Ely, BWCAW Fire Update
7/18 2026
Greetings from all of us at LaTourell's Resort & Outfitters here outside of Ely. We wanted to take this time to give you a bit of an update on current conditions here on Moose Lake and what that means in the short term to those of you that have trips planned with us in the near future.
You've probably heard the news of all of the fire activity that started up during the last couple of weeks in the greater Ely area. Some fires that started out quite small grew a bunch a few days ago with the most extreme fire producing weather days that I've experienced....102 degree real temperature with 30 plus mph winds. This weather combined with the very dry conditions we had been experiencing at that time caused some extremely fast fire growth. This situation stretched thin the ability for the US Forest Service and other area agencies to provide safety in both the affected and unaffected areas. This caused a closure of the BWCA and Canadian officials have also now closed Quetico Park. While we are under these extreme conditions, the Fernberg Road properties including all the way to our resort location has also been evacuated. We've had other fires closer than this in the past, but the location of the fires and the conditions from the other day have made this a concern to local officials.
What this means to you is that trips for the next few days are not possible here at LaTourell's for our cabin accommodations and for overnight camping trips into the wilderness areas. We've already been in contact with most of you with reservations with us coming up very soon, informing you of the closure through Monday on the US side areas. We will continue to communicate with folks as we have real information on any continued closures that may happen. We don't really have any good information on when that will be and it will of course depend on many factors with the largest being the weather that we receive in upcoming days. We did have a real nice rain of around an inch this morning which helped tremendously....but we do need more.
Thanks again to all of you that have planned trips with us. We are very disappointed that some of you have had to change plans here in the near future and hope that we are able to see most of you when access is again granted to visit these areas. Of course feel free to contact us if you have any additional questions. We hope to see many of you soon!