Portage Boardwalk

This boardwalk between Clearwater and Azure Lakes is new. When John saw it, he was amazed. He's been coming to these lakes for about 40 years and has always had to slog through the muck, swatting mosquitoes all the way. We were late enough that the mosquitoes were insignificant this trip, and the new walkway let us do the whole trail without getting our feet wet. There are even some short stairways in the boardwalk to get portagers over rocky sections. The board walk is only in the swampy sections, doesn't run the full length of the portage.

The portage trail is a short half mile. The south end starts in a bit of a swamp in a bay off the Clearwater River just before it dumps into Clearwater Lake. That means a little upstream river paddling must be done to access the downstream end of the trail, but the current there is managable, even in high spring flows. The Azure Lake end of the trail is in another narrow bay on the lake itself so no upstream river work is necessary at the north end. The bay is a narrow thing, fairly well hidden unless you know how to find it. Because paddlers come over from Clearwater Lake first, it's not a problem, and the river is usually easy enough that everyone paddles it on the way out anyway, instead of portaging south to Clearwater.

There is an outhouse at the Clearwater end, but a recent windstorm had blown a large dead branch from a tree and knocked the roof off. It looked usable but bring your own (dry) toilet paper. Hopefully it will be fixed before you get there, if you need it.

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