Doing some pre planning has anyone traveled Namakan River from Namakan lake or Lac La Croix? Which direction does the river flow? Any information on portages and such would be great.

ask and you shall receive!
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better do it, it
IM me for any details.  river flows LLC to Namakan

why,  the river flows in a downhill direction, of course!

which is roughly from East to West

I've paddled thru Lad LaCroix and down the Namakan as far as the Quetico River, then up that to Beaverhouse.  Some rapids to portage around,  and float planes land on 3 mile lake.  A highlight of the river was seeing lots of sturgeon migrating upriver (and a stop at the little store at the LacLaCroix village for ice cream bars).  Some of the campsites see heavy use/were overused, liely by fishing guides. 

For the section we did, the portages were as marked on the Fisher maps;  the one Wally missed is on the island.

Hey, thanks Wally that was a great report of your trip and lots of good info. We're heading up to Snow Bay and were thinking of heading out that way to check it out on our way back to Crane lk. Not sure I understood just where that portage started that you missed at Hay rapids or if you know what side it was on?

Ill send you an IM in the next couple days after I dig out the maps.  Check Google Earth and you can see the portage around the Hay complex.  My McKenzie's are clearly in error.

You can easily make Sandpoint from LLC in a 2 day paddle if you're pressed for time.

We traveled it from Lac La Croix to Namakan Lake 'way back in 1971 but I didn't take copious notes or lots of photos, so I can't give a lot of details and I don't remember a lot now.  I did a trip report but I don't suppose it would be of much help to you.  Probably just a laugh for the poor quality of Kodak Instamatic photography in 1971.   ;)  They won't compare well with Wally's.

Here is the link to it on bwca.com.  I am not sure how to link you to it on qj.

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I was looking at my Beymer Quetico Guidebook yesterday, and I see that he describes a trip starting at Lady Rapid bridge, travelling upstream to Lac La Croix, and looping back sout and west.  you might want to look at that.

Last September, we started at Crane Lake on the outfitter's shuttle boat, brief stop for canadian immigration, then to outlet of Namakan River and up-river to just couple hundred meters or so below Lady Rapid.  Our outfitter had arranged for a canadian guy out of Atikokan to pick us up in a van on the north side of the namakan river, and he drove us to the Beaverhouse put-in.  Whole trip took no more than two hours, including canadian immigration--they come right out to your shuttle boat.  It was very, very convenient for our trip and our schedule.  We used Mark Anderson out of Crane Lake; he was sick at the time, but his people were fantastically efficient and helpful.  On the return, his shuttle picked us up near Twin Falls on LLC (northeast inlet, from the Maligne River) and took us back to Crane Lake--less than two hours, even with my son stopping at one of those train-track portages to shop for a souvenir.  Again, very efficiently done.  USA passport check at Crane Lake came right out to our boat; took less than 5 minutes.  I don't know if Anderson had pre-processed us at the two immigration stations or not--it was so efficient, I had a hard time believing they went that quickly, without any advance notice.  Mark's son was driving the shuttle boat, and he was clearly good friends with the immigration folks on both sides, and also with the folks who ran the two train portages.