South Arm Knife Lake

South Arm Knife Lake, usually just called Knife Lake, runs along the Minnesota-Ontario border in the Kawishiwi district, and it's one of the larger lakes in the wilderness at 5,637 acres. It sits well back from every entry point, many lakes and portages in on the border route that links toward Saganaga and Basswood. A short, easy portage at its east end drops into Ottertrack Lake, and that ease of crossing is part of why so much border-route traffic passes this way.

The water runs deep and cold enough to hold lake trout, lake whitefish, and cisco alongside more typical fish like walleye, northern pike, and smallmouth bass. Knife Lake has a reputation as one of the better lake trout waters in this part of the wilderness, and the cisco living in its cold depths give those trout plenty to feed on. Motors aren't allowed here.

Knife Lake's best-known feature isn't a fish or a view. It's a person. Dorothy Molter lived alone on the lake's Isle of Pines for more than 56 years, running a small resort and, after a 1949 ban on resupply flights, making her own root beer to sell to paddlers passing through. She stayed until her death in 1986. Her cabins were later moved to Ely and now house the Dorothy Molter Museum, but the island itself is still there for anyone paddling by.

Fifty-seven campsites ring the lake, an unusually large number for one lake in the wilderness, spread widely enough along its long, island-broken shoreline that a party moving through on the border route rarely has trouble finding one open.

Knife Lake suits paddlers already well into a longer trip along the border rather than anyone looking for an easy add-on. Between the lake trout fishing, the history on the Isle of Pines, and more open campsites than most lakes this deep in the wilderness, it's a destination in its own right and not just water to cross.