High Adventure Canoe Trips for 2025
Experience the Boundary Waters on your own terms
Now is the time to plan your 2025 High Adventure Canoe Trips to the Boundary Waters. Our High Adventure Canoe Trips allow you to experience wilderness based your group’s goals. Making that happen is our primary function. We don’t dictate routes, pace, menus, or the number of people per canoe. Whatever your crew is coming to do, we will work with you to plan your route through the wilderness.
All High Adventure canoe trips are centered on your interests. Your itinerary is set by your ability level. Your route and pace is designed individually around you specific needs.
High Adventure Boundary Waters canoe trips offer a true wilderness experience. There are no roads through this area. Aircraft and motorboats are heavily restricted.
Our High Adventure Boundary Waters trips are 5 to 14 day wilderness canoe camping experiences. Typical treks cover 25 to 100 miles. You will travel through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area in Minnesota or Ontario’s Quetico Park. Our High Adventure Expedition Specials may be set-up to include both areas. All of our High Adventure trips start with private overnight lakeside accommodations at our lakeside canoe base. You may start and/or return directly from our docks. Other trips may start with van or boat transportation.
We are just six miles from Ely, Minnesota.
Nationally know anchorman Bill Kurtis
narrates this 25 minute introduction
to the Boundary Waters & Quetico Park, and
North Country Canoe Outfitters
Call us at 218-365-5581
We’ll get your copy
in the mail right away
Our High Adventure Canoe Trips
All of our outfitting services are designed to give Boy Scout troops flexibility.
YOUR High Adventure Boundary Waters crew:
- Sets the requirements for your participants to attend
- Determines the number of participants (starting with eight)
- Picks the number of days on the water (starting with five)
- Picks the arrival day of the week
- Picks whether to stay overnight before or after at our lake side base
- Picks the starting entry point location
- Picks the pace of the trip
- Picks the goals of the trip
- Picks the number of layover days on the trip
(Of course we give our best advice for your needs on all of these)
Participants
The success of any high adventure program is more about the people you go with than the place you go.
A perfect trek may have crystal blue skies, comfortable temperatures, and no bugs. But it becomes a slow death march with a poorly prepared, poorly led crew. Likewise a few days hiking in the rain with a sharp crew leads to lifelong golden memories.
A High Adventure canoe trip should take your crew to a new level in the outdoors. It should develop the aims of Scouting:
- Growth in confidence,
- The opportunity to both lead and follow, and
- An appreciation for each crew member’s contribution to the group’s efforts.
Good equipment, good food, good surroundings, and good weather are all part of the picture. The biggest part is the challenge and satisfaction of accomplishing the goals of your high adventure canoe trip program. Setting these goals, knowing their importance, and preparing to meet them is the most important aspect of the trip. North Country can help with all of these.
2025 High Adventure Canoe Trip Packages
Our traditional Boy Scout canoe trip outfitting is complete. We use the same gear we offer to our private party customers.
First, what we DON’T do for a High Adventure canoe trip:
- require groups to bring their own sleeping bags, pads, utensils, cups and bowls
- insist jungle boots to be purchased
- make group buy extra copies of maps to be purchased at $50 to $90 per crew
- limit our supplied personal packs to one per three participants
- send nine people out in only three canoes
- we don’t use 72-pound aluminum canoes
Now, how WE do a High Adventure canoe trip instead:
- Our outfitting is complete. You need only supply:
- your clothing
- hygiene and grooming items
- fishing rods with basic tackle and lures
- group compass and first aid kit
- Foot ware should be rugged with closed toe and heal. They should drain easily.
- One set of maps, may be purchased ($16 to $32) as we plan your route with you, or bring your own
- Though we encourage two person’s personal items per pack, you may have as many as you need.
- The only time we recommend a 3-person canoe is for an odd number group size
- Our featured offering is a 2-person Royalex canoe (50-pound class): quiet for fishing, lighter for portaging.
Our 64-pound aluminum canoes carry a $5/person/day discount: for the true novice, this canoe has the most stability on the market (short of some sort of outrigger set-up) - We offer the most top quality group menu in the Boundary Waters featuring the 1st night out having a choice of Certified Angus Beef ® steaks or a pair of 1/3 pound Angus burgers.
- Most groups opt to spend the night before their trip in our lakeside bunkrooms (included) versus a motel in town.
High Adventure Canoe Trip Expedition Specials
Back in 2016 we introduced a new concept in Boy Scout High Adventures. Our Expedition Specials are keyed to the type of Boy Scout canoe trip your crew wants to experience. These High Adventure canoe trips are each set for a fixed number of days. All five canoe trips are outfitted, supplied, and priced for eight person crews. They are designed to start on specific days of the week. Should you need to change to another weekday, deductions are offered, or supplements are needed.
All of our Expedition Specials include:
- All gear and menu offerings listed in our Leader’s Guide
- Four “Two-to-a-canoe” Royalex canoes for your crew
- Staff briefing on equipment use, menu review, portaging skills
- Private overnight bunkrooms at our lakeside base before & after
- Fast start, full, hot, continental breakfast at our base on morning #1
- Van transportation to starting points, and from exit points
- Use of our campfire ring for your closing fellowship
- Boundary Waters patch for each participant
WILDERNESS 50 – MILER EXPEDITION SPECIAL
Imagine your “fish’in buddy” landing a trophy fish
In doing research for this Expedition Special, we found there are a lot of differing opinions about what the Boy Scout 50-Miler Program is all about. Most agreed it should be hard; but that doesn’t mean brutal. In the north country, a 50-miler trip in 5 days requires a pace beyond what many Scouts and Scouters are capable of doing. An hour or two is needed each day to take down camp in the morning. Add another hour or two to set it up at the end of the day. Time is needed for meal preparation and clean-up. Then add in two hours per day for the 10 hour service project. The result is paddlers trying to cover 10-12 miles, with portages, in four to five hours day after day.
This trip is ideal for a Saturday afternoon arrival. Your 7-day High adventure Canoe Trip Expedition Special runs from Sunday to Saturday. Your last evening’s bunkroom is included, with departing for home on Sunday morning.
8 Participants All Inclusive Price: $6000 Bottom Line with tax exemption certificate.
If arriving on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday afternoon, deduct $400 per crew of 8.
