Portage Description:
My buddy and I were camping on Lunetta and decided to take a hike and look out over another close lake - so, we figure, why not check out Hassel Lake. Now we know. This is the nastiest portage I have ever been on in the BWCA. It makes the Stuart Portage look like a nice morning jog, the portage between Cummings and Big Moose is just a gentle Sunday hike. Why so bad, you ask - 1) blow down: we were only hiking the trail and some of the trees were hard to get around while hiking. 2) rough path: had I been carrying a canoe, I would have been stuck in several spots. 3) false sense of hope: in the middle we happened upon a spot where the portage trail appeared to drop down to a marshy area - perhaps the start of the lake?...? we thought probably not, and so continued on our merry way - only to find that we still had to cross a nasty rolling log, boulders, swamps, and more hills. I will only take this portage if I am being hunted down by somebody and can not get out of Lunetta into Little Crab or head out towards Princess and Schlamn. Even then I would have to think twice. If you need to see Hassel this bad (and I didn't see anything particularly spectacular about it) then take the southern route to get there.

Lake after portage: Hassel
Known campsites: 1
Lake Description:

Portage from Hassel into: