"Son" here. AMA! Fun to see this on HN. A few replies to some good questions: 1. Per @JdeBD, that was the Wikipedia edit that started everything. After 30+ hr

"Son" here. AMA! Fun to see this on HN. A few replies to some good questions: 1. Per @JdeBD, that was the Wikipedia edit that started everything. After 30+ hrs of online research, all roads lead back to this edit. I read 3 books on the island and found no mention of the boulder. 2. I took a bunch of photos that didn't make the article. Happy to share them offline with interested parties, but given that I could not find MB, they don't prove much. 3. The article does focus on us getting lost but that happened well after we left Ryan Island. This confused the NPR reporter too. Ryan Island is pretty easy to get to from Malone bay which is just a water taxi away from Rock Harbor. We had a working GPS with us the whole time which made certain legs of the trip a lot easier. How did we get lost with a GPS? The island is a mix of clearly marked dirt trails and large rock fields with no trail markings. You need to have a great sense of direction and some luck to pick up the trail again after traversing each rock field. We got lost after what must have been a quarter-mile rock field at 1am and the GPS didn't have the hiking trail marked in that area. 4. We made 2 landings at different points on Ryan Island, one southern and the other west / north-western. I did a lot of bushwacking from both points but there was no evidence of any water on the island or even mud where there could have been a "seasonal" pool. I was looking for a clearing or any kind of large flat-ish area but couldn't find anything like that larger than a few feet in diameter. The (small) island is extremely rocky and densely wooded. 5. Re the route, as many have noted it was very convoluted. We originally planned to go 18 miles in a day - the first half mostly paddles and portages, the second half is an 11-mile coastal trail back to Rock Harbor. The plan was to abandon the canoe at the halfway point and come back and get it via water taxi the next morning. After getting lost we gave up at the halfway point around 4am and camped for the night there.