https://www.fs.usda.gov/recarea/superior/recreation/hiking/recarea/?recid=80884&actid=50
Alexander Falconer describes the route:
Point to point trail starting East to West (the way I ran it) from the Gunflint Trail Rd to Snowbank Lk Rd. The trail is 100% within the Superior National Forest and enters the Boundary Waters Wilderness from the East in about 2.6 miles and is completely a Wilderness trail from that point on for another 34 miles.
The Kekekabic Trail Association, which is now a segment of the North Country Trail lists the trail as 41 miles. The Forest Service lists the trail as 46 miles. My Garmin Fenix 5 watch logged 39.6 and my Garmin inReach logged 39.1. Given this is the first listing for this route, hopefully other people's tech can be used to start to hone in on an actual distance!
The trail follows a relatively well established trail along lakes and rivers of the BWCA. The trail crosses along several beaver dams, logs over streams, through marshes, etc. You’ll get your feet wet!
The east and west sides have more elevation and views of the wilderness all around. The middle portion goes along the lakes with more river and stream crossings and beaver dams.
Comments
Hello! If anyone happens to be watching or following this trail - I'm attempting the Kek this coming Saturday, Oct 12th! This is phase 2 of my Running for the BWCAÂ - running across canoe country to bring awareness of the sulfide ore copper mine threat to America's most visited wilderness to all you awesome trail runner people.
I'll have a link to the map my Garmin InReach will be tracking, I'll post that in the coming days when I get it activated again and set up.
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Here’s my garmin tracking link:
https://us0-share.inreach.garmin.com/kekekabic
Hey Alex! I am planning to thru hike the kek this year (2021) and I would like to ask you a few questions about your ultra run you did a few years ago :)Â
Running the Kek October 12, 2020! We'll post our live track on Sunday for folks to follow along--if you'd like
Here's our livetrack
share.garmin.com/cedarleaf
password: KEK
Made it! Did it a day late.
Here' the video I made of the run: https://youtu.be/6jUKcvmCTLQ
Friends Brennan and Lisa and I plan to attempt the unsupported mixed gender team FKT on Saturday. Wish us luck! Check back next week to see if we made it. Shoutout to Carter who set the men’s FKT in 2019 — thanks for all the great beta!
Suppose it’s time for me to chime in and state that I’ll be attempting a new FKT for unsupported male on Friday, running west to east, then joining my friends Lauren and Lisa for an unsupported mixed gender FKT attempt on Saturday heading back east to west. We’ll post our progress once we’re back to internet.Â