Meat Lake
Making Connections
- Portage Northeast, 48 rods, to Clark
- Portage West, 90 rods, to Sprite
Maps
- Fisher
F-9, Cummings,
Big Moose, Fourtown Lakes
- McKenzie
No. 16, Burntside
Lake
Links
- DNR Lake No. 690305
- Lake Map No. C1306
- Lake Table No. 1
- MDH Fish Consumption
Advisory - N/A
- MPCA Water Quality
- N/A
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Scale 1:21420
Full image approximately 2
miles square |
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Description
Meat is a very small, shallow lake
in the Vermilion basin, 30 miles southeast of Crane Lake and 12 miles WNW
of Ely. It's 25 acres have a maximum depth of 24' though some 95%
of the lake is in the littoral
zone, with waters less than 15' deep. It has a measured water
clarity (Sechi disk) of 7½'.
Meat has no surface water outlet as the terrain rises on all sides of the
lake.
Out of the west end of the lake, an easy 90 rod portage leads to Sprite,
gaining 17' of elevation in a relatively gradual climb. A more rigorous
carry heads out of the northeastern end of Meat, bound for Clark,
to the northeast. This trail starts out with an easy grade, gaining
10' of elevation over the first half of its length, before dropping off
steeply in a 33' descent to shore of Clark. (While both Fisher
and McKenzie have this
as a 48 rod portage, it scales off the USGS maps at something closer to
67 rods). Access to Meat was also once available by way of a 100
rod portage into the northeastern bay from the end of an old logging road.
This old portage connected up with the Clark portage near its Meat Lake
end and may still be visible as a fork heading south.
Meat sustained only a couple of patches of blowdown in the Independence
Day windstorms of 1999, one along the shore in the northeastern end of
the lake, and another up the hillside off the southeastern corner.
Campsites
Meat supports but one established campsite,
along the eastern shore.
Planning Considerations
Meat is part of a group of small, interconnected
lakes clustered near the southern boundary of the BWCAW, just to the southwest
of Crab. Other lakes in the group are Battle,
Boulder, Clark, Glimmer,
Hassel, Phantom, Saca,
and Sprite.
Wildlife
Meat supports populations of Northern
Pike (Esox lucius) and
Yellow Perch (Perca flavescens).
Notes and Comments
If you can find its junction with the Clark
Lake portage, the old portage trail up from the south might make for an
interesting hiking trail. Since the boundaries were pushed outward
with the 1978 wilderness act, the south end of the old portage is still
well within the BWCAW and the logging road to which it connected has been
abandoned. |
