Whats the deal with Basswood Bob?

Here's the story......It was my first summer working as a interpreter at the Northern Tier Canoe Base. I had gone through the interpreter training and had two crews under my belt. My third crew arrived for their 10 day trip in the BWCAW. We decided that we were going to head west up towards Curtain Falls and come back down by way of the Bear Trap River. When planning out trip, we got some advice to take the Basswood River instead of the mile long Horse Portage. Of course any crew hearing that they can get out of a mile long portage is gonna take it, right?

On our second day we got to the Basswood River fairly early and started the trip through it. We spent a lot of time walking our canoes around every set of rapids and slipping through the easy ones. Finally we came to the set of rapids that we had been warned to portage around. But the instructions we had been given were for those going up stream and we were heading down stream. 

We ended up in a position where we were between two sets of rapids and decided that the best option was to try to walk down the side of the downstream rapids rather than trying to walk back up the ones we had just walked down. We started to do this and found that the rapids were a little stronger than we had thought and the first boat and the advisors got swept down. I stopped my boat and was watching them to make sure that they were ok. While I was watching them, the boat following me rammed into my boat turning my boat on its side and forcing into a large rock. The packs fell out and since they were clipped in they caused the boat to be twisted around the rock even more. 

After a brief moment of panic, I made sure that the rest of my crew was safe and was carrying everything along the land. I then proceded to wrestle the canoe, to get it free. The force of water that was filling the boat was a lot of weight to lift out of the water. I eventually got the boat out by having the rapids push my body into the boat as I lifted. Then I just grabbed onto the boat and rode down the rapids(this part I don't remember). After swimming the boat to shore and gathering all our equipment, we paddled down the river to the first campsite and took this picture of the canoe and the shape it was in. 

Once we got to a campsite, we called into base to see what are options were. We worked it out to go get a new canoe at the closest location that they could get one brought in with a motorboat. After working out all the logistics of getting the new canoe, we needed to fix the broken one so that we would be able to float it behind another canoe. To fix the boat I used large pieces of birch bark and duct tape as shown in this picture. 

The next day part of our crew paddled 18 miles to get the canoe and return back to camp. A funny side note is that we ended up having to portage the mile long Horse Portage twice due to our adventures in trying to go around it. We ended up having a great trip. It was a lot less miles than we had planned, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. 

On my return to base, the rumors had been circulating for about a week. Everything from ideas that I was body surfing and paddling down Basswood Falls. Along with the rumors they were already calling me "Basswood Bob." Having spent five summers up there, "Basswood Bob" or just simply "Basswood" has become the only way people know me. I take it as a nickname I truly earned and learned a great deal of life lessons from. 

Live and learn I guess....