Whitewater Rafting
Tours in Minnesota.

Boundary Waters Outfitters runs guided multi-day canoe expeditions in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness — 1,098,000 acres and over 1,100 lakes connected by portage routes in the only canoe-only wilderness of this scale east of the Mississippi. Trips launch from Ely on the eastern entry-point corridor, paddling chains like Moose-Newfound-Sucker, the Kawishiwi system, or the legendary route up to Knife Lake on the Canadian border. The wilderness is a rock-and-water landscape carved by the last glaciation across the Canadian Shield, with camping on bedrock islands, portages worn into the granite by a century of wood-canvas canoes, and a strict no-motor, no-can, no-bottle ethic enforced by the U.S. Forest Service permit system. Guides handle permits, gear, route planning, and food packs, and run trips from beginner four-day loops to two-week traverses connecting the Boundary Waters with Quetico Provincial Park to the north. Black bear, moose, loon, and timber wolf are regular wilderness companions on every trip.

North Shore Adventures runs guided sea kayaking, hiking, and ice climbing along Lake Superior's North Shore from a base in Grand Marais, the historic harbor town near the Canadian border. Summer trips paddle the basalt sea cliffs of Tettegouche State Park and the Palisade Head headlands, where billion-year-old volcanic rock from the Midcontinent Rift drops vertically into the largest freshwater lake on earth. Backpacking itineraries cover sections of the 310-mile Superior Hiking Trail across the Sawtooth Mountains and the boreal forest of the Cascade and Temperance river valleys. In winter the operation pivots to ice climbing on the frozen waterfalls of Gooseberry Falls, Tettegouche's Illgen Falls, and the Sandstone Ice Park, with full WI3-WI5 instruction and rental of tools, crampons, and screws. Grand Marais sits at the edge of the Boundary Waters and the Grand Portage Ojibwe reservation, and most trips draw on the deep Anishinaabe and voyageur history of the Lake Superior coast.