this weekend if walking on hard water counts the same as dipping a paddle. I feel like a newb!"

I'm at 34 lakes in 5 trips with only two repeats. How many lakes/trips does it take to increase our BWCA newb status?

I like this post fun to look back on the trips we have taken. mine was lower than I expected but we have repeated a couple areas and had a couple of relaxing base camp trips.

51 different lakes, 5 different rivers.

I always thought some sort of clickable map would be cool. I image something like a map that you can click on the individual lakes you’ve been to and it would highlight those somehow that could be a cool wall hanger…

Thank for throwing this out there and giving me something to do this afternoon!

I have paddled 92 unique lakes across 18 trips, not counting any of the rivers that got me to them such as the Moose River and LISN. Several lakes passed through on multiple trips with 4 being the highest (the Pauness lakes). Multiple times camping on quite a few- Loon (3), Boot (2), Fourtown (2), Iron (2), Good (2), Wood (2), Agnes (2), Upper Pauness (2), South Temperance (2), Lac La Croix (2 on opposite ends) but only at the same site twice (Loon and Good).

If things go to plan I'll be adding more nights on a new to me area of LLC this coming summer along with adding 4 new lakes to the list. And now that I know this, I'll have to plan something special for unique lake 100, which will most likely have to wait 2025.

Stumpy: "

TreeBear: "So I geek out big time on this one. I have a spreadsheet where I do out math including lakes visited, lakes camped on, percentage of total lakes visited, and on and on. After 69 trips, I have visited 435 different named lakes, which is still only about 39% of the total BWCAW lakes which is about 1114 give or take. My most visited lake is Rove which I have visited over a dozen times now from a wide run of entry options: Daniels, Duncan, E Bearskin, Daniels Spur trail, Clearwater, and Crane.



"

I want to be that Geek.
I need help... been to over 500, I think, but so many lakes, that I don't want to double list.
"

Haha, it is a problem, but it gets me through the winter when traveling conditions are harder! Right now, the excel spreadsheet has seven pages: a lakes visited tab, an "unfinished business" tab, a trips taken tab, an entry points utilized tab, a top-10s tab, a "need to visit" tab, and a BWCA historical info tab. Then stuff gets super nerdy from there! Lakes visited is a list of all BWCAW named lakes with their number of campsites and acreage. Each has a checkbox for "visited" and a checkbox for "camped on." That data spits into a formula that adds up the number visited divided by the total to give a percentage. There's also an adjacent table tracking "lakes visited by method" including "type of canoe hull." The trips tab is also super out-of-control with dates of each trip, number of days, number of nights, entry point utilized, type of permit, mileage traveled, number of portages taken, rods personally portaged, lakes visited, number of lakes visited, and percentage of lakes visited that were new to me. Those get spit into a bunch of formulas for calculating BWCA nights per year, mileage traveled per year, mileage travelled per BWCA night, and portages taken per year as well as projections like "is the number of new lakes I visit per trip slowing down?" Also stuff like "mileage travelled by type of canoe" which, fun fact, the Voyageur Challenge this year just pushed Kevlar past Aluminum for my miles-traveled list. Entry points track the entries I have utilized (enter or exit) and, fingers crossed, I am hoping to finish canoe entry points this year with trips utilizing Little Indian North, Trout, and Farm (still working on wrapping up hiking and winter EPs - only about halfway there.) Of course, lots of other nerdy stuff. Anyways.... I might need help!

I hope Stumpy isn't underwhelmed . . .

This is an interesting topic.
I went through the list of BWCA lakes at the top of the page and just quickly counted the ones I could remember, and including named creeks and bays, and rivers, came up with somewhere between 175 and 200. I am sure if Spartan1 counted up, he would use a more scientific method and get a more exact number, but this one works for me. :-)

Even though we did our tripping over 42 years, we didn't live nearby like so many of you, so we didn't have even one trip a year average. I think a total of something like 22 BW trips, plus a couple in Quetico, one in Temagami, and two short trips in Algonquin.

Treebear - My spreadsheet contains the following tabs;

Trip Listing (EP, Date, Participants)
Bucket List (future lake list)
Current Year (Weekend listing & associated plans)
Favorite Lakes (My top 3 favs for May Lake trout, June Walleye, Sept Lake Trout, Oct Brook Trout - my usual trips)
Packing List Templates (seperate lists for solo or tandem and summer or shoulder season)
Gear Weights - Current gear weights and potential future replacements
BW Lake trout - Netting data and lake information for all BW lake trout lakes
BW Brook trout - same
BW Walleye - same
Personal Best Fish - listing by species

It's interesting to see the ratio of trips to lakes. I was initially surprised by the number of lakes vs trips for some individuals, but it makes sense I guess. Living nearby, a number of my trips are just a day trip to fish S. Kawish or another fairly easy access lake or just a quick 2 night trip in a couple lakes to fish.

This is a fun thread. I have canoed in 31 different boundary water lakes, walked the portage, and fished in a 32nd. 15 of those lakes have been done a second time. Man, some of you are at 4-500 plus! That's a goal that I will strive for.

A few months ago I worked up a quick summary and found 21 trips, 16 EP's, approx. 140 lakes, longest portage 472 rods, most portages in a day 9. I may do somthing a little more detailed when I have more time. An interesting thread.

Reviewed my planning spreadsheets and looks like I'm at 110 lakes on 10 trips, all but 1 in the last 3 years. Not a basecamper, maybe take a single layover day on a trip, and prefer to push away from EPs and keep moving - especially on solo trips. I didn't track portages for all trips, but can think of at least 4 that were a mile plus (Zenith to Lujenida last year was the longest to date, happy to report I crushed it single carrying in 45 minutes.) Considering visiting the SW area this spring which will be new to me!

I also started a gear weight spreadsheet, and add a new column for each trip. That way I can mark what items I take, review what was really used/needed/missing and make changes on trip to trip. Good way to prep/geek out in the offseason to review all that.

Helps my Christmas list when thinking about what gear to ask Santa for to shave weight too.

What a fun thread! Speckled, you have inspired me to create a spreadsheet too! In an initial review, I have visited about 75 different lakes in 15 trips with some trips as few as 2 lakes, and the most being 22! Not bad for four day trips!

Enjoying this thread! Good idea, Speckled.

27 trips for me
123 lakes plus several rivers
camped on one lake 29 nights (Wood)
Most lakes in one trip: 42 over 16 days.

Those of you with the spreadsheets make me wish I would have done a better job tracking my trips. I like reading about your observations.

Oh boy I love me some stats!! Data science is one of my geeky passions. Surprisingly, I hadn't put a spreadsheet together to track this, but now's as good a time as ever!

* Trip Count: 13
* Unique Lakes: 108 (118 inc. various bays)
* Unique Rivers & Creeks: 12 (Kawishiwi River counted multiple times based on section)
* Most lakes from single entry: 36 (Moose Lake)
* Most lakes on single trip: 28 (LIS Interior Tour, 9 days)
* Average number of lakes per trip: 22(!)
* Most used entry: Moose Lake (4 trips, everything else 1!)
* Most visited lake: tie between Ensign-Splash-Birch-Carp-Melon-Seed-Knife-Amoeber-Topaz-Cherry (3 times each, from 2 diff entries - wonderful area but I'm trying to focus on new ones!)
* Bodies visited more than once: 31/130 (24%)
* Bodies visited only once: 99/130 (76% - variety is the spice of life eh!)

I've been running gear spreadsheets since my first trip in 2018 and rely on a new sheet for weight distribution and packing checklists for every single trip. The phrase "did you check the spreadsheet?" is a joke among my tripping group. It helps keep pack weights as low as possible so no one gets stuck portaging "the bear", and ensure you're not overpacking food (which is much harder since everyone ends up picking up a few extras "just in case").

One protip I will give is to use conditional formatting to highlight cells green/orange/red based on expected/tolerable weights (i.e. green from 0-8oz, orange from 8-32oz, red from 32oz+). Google Sheets will create transition colors to make this more flexible as well. I love my colorful spreadsheets. :) It makes an unintuitive format (grid of text) more intuitive, by making it more visually descriptive.

TuscaroraBorealis: "Did you read/understand the question in the original post???

I think it was just asking about BWCA, not lake(s) in other areas. :)"

YaMarVa: "How do you know someone goes to the Quetico? - They will tell you without you asking them.

This thread is about favorite BWCA lakes and they still can't help themselves.
"

Good thread! I never thought to count up the individual lakes. I've got a few in the BW, too!

I have 5...maybe 6 trips planned in 2024. i will visit exactly zero new lakes. Initially our trips were a mix of new areas vs already visited favorites. The last few years, i've had much higher propensity to visit the same lakes. I have a handful of favorites and returning to a favorite lake and a favorite campsite, has a great feeling.

I'm sure new lakes will get crossed off the list, but right now when I think about about a BW trip, those favorite lakes have an almost unbreakable pull.

OH MY GOSH!! I have so much to improve my spreadsheet with!! I never thought to use conditional formatting. I only have 4 tabs - I have new ideas now to bump that up.

We've made 4 trips total. 3 of them were on the same/similar route covering 14 lakes. Last year with trip 4 we added 10 new lakes. We are still deciding on a route this year.

beanpole: "...I never thought to use conditional formatting..."

how will you??

I have been visiting the BWCA for 48 years. My lake count is about 210, 24 entry points and over 80 trips of 2 to 10 days and I cannot count how many lakes we have camped on more than once. We will not see any new lakes this year as we are taking my brothers adult children.

As the original poster had posted - while tracking weights on my packed items. Color coding the weight. Give a quick view of the heaviest items.

Lots! I put my initial on the lake on my maps that I've been to. The OP asks for lakes you've dipped a paddle in. Unfortunately, a lot of the obscure lakes, I just walked in to see them; no canoe.

I'd been meaning to do this, or even have trips where I'd bushwhack to a side lake carrying just a paddle to officially dip it into the water. Maybe those plans of accumulating lakes will still happen someday, but for now, I'm at 53 lakes over 16 trips -- but fully half of those trips were to the same Lakes One through Four (the family knows what it likes, and they're easy ways to introduce friends), and last year's solo yolo one-way added 17 new lakes to the list.

Thanks for the motivation to up my tracking on my spreadsheet. Previously just had dates, EP, campsites and various notes. I do also keep track of my canoes and winter tent to see how much money I am saving on rentals.

37 trips (15 winter no paddle dipping I suppose)
103 unique lakes
40 lakes most on a single trip
11 times to Seagull (6 times in the winter)

56 lakes in 9 trips.
Been to 1 lake 4 times.

I'm think I'm at 192 give or take a couple. I've been to many of the lakes multiple times. Always looking for that next new lake though.

Tony

done about a dozen trips into SAK , overall 28 lakes , i wonder what TB count is ? ;)

I don't count lakes been fortunate and counted the lakes I caught Lake trout out of in the BWCA and Quetico an even 60 lakes. That shows how special the area is up there. Yes lost a few in other lakes also.

Just one trip, so far, but we paddled 24 lakes together. My tripping partner hit one more for 25, and saw a couple of moose, while I was checking out campsites on our rest day.
Edit:
Two nights each slept on Ima and Adams for tie in that category.