Canadian wildfires aren’t keeping BWCA visitors home — yet
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Minnesota’s air quality alert hasn’t stopped kayakers and canoeists from going out on the water in Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Smoke from nearly two dozen wildfires in Canada traveled into Minnesota in recent days, triggering an air quality advisory that continues until Monday evening. But in Ely, families who booked their trips to the BWCA months in advance are continuing with their plans.
“It really hasn’t been too smoky up here,” said Jason Zabokrtsky, owner of Ely Outfitting Company. “We’ve had maybe a couple of particularly smoky days, but it’s been more like kind of a bit hazy, I guess, as you look down the lake.”
He said air quality alerts usually happen in late summer, but it’s started earlier than usual this year.
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“We don’t typically have air quality issues in the spring,” he said. “It’s usually a later summer thing when we’ve got fires as things dry out, but this seems like a particularly early start to fire season and smoky season,” said Zabokrtsky.
The outfitting business owner says the biggest issue he’s had so far is visitors being thrown off by wind changes that make conditions smokier. And smoke has been on people’s minds more because it’s been in the news.
“And then people are thinking that the fire might be very close to them when in fact it’s smoke blowing in from hundreds or thousands of miles away,” he said.
But since the wildfires in northern Minnesota have been largely contained, Zabokrtsky says people who are visiting the BWCA are heading out knowing they’re probably going to see some smoke or wind change.
For Ryan Kari, who runs Ely Outdoors Company, the air quality alerts haven’t raised concerns so far.
“I think of it as a non-issue just because it’s not any fire danger, it’s just the smokiness coming from miles and miles away and coming here,” he said.
On Sunday morning, he ran tow boats dropping off a few groups of people off Moose Lake. He didn’t spot any smoke.
“They’re calling for southwest winds [Monday] and it'll be smooth sailing as long as it’s blowing that direction,” Kari said.
