Dry Lake day hike: Easier in Ely

Dry Lake sits a few miles north of Ely, just off the Echo Trail. A Superior National Forest trail circles the lake. The Dry Lake Trail shares the same parking lot and some of the same trail as the popular Bass Lake Trail, a six-plus mile circumnavigation of Bass Lake. In comparison, the three-mile Dry Lake Trail packs more scenery per mile and yet has fewer hikers.

In the last year, the Superior National Forest has significantly improved the signage for the Dry Lake and Bass Lake trails, with accurate new maps at virtually every trail junction. The trail itself is fairly well maintained, with bridges over the creeks. There does always seem to be at least one tree down across the trail when I'm there, though.

The hike starts with a short approach to the loop. Watch for signage as the trail turns off a wide snowmobile trail onto a more rugged hiking trail, then climbs to the top of a high bluff. I always hike this trail clockwise, taking the left fork at what is now Junction 2. No particular reason for that, just habit.

The trail soon reaches Little Dry Lake. The most rugged part of the hike is along the north shore of Little Dry Lake, where the glaciers left a big rugged pile of cobblestone. A thick crop of poison ivy grows alongside the trail.

One of the scenic highlight is the high rocky bluff above the west shore of Dry Lake. There is no development on Dry Lake, just wild open public land, so stop for a nice long break at the bluff, marked on the maps as a scenic spot.

Another scenic highlight is Dry Falls. This is where the water from Dry Lake empties into Bass Lake.

From Dry Falls, it's a dramatic one-mile hike back to the parking area on the Echo Trail, along a pine-studded ridgeline with great views above and small patches of wintergreen below.

If you're in Ely and looking for an moderate half-day hike, you can't go wrong with the Dry Lake Trail.

Hiking Ely's Secret-Blackstone trail

I had four days of just me and the poodle and the wild woods of Ely, Minnesota. I don't think she'd like a solo canoe ride. The steam bath was not going to work. We had to go to the Secret-Blackstone trail.

Daphne is the second standard poodle hiking partner I've had, and at 20 months old she's still learning the joys and triumphs of good trail hiking. Secret-Blackstone is a small trail system east of Ely. Since it's a Superior National Forest trail, dogs can run off leash. Hiking with any dog on a leash is a hassle, but with a strong, agile poodle with psychotic tendencies on the leash, it's nearly impossible.

The Secret-Blackstone trail winds around three lakes strung in the hilly country between Moose Lake and Snowbank Lake, two popular BWCA entry points off the Fernberg Road. The trail is well-maintained and well-marked. If you're out for an easy hike, just stick to the two-mile loop around Blackstone Lake. But the dog had shown she could stick to the trail and not attract bears or wolves. We were ready for more hiking, so we headed past Blackstone Lake to the cliffs of Ennis Lake. 

Here I am at a highpoint over a pond near Ennis Lake. Longtime Superior Hiking Trail supporters might just notice that my t-shirt reads, "I'd rather be hiking the Superior Hiking Trail." But on this day, that would be a lie. This is a great little set of loop trails and I was delighted to be there. 

After sniffing up a LOT of bushes and waiting patiently behind me on the narrow trail, Daphne was pretty happy to be on this trail, too. 

If you go
Download the map and driving directions from the Superior National Forest. There really isn't a better map out there. The trailhead is very near the canoe launch for Moose Lake, and you'll find restrooms at the canoe launch. 

The hike just around Blackstone Lake is very scenic and is pretty easy going, through some lovely red pines and past two backcountry campsites where you can sit by the lake. It's just under two miles and most hikers can complete it in about an hour. 

Past Blackstone Lake, the trail gets much rougher and narrower. It's just over a three mile hike on the long loop to Ennis Lake and back, but it will take at least two hours to complete the hike, plus you'll want to hang out on top of the Ennis Lake cliffs.

Freaky early spring in the North Woods

Alder catkins at Bear Head Lake State Park. March 24, 2012. Note open water.

It's March, and the frogs are calling outside Ely. The ice is off all but the biggest lakes. Nearly every sign of spring is coming a full month early. It's as if winter never happened, which is sort of true.

Leftover lake ice stack on the shore after break-up, Bear Head Lake.

Finally by the end of February the weather got as cold and snowy as a typical late November...and then on March 1 we jumped right past winter to weather more like May.


Of course the lakes opened up early; they hardly even froze. Of course the snow is all gone; we hardly even had snow on the ground.


The woods are already drying up. Streams are already running low. It's freaky and I just don't like it.

"Not even eaten at all."

This bit of news from the Duluth News Tribune on February 10, 1898 sure was a relief to read. We're headed up to Ely over the holidays and would have hated to come across Mr. Cameron's remains.

Sig's shack

I had the rare opportunity last week to visit Sigurd Olson's writing shack. Much to my surprise, it was not at the famed Listening Point, but right in town in Ely. My brother George and his partner had met Listening Point Foundation's executive director, Alanne Dore, and she invited them to see the shack. I tagged along, and was really glad I did.

The shack looks like Sig had just left. I was stunned to see that the last thing he ever typed was still in the typewriter: 

A New Adventure is coming up

and I'm sure it will be

a good one.

Perhaps subconsciously aware of his own passing, Sig typed those words, then went out in the woods on his snowshoes and died. The snowshoes rest in the corner of the shack.

Sigurd Olson is best known for his work in the Boundary Waters and for wilderness preservation worldwide. He would come to the North Shore area primarily to fish the headwaters of the streams for brook trout.  He did write a lovely poem about Lake Superior; when I find a copy I'll link to it here. There is talk now and then about naming Minnesota Highway One, the winding wild road connecting Ely and the North Shore, to Sigurd Olson Highway.

An entire desktop in the shack was covered with rocks, some of which could have been from a North Shore beach but others coming from much further away. Probably a lifetime of memories right there, captured like a Zen garden.

As a writer, naturalist, educator and fan of wilderness myself, I was deeply moved by the experience. The writing shack is so resonant with the spirit of the man. The future of it is unclear, as it sits on private property. If you're inspired by the work and words of Sigurd Olson, consider supporting the Listening Point Foundation.

German Expressionism hits the North Woods

Seen on a well-used National Forest outhouse at a ski trailhead in Ely:

 
This well-weathered man reminded me of the woodblock prints of the German Expressionist, like this one from Max Kaus.

When we arrived in Ely for our winter break, the woods were full of snow, but it was a crusty, angular, and shall we say depressing snow. Like the angular cuts in those woodblocks. Actually, there was a lot of German expressionism during our week up in the Ely woods.

Like my older son, in his first year of German, teaching his younger brother how to insult someone in that great language ("No, no, no, it's 'dein-e' Mutter, not 'dein' Mutter!")

Or when the old German scholar himself whoops it up sledding down the steps of the snowy cabin. Ach du lieber! Was für einen Rutsch!

When my 75% deutschstämmig wife expresses herself, is that German Expressionism? 

What if she takes the express route right down a moody Boundary Waters lake? I think I've seen this scene in a Ernst Kirchner print.

Der viele, viele Schnee...

Chasing winter, you just might lose the race

The other day, my family ended up at a restaurant having arrived in two different cars. When it was time to head home, one son rode with me, the other with Sally. My co-pilot son, as soon as we were out of earshot, told me to get going and beat them home. Unfortunately, they had a way faster path out of the parking ramp and would be unbeatable.

Wouldn't you know it, when we arrived at the one possible optional turn on the way back, they were right in front of us at the stoplight. They went one way and we went another. "High risk, high reward," I told my son as we headed out. "If the stoplights work for us, we might just pass them."

Well, the stoplights were against us, and we lost the "race." (Is it a race when the other participant doesn't know it's a race?)

We are up in Ely for the week. Normally, especially this time of winter, you head north for the snow and the cold. But Ely had a stretch of warm days last week that turned the ample snowpack into crust. And as we were leaving Duluth, a major storm was dumping snow on the Twin Cities and even on the outskirts of Duluth.

We chased winter all the way up here, then winter went the other way. We skied at the Hidden Valley ski trails yesterday and it was okay, not great, with a dusting of poofy snow packed into crusty trails.

Yet...it's not like we "lost" anything coming here.

It is still deep in the season here. The snow is two feet deep at least. I had the most amazing wolf-pack, wolf-howl experience ever, with a pack of wolves just a few hundred yards from our cabin howling away. The stars are bright and the birds at the feeder are wild creatures and Ely is, as always, Ely.

This winter still has a long way to go. Forecasts call for colder than normal temps through early March. I hope all those North Shore and winter fans in the Twin Cities are enjoying their next round of winter. I'm definitely enjoying mine.

Miss North Shore, please come home

What is the North Shore? What does it mean to live there? And...can saying you live here make it true?

The Lake County News Chronicle reported on a case of mistaken North Shore identity. The four contestents for the title of Miss North Shore listed their homes as Silver Bay, Two Harbors...and "Scenic Highway 61." The eventual winner, Caitlyn Thompson, was the person from the scenic highway. 

After some consideration by authorities, however, it was decided that Ms. Thompson did not actually live on the North Shore. She lives in a Twin Cities suburb, Vadnais Heights.


View Larger Map

Ms. Thompson's family has a summer vacation home in Holyoke. Holyoke is a small settlement in the Nemadji River area south of Jay Cooke State Park. You reach it off Highway 23, the scenic back route shortcut between Duluth and Sandstone. Holyoke is within 30 miles of Lake Superior, as the crow flies. But it's not really the North Shore.

So the title of Miss North Shore, and the $1000 scholarship, passed on to first runner-up Kimberly Jacobson of Two Harbors. 

I say, "Welcome to the North Shore, Ms. Thompson." Keep saying you live here, and eventually you really will. Holyoke isn't quite as North Shore cool as, say, Finland or Maple Hill, but it's close. We need more talented, energetic young people moving here. When Ms. Thompson finishes her nursing studies at St. Thomas, I bet there's a job for her in Grand Marais or Duluth.

I remember when I was in my early 20s, a lifelong resident of the Twin Cities but also a Boundary Waters guide and frequent North Shore explorer. At one point, I started telling people I lived in northern Minnesota. It took a few more years of actually living in Ely to make that true, but it was so important...and felt so good!...just to say it.

The rules of the beauty pageant may have ruled her not a real "Miss North Shore." But saying you live on the Shore, even when you're stuck in the suburbs, is the first step to making it true. 

Snow buntings

Driving from Ely to the North Shore yesterday, I was stunned and thrilled by the flocks of snow buntings rising from the road as we passed. Photos were simply impossible, since we were going at least 60 mph and the birds popped up without warning. But the beauty of the flock in flight, the flashing of dozens of white wings, called out for something, somehow, to capture it.

Maybe some snow bunting simile?

Half-burnt aspen leaves, caught in the updraft, rise and dance from the burn pile.

Snowflakes scatter from the road, up and out and away, only there is no snowstorm.

Snow buntings, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology,  are migratory birds for whom Minnesota is "south." They nest in the high Arctic. There, the males arrive weeks ahead of the females, in the long long sunrise of the Arctic spring. Prime nesting sites are deep in rock crevices, which the males line with their own feathers. The birds we see here are scrubby brown and white, with dramatic flashes of bright white when they fly. The males rub off that winter plumage to line their nests and to reveal their summer plumage of all black and all white.

The best photo of snow buntings in flight I could find online comes from the website of Donald and Lillian Stokes.  Check it out!

Goodbye old friend

My daypack for the last 20 years has been a miracle. Just a month old, it was stolen by a car prowler in Seattle and we just happened to find it in a dumpster three blocks away, emptied of anything "valuable." But far more valuable was the pack itself and all the adventures it's been on.

Wherever I've gone, it's gone too. To Germany and back. Down the Green River in Utah. And up and down and all over the North Shore, spring, summer, fall and winter.



When the seams began to burst, Get There! Designs in Ely fixed it up and made it good for another 4 or 5 years. Now the seams are really going. The nylon is so worn it won't hold the thread used to fix it.

I splurged on a new pack at REI last month. I'm not feeling real good about it yet. I found one that was as simple as the old one and nearly as big.

Thank you, Sally, for that wonderful birthday present back in 1991. May be the best present ever. Especially since I've gotten to share it with you so many times.

For vigorous growth, straight and tall

My trees have ED.

Every fall for about four years now, I've wandered the forest around our cabin in Ely and stapled small rectangles of newsprint around the tippy top of the smaller white pines. This tippy top is called the "apical meristem," and tucked inside those needles are the starting buds for next year's most critical growth: upward.

The problem is, the deer eat everything they can when winter rolls around, and those little buds are packed full of energy ready to spring out next year. Our property had hundreds of stilted little white pines, all about a foot tall and three feet wide, trying desperately to grow tall but beaten back every winter by deer browse.

Just stapling the bit of paper over the bud, however, seems to deter the deer. Each year now, these poor pines on our property have gotten taller. It fills me with pride to be able now to actually leave some trees uncapped, since they've grown so tall.

Given all this positive energy for growing things straight and tall, I had to giggle when I found this photo as I prepared for this blog post. Note the ad in the upper left. Speaking of growing things...

Suspended due to blueberries

This blog has been temporarily suspended due to a relative abundance of blueberries in the Ely area. The blog's author has been blinded with greed and cannot maintain his normal schedule of blog posting. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Trails Hiking?

My good friends at Minnesota Power have a tendency to over-sign their trails. Maybe it's a fear of liability. When the Boulder Lake ski trails north of Duluth first opened, there were "caution" signs on every curve and dip. But this sign, at their great new trail to Kawishiwi Falls in Ely, is something new.

Birds Watching?

Lunch having?

Perhaps the sign Yoda wrote.

Here the falls are:



Enjoy them you should.

Feels like the last time

Nothing like pop music of the 70s or 80s to get me through a crisis. Between Foreigner and Melissa Manchester, I've made the transition from winter to spring.

Thanks to some late-season snow and the persistent grooming of Ely's great Nordic club, I enjoyed one more day on the Hidden Valley ski trails last week. It was classic spring skiing...mashed potato snow in the sun and crispy icy tracks in the shade.

The best part was one more blessing by wolf tracks:



Looking back, I have to wonder why I thrashed around so with the end of this ski season. It ended way too quickly, for one thing. To go from the heart of the ski season, with deep snows and weeks of potential skiing ahead right into mush and crust, was brutal. I didn't know the peak had passed.

If you ever only knew that this time was the last time, it might help put it all to rest. Knowing it's the last time out, would I experience it more fully? Would I be melancholy?

Would I lose focus and crash?

Ski patrollers know that one of the most dangerous runs skiers take is when they know it's the last run of the day. The Duluth paper today had a story about a local high schooler on his last run of the ski season at Spirit Mountain last year; he fell badly and is paralyzed from the chest down.

Music has really had a hard time with this one last time feeling. Why did Foreigner sing "Feels like the first time" so rapturously, and not "Feels like the last time"?

Instead, we a need moody singer-songwriter. Leave it to Melissa Manchester, "One more time for all the old times."

One last time.

Melissa? "And I think we can make it."

Just keep your eye on the ski trail until your skis are off.

The Last Temptation of Winter

Stand on a Boundary Waters lake in early spring and experience temptation. The surface of the wilderness lake is flat and smooth with well-hardened snow. You could go anywhere, especially on skate skis that would fly across the wilderness. Before the day warms up, the snow pack in the woods is crusty hard. You could walk anywhere. Cliffs rise around the shore, with just enough snow on them for easy access. You could climb anywhere.

With all this temptation, what is a guy to do? Ski, walk or climb...or all of the above?



The Slade and Rauschenfels clan chose "all of the above" on a visit to Slim Lake yesterday.

Slim Lake is in the BWCA, in the Crab Lake portion of the Wilderness. It's right off of the North Arm Road, off the Echo Trail north of Ely. In summer you can drive a quarter mile up a narrow road to a trailhead, but in the winter you park on the North Arm Road, right by a public access for the North Arm of Burntside Lake.

The creek connecting Slim Lake with Burntside Lake was mostly open and rollicking with spring melt-off. It was the most spring-like part of the whole day, since the woods were still full of snow and the bright blue sky spoke far more of winter's cold than summer's heat. That taste of spring and aliveness felt terrific. The portage crosses the creek twice, and both times we lingered at the open flowing water.



Slim Lake is ringed by cliffs, a classic bulldozer job by the glaciers. Hans and I scampered up over crusty snowpack, bare cliff, lichen and white pine to the top of a knob.

And what goes up, must come down:



We were on foot, not on skis. But oh man was the skiing tempting. Wide open lake, flat just softening snow...it was calling out for skis, especially skate skis.

The last temptation of winter would be given another day.

Coming soon: Women who skate with the wolves

Blessed by wolf tracks

I love the stories you can find, and imagine, in the winter woods. Tracks of animals are so real and definite: this animal put this foot HERE, then this other foot HERE. The biggest thrill for me is finding fresh wolf tracks, like here on a ski trail outside Ely.

The tracks led off the groomed ski trail and into the woods. I could easily picture the one wolf loping off through the trees, followed by a few pack members along the same path.

To me, a wolf blesses a place. I've never actually seen a wolf when I'm on foot in the woods. To know that a wolf was here, just walking by, makes a place far more wild and more special. Sure wolf are running across the highway or in a cage at the Wolf Center. Here they are at home, at leisure, walking through the woods.

It is this appreciation of wildness that I've hoped to bring to my family.

Seeing wolf tracks reminds me of the German word for wolf track. "Wolf" is the same in both languages, but then you add a grammatic koan, an abbreviation of the past participle of the word "to go." It's pronounced almost like "gong". You end up with a familiar name, the first name of the composer Mozart.

Wolfgang. I actually proposed this as the name for our first-born. Sort of in honor of music and our German heritage, but mostly as a reminder of wild places.

Instead we have Hans, and he is way more of a Hans than a Wolfgang, and I couldn't imagine him with any other name.

Plus which, Hans still likes to make his own paths through the snow:



Blessed by wolf tracks, blessed by the wild.

More pines, more poodles

A week in the woods on the edge of the Boundary Waters, poodles and part poodles everywhere. Chloe the standard poodle was the trail boss, at first. I took her for a short walk in on the Bass Lake Trail toward Dry Falls. This photo makes me laugh, because it's the same pose and attitude as Jim Brandenburg's pictures of wolves Only wolves don't have collars or puffy white curls.


www.jimbrandenburg.com/gallery/shows/wolves.

Princess Chloe would be eaten alive by wolves.

Later in the week we were joined by Chloe's "cousin", Zoe (yes, the names rhyme). The Zoe-ster is a golden doodle, with all the friendly loving golden retriever genes that poodles lack. Here's the whole clan on Fenske Lake, off the Echo Trail north of Ely:



Zoe is the dog on the right. See that friendly look, the one that says "When you're done with that, can we play?" Chloe's look, on the left, says "Is that a dog treat in your hand? For me?"

A Screamer, literally

What sane person sees a sign that reads, in essence, "Go This Way to Die," and chooses then to follow it? Well, besides fans of Russian roulette, cross country skiers follow some dangerous indicators of doom. In Ely, MN, you can follow just such a sign, except it is labeled "Screamer."

Ely is the Grand Marais of the Iron Range. Instead of Norwegian fishermen, Ely has equally charismatic Finnish miners. There's a Sven and Ole's, "Sir G's," only without those cheesy bumperstickers or TV ads. And just as Grand Marais has Pincushion Mountain, Ely has a mighty fine nordic ski system just on the edge of town.

The Hidden Valley trails are a terrific outpost of well-maintained ski trails in a lovely near-wilderness setting. Hans and I took off on some of the challenging inner loops this week.

At first the endorphins kicked in and he was pretty happy:


Then we began the climb to the top of the Screamer. Though I kept saying, "What goes down must go up," Hans' attitude worsened faster than a typical teenager. Here he is at the top:



Note the yellow and black caution sign. That is the top of the Screamer itself, a drop straight across the contour lines, all set for maximum acceleration.

I skied first, I yelled a bit, especially at this point where the steep downhill turns steeper and my stomach rose to my throat with a gurgly "a-HMP."

You'll have to ask Hans how he made it down. How he lived to tell the tale. Unfortunately, he erased the images from the camera.

"Screamer" is an apt name for this trail. Which got me thinking about other trails and their bodily results. How about a trail that's named "Bruiser"? Or "Broken Collarbone"? Hey, I'm a skier, sign me up!