Taking the 60 mile DQ Challenge

With a distance of about 60 miles, including 10 miles of portaging, Will Barnett, Mike Shelby, and Greg Scudder, staff members of the Northern Tier Somers Boy Scout Base broke the DQ Challenge record. What’s the challenge... and what’s the reward? These young men woke up at 4 a.m. and were in their canoe by 4:45, shoving off on Moose Lake heading to the Dairy Queen. We have to consider much of this by ‘rods,’ a measurement of 16 1/2 feet per rod or 320 rods to a mile. Start paddling on Moose Lake then portage 200 rods to Tofte Lake, canoe across that, then portage 220 rods to Ojiway Lake, paddle across that, then a little bitty roller portage into Triangle Lake (paddle), then 190 rods into the Kawisiwi River which connects to Farm Lake (pad-d-d-dle), go north toward Fall Lake, go under the bridge and around the power dam, which flows into the Shagawa River and paddle on until you reach County 88 and get out here. From here pick up the canoe and walk two miles on Hwy 169 to town and the Dairy Queen. Are you ready for a treat yet? After some cheese burgers and fries and each a different DQ treat.... and by the way they took their time, about 45 minutes... they got a photo outside the Dairy Queen for ‘proof’ of being there and picked up their canoe and headed the two miles back to the Shagawa River. There are a couple routes to take back, and these guys chose the loop... instead of backtracking. They got back into the Shagawa River on the other side of the road. Once back in their canoes on that hot July day and a long trek so far, and now with the wind at their back going with the current, it seemed a good time to settle into the bottom of the canoe and take a little nap...floating along for about 20 minutes, resting just long enough to refresh themselves for some of the hardest stretches of their ‘voyage’. The Shagawa River flows into Fall Lake (paddddddddle along ...), then the hard part hits. Take ‘the 4 mile portage’ which is an old railroad track without the tracks any more, flat and straight to Hoist Bay (padddddddle...) then take a 90 rod portage to Indiana Lake (paddddddddle) where they encountered the real treat of the adventure with several tiers of beaver dams to work through, through sticks and logs, not seeing any beavers. Although tiring, they still found it quite entertaining. On to Wind Bay and to Wind Lake then to Moose Lake, landing back at the Boy Scout Base by 7:15 p.m. with a record time of 14 hours and 30 minutes. Hopefully the DQ Challenge was worth the reward of the yellow diamond painted on their paddles, and the reward of the challenge - just knowing THEY DID IT! ‘The DQ Challenge’ was actually thought up by Tim Babb back in 1999. Tim is a member of the Order of the Arrow, a society of honor for Boy Scouts who work with the U.S. Forest Service repairing trails thoughout the BWCAW. The purpose of the Order of the Arrow is ‘service.’. They do one week of trail work and then take one week for a personal trek. Tim was with on one of these crews when he thought of the DQ Challenge. He got the idea from another challenge where he previously worked, at one of the three National Boy Scout Bases in the U.S. - The Philmont Hiking Ranch in New Mexico, with its 215 square miles of hiking trails has ‘The Subway Challenge.’ Basically the challenge is hiking down the saddle between Mt. Baldy, the highest peak at Philmont, and Mt. Touch Me Not. From there they hitchhike 25 miles to the town of Eagles Nest, stop in at Subway, eat a foot long sandwich and hitchhike back to base. Usually someone from town recognizes the scouts by their shirts and picks them up. When Tim came to the Minnesota Boy Scout Base in 1999 he thought why not have a DQ Challenge? He and his crew were the first to do it in the year 2000. Tim never did it again. He doesn’t have to. It is left to be taken up by others - by about eight teams so far. This is only one of the many challenges at the Boy Scout Base.