I have a Basswood River Quetico permit for June 21 of this year.  Hopefully the ice will be off by that time :)! 

At any rate we were planning on going up to Brent/Comnee and back.  However, I have a buddy who can now go, but can only really go if he can get picked up after the trip in Fort Frances.  He has a cabin in Canada on Lake of the Woods.  This is a good problem, as I have never done a trans Q trip and have always wanted to, but it does present logistical challenges. I thought maybe you guys/gals could help me with ideas. 

There will be six of us total, probably two vehicles and two canoes.   What I am thinking is that my son and I will drive up to either Beaverhouse or Nym early the day before and have an outfitter meet us there and shuttle us to Ely.  I have a three person SR and the other guys would come up (to Ely) later that day rent another 3 seater somewhere in MN, hopefully not Ely, so we could drop it off on our return home.  However, I am not sure how we would get their vehicle out of Ely. 

We would then paddle across the Q, probably up to Comnee and over to Camel and work our way to either Beaverhouse or Nym. 

My questions are:

1)  Do you know anyone who would do the shuttle work.

2)  We will probably have two cars involved, but can anyone think of a scenario that would not require us to come back to Ely on the way back?  Either to drop off the canoe or to get our second car.  Probably not that big of a deal, but it will add a few hours to our trip on the backside. 

3)  Does anyone know of a better alternative?  Could I just drive to Ely and pay someone to shuttle a vehicle to a northern EP?

Thanks, and I may just call a couple outfitters to see if they have any ideas. 

Mav

As you outline what you have in mind, option 3 seems the best to me and I do not have another. At different times and places I have hired a shuttle service and it always worked.

Good luck.

The ideal solution is to find someone that wants to do the opposite trip. They can take their canoe up to your exit lake on your car. Leave the car and paddle back to Ely or Moose Lake. Many years ago a friend asked me to shuttle them to Nym. I found a permit and a couple of days off of work and paddled up to Nym to drive their car back to Moose Lake. Worked smooth as silk except for trying to get the customs guy to understand it on the return drive.

You could split the party and do it this way. Rendevous at predetermined place and time.

Of course, you could always reverse your "shuttle" by driving to Ely and flying to Beaverhouse.  Then, you could paddle from Beaverhouse back to PP.  Its probably overall quicker to do it this way, and as obvious, more expensive.

I did this trip several years back.

dd

To answer your first question, at least some of the outfitters in Ely are reported to shuttle to Beaverhouse.  Piragis has been mentioned as one that would.  I thought it was in the $150 range but could be terribly off.  So call a few outfitters - maybe one you have done business with - and see  if they will and if you can afford it.  Least expensive would seem to be one of your party drives up day before and the outfitter follows or leaves a little after you and shuttles that driver back to Ely.  I'm sure more expensive would be to have them position your car there since that would take two drivers or I suppose you could time it and a driver would return with you to Ely.  The plainest and most straight forward is they meet and shuttle you back to Ely to your car, which I'm sure they'll move to Ely from Moose or your BWCAW EP at little additional to the Beaverhouse shuttle.

Anyone up for a group solo...Beaverhouse back to Ely or Crane Lake?  Probably 10-14 days.  I volunteered to Maverick via PM to drive the car to Canada. 

Correction...group solo route would be Nym back to Ely, 10-14 days.  Starting 22nd or 23rd of June.

Thanks for all the advice on this topic.  A bunch of really good ideas.  Someone even said to find a person to do our reverse trip and drive our car up and I remember thinking, how do I do that.  So Intrepid Camper really shocked me with this offer to drive our vehcile up to Canada as the timing works for her and she wanted to do a trip like this.  Thank you too I/C and we are excited to be helping you do a really cool trip in reverse of ours.  I'll post our route when we get it figured out in case our paths cross, but I think we will be west of where you plan on going. 

A rough draft of our trip will be up through Basswood/McIntyre/Brent/Comnee/Delahey/Camel/Sturgeon/and out at Nym.

Mav

Maverick wrote on May 6^th, 2013 at 9:44pm:

So Intrepid Camper really shocked me with this offer to drive our vehicle up to Canada as the timing works for her and she wanted to do a trip like this.  Thank you too I/C and we are excited to be helping you do a really cool trip in reverse of ours.

IC is definitely a player!  A few years ago, we set up a "ride-swap" so we could each do a one-way trip.  She started at Moose lake and did the Man-Chain up to Sag.  As she finished, I arrived at Sag and took the vehicle back to Moose Lake (our ultimate destination after going up the Falls Chain, into Kawnipi, up as far as McKenzie then back to McEwen and down the "enchanted" chain to Louise then out via Agnes, Meadows, Sunday, Bayley Bay and PP).

In short, we both managed to do the trips we both wanted and avoided a "dead head" back to our original starting point for paddling.

Thanks again, IC.

dd