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DAN KRAKER: Pairs of hotshot firefighters are paddling into shore at a Boy Scouts high adventure camp on Moose Lake on the edge of the Boundary Waters.

SPEAKER 1: Come look at this landing. This is--

SPEAKER 2: Boom. Out to the side. Look at that.

DAN KRAKER: They're here for a day of water safety and canoe training. Portaging proves to be one of the tougher lessons.

SPEAKER 3: Backwards.

DAN KRAKER: One of the firefighters stumbles as he hoists the heavy aluminum canoe on his shoulders. These five hotshot crews are all from the southwest, and about half of them have never set foot in a canoe.

CARL BOYLES: It has been a complete out of fish, out of water experience, so to speak.

DAN KRAKER: Carl Boyles is Director of Programs for the Boy Scouts northern tier. He oversaw the firefighters training.

CARL BOYLES: They're used to fighting fires, but never in a lake environment. So they're surrounded by all this fire and all this water at one time.

DAN KRAKER: And that poses some unique challenges.

TOSTEN KULAAS: Staying dry, I think, is going to be the biggest challenge that we have out there. Getting wet feet tears them up pretty good, so.

DAN KRAKER: Tosten Kulaas is with the Happy Jack Hotshots from Northern Arizona. He also says just getting out to the fire lines will be tough. They'll be hauling diesel water pumps and other heavy equipment in their canoes and over portages.

TOSTEN KULAAS: We've been mostly fighting fire in the southwest, which is pretty fast paced. This is going to be a little bit slower and methodical.

DAN KRAKER: Kulaas and his fellow hotshots are paddling out this morning to the fire's Northwest flank, near where it first started nearly a month ago, within the Boundary Waters Canoe area wilderness. Their tools are simple, mainly shovels and chainsaws. It seems primitive compared with action on the fire's Southern perimeter, where it's burned out of the wilderness.

There, National Guard Blackhawk helicopters are dumping fire retardant, and bulldozers are cutting wide fire lines. But fire information Officer Doug Anderson says simple canoes efficiently transport crews where there aren't any roads, and few places for helicopters to land.

DOUG ANDERSON: We get them in there as fast as we can, and that's sometimes the fastest way to get them there.

DAN KRAKER: It's also partly a policy decision. Mark van Every is the District Ranger for the Superior National Forest in the Ely area. He says designated wilderness areas require firefighters to take a lighter approach.

MARK VAN EVERY: We don't want to have four bulldozers wide lines through the middle of the wilderness because those are there for a long time, and the values that are at risk are different. Again, a wilderness area is managed to allow natural processes to play their normal role, and fire is a part of those natural processes. There's a lightning strike, and it's a natural process, and it's what created fires over history or what created the vegetation that we have there today.

DAN KRAKER: That's not to say they don't make exceptions. Firefighters will be allowed to use chainsaws to clear lines to prevent the fire from spreading, but they'll camp in established areas, and even follow BWCA limits of eight people per campsite. Firefighter Chris Hedgeman with the Black Mesa Hotshots in Northern Arizona, says they're used to working in wilderness areas throughout the West.

CHRIS HEDGEMAN: We try to do what we can to do the littlest impact to the land, with the chainsaws, with the digging of the line, and so we're just going to try to do the same thing out here as we've been doing all year.

DAN KRAKER: Hedgeman and other hotshot crews plan to work their way East on the fire's northern edge. There are now about 500 firefighters struggling to control the fire. Many are on the Southern perimeter, where they're trying to prevent it from moving toward homes near the town of Isabela. But the fire's Eastern flank is still completely unmanned, and with prevailing winds blowing out of the West, and a lot of empty wilderness in front of it, fire officials expect the Pagami Creek Fire to continue burning for a long time. Dan Kraker, Minnesota Public Radio News, Ely