Isle Royale Forums

My brother and I are planning our first visit to Isle Royale. We are a couple of South Coasters (from the Gulf Coast) who enjoy island camping and were looking for some place fairly cool and not too strenuous, since we both have let ourselves get out of shape. I've been reading this forum and searching the net for information. I also made a few calls to the Ranger III and lodge for information. So, I'm gaining a basic understanding of how things work but there sure are a lot of "moving parts" (e.g. ferry schedules, lodge availability, regulations about storing fuel and food) to take into account. More than most other trips we've planned.

The basic plan is in late Aug take Ranger III to Rock Harbor, backpack four nights, return to the lodge for one night, backpack four nights, return to the lodge for one night and take the ferry back to the mainland.

There are a couple of questions which I have not seen answered:
We are considering bringing a couple of new 1-gal paint cans to use for caching food to reduce our pack weight. Has anyone else done this. Do you see any problems in doing it? I read about people caching food in the shelters and that there had been some problems with vandalism. We were thinking about caching the food off trail.

I almost hate to ask this question but we both have wives who worry too much. I understand that there is a pay phone at Rock Harbor and read that there are some spots on the island where some people have been able to use their cell phones. I was wondering if anyone had any specific guidance on which wireless carriers might reach out that far. Or have other suggestions. Just being able to send and receive a daily text message would be enough to mollify the wives. I would suspect that the best chance of service would actually come from Canadian CDMA carriers like Bell.

First of all, welcome to the board and good luck in your planning for Isle Royale. It's a wonderful place.

To address a couple of your questions, you want to land at Rock Harbor, backpack for four days and return to RH for a night, then backpack another four nights on the trail, then return to RH again before heading home. That's a rather interesting itinerary - mainly because it'll be hard to find two distinctly different four-day routes from RH. Heck, in four days, you could almost be to Windigo! I would suggest seriously rethinking your itinerary.

If you have time to spend eight days on the trail, you could go RH > Daisy Farm > McCargo Cove > Todd Harbor/Hatchet Lake > South Desor > Siskiwit Bay > Feldtmann Lake > Windigo > then ferry back to Rock Harbor. You'll have to plan accordingly so you arrive at Windigo in time for the Voyageur II to pick you up.

And forget the food cache cans. Just pack efficiently.

And regarding cell phones, you certainly can't count on them working up there. Sure, it's nice to call home and reassure the family you're doing fine, but go to IR to enjoy the solitude. Call them before you hit the trail and call them when you come off the trail. You'll be fine, and they will be, too.

Enjoy your trip (as well as the planning).

I've only been able to get service once in my 4 visits to IRNP. That was last year and it was on the last day at Malone Bay. I think that something in the sky picked up my calls. I only had a signal for about ten minutes.

jerry

Jackfish wrote:First of all, welcome to the board and good luck in your planning for Isle Royale. It's a wonderful place.

Thank you. Two of our other wonderful places are Horn Island off Pascagoula, Miss. and the St. Joseph Peninsula in NW Florida. Isle Royale will be a very different sort of wonderful.

I would suggest seriously rethinking your itinerary.

Thanks again. We will do that, although the creature comforts of sleeping in a bed, eating in a restaurant and the other things RH offers are attractive.

If you have time to spend eight days on the trail, you could go RH > Daisy Farm > McCargo Cove > Todd Harbor/Hatchet Lake > South Desor > Siskiwit Bay > Feldtmann Lake > Windigo > then ferry back to Rock Harbor. You'll have to plan accordingly so you arrive at Windigo in time for the Voyageur II to pick you up.

Ah. Didn't think of using one ferry to get us to the other. Thanks!

And forget the food cache cans. Just pack efficiently.

OK

And regarding cell phones, you certainly can't count on them working up there. Sure, it's nice to call home and reassure the family you're doing fine, but go to IR to enjoy the solitude. Call them before you hit the trail and call them when you come off the trail. You'll be fine, and they will be, too.

One night my brother and I were on Horn Island when a storm front blew through. We had a wet and windy, but safe, night. The wives were in a full-blown panic-attack. Of course the advantage of Isle Royale is that it's separated from home by almost 20 degrees of latitude.

It would be interesting to carry the 4-element Yagi (8 oz) and see if that makes a difference. It only takes one bar to send a text message.

DonNewcomb wrote:I almost hate to ask this question but we both have wives who worry too much. I understand that there is a pay phone at Rock Harbor

There is a pay phone at Rock Harbor, but does it work? It seems to me that both this year and last year I remember seeing an "out-of-order" sign posted on it. I didn't need the phone, so I didn't investigate further.

At least in the spring, the phone had been removed. We were there early, and they could have replaced it later, but I would not count on it being there unless someone else has seen that it has been replaced.

The 'ol phone was analog cellular, which no longer exists. Given the new (lower) power levels for digital, as well as the higher frequency, I'm going to guess that getting phone service is even more difficult...

I'm told AT&T phones can work from the rocks above Chippewa. Have not been able to confirm this myself.

fonixmunkee wrote:I'm told AT&T phones can work from the rocks above Chippewa. Have not been able to confirm this myself.

It is about 20 km from the nearest bit of Canada and a bit more from Pigeon Point to various spots on the north side of Isle Royale. GSM (e.g. ATT & T-Mobile) has a design range limitation of 36 km (about 18 nm) due to the limitation of the TDMA timing advance. In some areas around Europe they fudge this to get up to 90 km but it requires that they give up half the capacity of the cell. CDMA (e.g. Verizon, Sprint, Alltel) has no specific range limitation but is limited by how much capacity the engineers want to build into the code matching filters. From a ship in the Med I was able to use my GSM handheld phone with a 4-element Yagi pointed at an island right up to the 18 nm range limit at which point service just hit a brick wall.

Rogers has GSM coverage at Thunder Bay which might be able to reach Isle Royale. AT&T does not show any service at Grand Portage. Bell Mobility has CDMA coverage in Thunder Bay. With the right phone/antenna combination one should be able to connect from any place on Isle Royale with an unobstructed view to the north. It may also be possible to connect to CDMA carriers (e.g. Verizon) on UP (Eagle Harbor) but it would be a long way.

If I were boating, rather than backpacking, I'd surely bring the Yagi but it and a phone are almost 12 ounces. And a solar charger would bring it up to a pound. Not weight I want to carry.

I know this is a sensitive subject for many backpackers who don't want to see any sort of phones in the backcountry. It's really too late. Iridium and Globalstar ended backcountry isolation. I could bring an Iridium phone but it's another pound in the pack and a $30/month contract I don't need.

In 2004 I got cell service from the Greenstone in the area of Mt. Ojibway...It was international roaming out of Thunder Bay, Ont. You can always rent a sat. phone for a week....several companies online.

ScoutDad wrote:In 2004 I got cell service from the Greenstone in the area of Mt. Ojibway...It was international roaming out of Thunder Bay, Ont. You can always rent a sat. phone for a week....several companies online.

What was your cellular carrier?

I'm really not interested in packing a sat phone. I own an Iridium phone and had service for a couple of years but dropped it when they raised their monthly base rate from $20 to $35. It was a toy which was becoming increasingly more of a toy than a tool. INMARSAT lowered their rates so that I could make sat calls from the ships I worked on for about $1.75/min. Most overseas hotels installed high-speed Internet which allowed almost free calls home from abroad. My former employer eventually installed high-speed Internet on our ships with provisions for the employees to make occasional free calls. Were I an offshore sailer or long-distance hiker, heading to the arctic, etc. I'd probably reactivate the Iridium phone.

What was your cellular carrier?

In 2001 I had verizon, and got a clear signal from Thunder Bay; however on that trip I hadn't activated intl. roaming with my provider.

In 2004 I used Cincinnati Bell, which I believe uses AT&T towers when roaming in the USA. The signal was strong, and I completed a 3 minute call back to Ohio no problem.

I do remember that in 2001 I could only get a recording..."Welcome to Thunder Bay Cellular Network". You might contact them and see what USA service works w/their towers.

When you had Verizon you were probably accessing Bell Mobility in Thunder Bay. Cinci Bell is an ATT partner and you probably had a GSM phone roaming on Rogers. I'm pretty sure they had converted over from TDMA by 2004.

Most people would be amazed just how far their little handheld phones can reach. The key factors are having a line of sight and a good antenna.

I came across this quote today and thought it would be perfect for this thread. It's from none other than Sigurd Olson, the famous writer and environmentalist and one of the key people involved with making the Boundary Waters a wilderness area.

"Living happily in the out-of-doors means getting down to the bare essentials. The man who goes in with all the claptrap necessary to give him a semi-civilized existence in the wilderness is defeating at once the very purpose for which he went in. "

This isn't intended to ridicule someone who might want to carry a cell phone on a backpacking trip. I just thought the coincidence of this topic and me seeing this quote was too timely not to share.

[quote="DonNewcomb"]

There are a couple of questions which I have not seen answered:
We are considering bringing a couple of new 1-gal paint cans to use for caching food to reduce our pack weight. Has anyone else done this. Do you see any problems in doing it? I read about people caching food in the shelters and that there had been some problems with vandalism. We were thinking about caching the food off trail.

Some folks have left food with the concessionaire in the past, that might be an option for you. i would check with the concesionaire.