Spider Lake Primitive Management Area

This is a good PMA to try if your goal is a little more solitude, but you don't want to work that hard to find it. In the southern part of this PMA, Three Eagle Lake is one of the easiest PMA lakes to reach. Snatch, Reflection and Sedative Lakes make for a good day trip if you are camping on Ima Lake. Leave your gear at your Ima Lake base camp and go into the PMA with an empty canoe. Sedative Lake, past Reflection Lake is fairly challenging to reach, but may have a few fish in it if that is your sort of thing. There is a campsite on Sedative Lake, but getting a full load of gear all they way there will definitely push most groups to their limits. Finally, there is Solitude Lake. This is probably a very beautiful lake. It used to have a campsite on its north shoreline as shown on older maps (1980's and earlier). It is most accessible from Ima Lake, but don't expect it to be easy as this area was affected by the 1999 windstorm to some extent.

On the north side of this PMA, the lakes range from fairly easy to get to (like Neglige), to lakes such as Minerva Lake which probably goes 10 years or more between visits. Neglige Lake is a Minnesota DNR designated stream trout lake and is stocked with brook trout. It used to be stocked with rainbow trout too. There is a good place to camp on Neglige. Neglige receives a fair amount of traffic for a PMA lake because of its trout fishery. Explorer Lake is also relatively accessible and also portaged to from Trader Lake. Explorer Lake has lake trout and used to have a campsite as depicted on old BWCA maps of the lake. Grubstake Lake is a modest bushwhack, but the lake is very swampy. Spider and Kettle Lake used to support maintained campsites, but the condition of the portage/bushwhack and the campsites is questionable since the 1999 blowdown heavily impacted this area just north of Lake Kekekabic. As of 2003, the first portage from Pickle Lake to Kettle Lake could not be located (Pauly, 2005). The three most interior lakes of the Spider Lake PMA are Redface, Minerva and Bedford Lakes. All three of these lakes will take an expedition to visit.

References:
Pauly, Daniel, Exploring the Boundary Waters (Minneapolis:  University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 175, 350.