When Bill Rom set his canoe in Larch Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness last week, by his calculation it marked a major milestone.
It was the last place the 80-year-old believed he needed to check off on his quest to visit what he thought was every lake reachable by portage in the BWCAW and the adjacent Canadian wilderness of Quetico Provincial Park, he said.
Though he has since learned that he likely missed several lakes, he said, visiting nearly all of them is still a feat that few others — if any — have accomplished. It has taken Rom roughly six decades.
“I’ve done 99.7 percent,” he estimated Friday, adding that he will try to make up for those he has missed.
Federal managers of the BWCAW don’t keep a ready list of all its lakes based on such criteria. The BWCAW has more than 1,000 lakes; Quetico, more than 2,000.
“It’s been a lifelong quest,” he said Thursday from Ely, where he spends many summers and where his family name is synonymous with canoe travel.
His father, also Bill, owned and operated Canoe Country Outfitters in Ely for 30 years beginning in 1946. The business was considered the largest canoe outfitter in the world at the time. (It was later bought by another family that has been running it for multiple generations.)
The elder Rom put his son to work as a guide, and young Bill recalled spending his teen years and early 20’s leading people on trips through the wilderness and parts of Canada. He took his own side adventures, too, even as he began to navigate life as a medical student at the University of Minnesota. He also recalled that his dad had similar aspirations and useful maps to study.
