BWCA Angleworm Trail

Day Hike, October 11, 2025

By Heather Horgen

October 15^th, 2025

The Angleworm Trail

After a short hike last year, Mom and I wanted to do a long hike in the BWCA near Ely, and the Angleworm Lake Trail provided the perfect opportunity. A total of 13.1 miles, it can be completed (by ambitious hikers) in one day.

We woke up early on Saturday morning and got to the trailhead around 8:30am. It was a beautiful day, a little chilly at around 34F, but sunny with expected temperatures around 60F. I filled out our BWCA permit and we went in.

The first part of the trail is a 2.2 mile portage, before the trail splits and goes around the lake. When we got to the wetlands the boardwalk was partially underwater, and with the low temperatures a thin layer of ice made it very slippery. We almost turned around.

In the spirit of adventure, I decided to try, very slowly to cross the boardwalk - and we were able to get across! We didn't see any beavers though.

Past the wetland the terrain started to turn rocky. The trail was easy to follow so far.

The views of Angleworm lake were amazing! We encountered the first person we saw - a solo camper who had stayed the night before. Below is a view from one of the campsites. From here the trail started getting rockier and steeper. We stopped for a few minutes to take off jackets and have some trail mix.

So far so good!

At 11:30 we stopped for lunch. We sat on a ridge and ate meat sticks, cheese, and an apple (and saved our protein bars for later).

We made around the top of the lake! I had been keeping an eye on the map to make sure we were on the trail, and it really seemed to take forever to make it to that point, which is roughly half way. Around this time we encountered a young couple portaging up to Bear Trap Lake. They weren't expecting to see another person out there and we accidentally surprised them coming across the trail - they almost dropped their canoe!

The terrain was tough! We had to army crawl under a large fallen tree. I had to consult my downloaded map often to orient which way the trail went, and to make sure we were still on it.

Near Whiskey Jack Lake we saw a group setting up at a campsite, and realized we were off the trail. Thankfully we saw the site before we got too far off track. We actually couldn't easily follow the trail to backtrack, but using the map we cut a short distance up to the trail. We realized we missed a marker to turn away from the lake to stay on the Angleworm trail.

Back on track! Crossing another beaver dam.

We were getting tired. Our feet hurt. We were so relieved to see the point where the trail came back together. That meant we were close to the trailhead! Heading back towards the wetlands we saw one last solo hiker; a guy with a huge pack, including a rifle, and his dog. Further back on the trail we saw his canoe along with another pack, meaning he was coming back to portage it. We hope he got to his camp before dark!

We did it!

We came out at 4:45pm, just over 8 hours from our start. We estimated that we stopped to rest a total of 20-30 minutes - we wanted to make sure we were done before dark!

It was a lot of fun, and amazing to be out in the wilderness in such a unique and special place. It's been a long time since I've been somewhere so quiet - no planes, no cars, no people. Just the sound of the wind in the trees.