Exploring the Gunflint Trail

I spent the last two days up the Gunflint Trail, that slice of civilization reaching deep into the Bounday Waters. Accustomed to the North Shore, I get excited about the wildness and ruggedness of the Gunflint. Just off Highway 61 on the North Shore you find wide pleasant trails and lots of housing developments; just off the Gunflint Trail, you find wolf scat and a few campgrounds.

The Gunflint does not have a huge reputation for hiking; it's more of a canoeing and resort destination in the summer. The hiking trails off the Gunflint are either super long (the Kekekabic Trail or the Border Route Trail) or super short (Northern Lights Lake, Honeymoon Bluff). Where are the sweet 5-8 mile day hikes?

On the way up, I checked out a couple of the well-known shorter walks. Honeymoon Bluff is gorgeous but so short (0.4 miles) it's not a hike at all. I camped at site #18 at Trails End campground, one that's featured and pictured in our book Camping the North Shore.

Following hunches, I did two day hikes in one day. First I hiked the Kekekabic Trail from its eastern trailhead 3.5 miles into Bingschick Lake. This was fascinating, especially with the combination of the 1999 blowdown and last spring's Ham Lake fire. The trail was rough, just a wilderness trail with far less maintenance than a state park trail. Over half the route was in open areas of burned down trees.

Bingshick Lake, apparently known for its brook trout, had been burned all the way around and seemed pretty desolate. But the campsite had a few standing trees and made for a nice break.

I finished the first hike early in the day and headed for a delicious lunch of a walleye quesadilla at Gunflint Lodge in their new Red Paddle Bistro. After lunch I was totally stuffed but was able to roll over to the Loon Lake boat landing. Some maps had shown a trail running along Loon Lake and up to the Gunflint ski trail system. This was the Bryce-Breon trail.

As devastated as the forest along the Kek was, this forest was old, vibrant and luxurious. Ancient cedar trees along the shore of the lake, scampering over roots, an osprey swooping in to its nest high in a standing dead tree made it feel like the Land of the Lost, the land that time forgot.


So, two nice mid-length day hikes on the Gunflint Trail. Plus an ungodly number of ticks and black flies.

Tough questions in Maple Grove

Camping equipment cash magnet REI has a terrific new store in the "Fountains" shopping center in Maple Grove, MN. Before yesterday, I didn't really even know that Maple Grove existed. What once was cornfields is now a shopping complex. One big difference though from the classic cookie-cutter Mall Land was the wind turbine spinning lazily away in the background. Plus, instead of more mall-lets just beyond the Fountains, there is a massive gravel operation, with tall piles of multi-hued rock that looked for all the world like a North Dakota badlands scene.

I did a program at the REI store last night, on camping and exploring the North Shore. What fun to get a group of North Shore fans in a room and talk about cool things to do on the shore! But there were some tough questions, mostly about how to get a campsite when you don't have a reservation. Two of the parties were headed to the shore for Memorial Day weekend and did not have a campsite reserved. One party could leave late Thursday, one was stuck in the Cities until Friday evening. What to do?

There are almost always open campsites to find, I opined. Maybe not at your first choice campground. And maybe not on the shore proper. Go inland, I suggested. Try Ninemile Lake, or Two Island Lake, or maybe Indian Lake outside of Brimson. They have a bunch of site that are only seldom taken.

But also, I preached a bit, don't worry. You're on vacation. You'll find a campsite. After the tent is up and you've got a fire going, it will feel a lot like home. If your campsite isn't right on a lake, or The Lake (Superior), walk around and explore.

Say no more, say no more

This sign caught my attention today on the way up the shore to plant some trees at Sugarloaf Cove. It says it all. I was in a hurry to get to the tree-planting program, so I made a mental note to take the picture on the way back down. Much to my surprise, that mental note stuck to my forehead like glue and I actually remembered to stop.

The sign is right on Highway 61 (Minnesota's North Shore Drive). just east of Tettegouche State Park. It must have just gone up this week. I totally understand the schema here, because I've done the same myself...people speeding by because they are anxious about a campsite. I hate that anxiety...will there be a site? Will there be a nice site? I remember a long anxious drive into the Squaw Flat campground in the Needles area of Canyonlands; that's a two-hour drive into a dead-end part of the national park, and if there was no site we were out of luck.

Campground reservations have taken a lot of the stress of camping away. Or shall I say the adventure of it? No, it was never a good stress. This sign captures that stress from a sardonic local perspective. Very funny.

Wildflowers on the web

I spend half my time online in winter checking ski conditions. Every last bit of snow is analyzed, every track set described in flowing prose.

Why can't I find online what flowers are blooming? Or how mucky the trails are at the state parks nearby?

Winter is holding on

A certain significant someone in my life has her birthday on March 26. If we can go cross country skiing on her birthday, that is a good thing. Though snowfall has been below average this winter, the snow we've received on the North Shore has stayed on the ground. So the birthday girl might just get a ski outing for her birthday. The city of Duluth groomers seem to have turned their PIsten Bully in for spring, but with recent small snowfalls and highs around 30 degrees, it still feels like winter.

It's been really a classic long-term weather pattern here, with big high pressure systems sitting on top of us in northern Minnesota and sending snowstorm after snowstorm along tracks south and east of here. Madison, WI has been hammered with snow, for example. They got more snow on one day last week than we've gotten in months. That storm track could still move north when it's cold enough for snow, and then we might get yet another big dump.

Camping the North Shore is out!

Our second book (or fourth, depending on how and what you count) is back from the printers and headed out to bookshelves around the region. It is so...serious...to get this done. One book could be a fluke. But two books? With matching covers? It means that we mean business. There and Back Books...here to stay!

This is a great book and I really hope it finds a lot of readers. Not just because I want to sell books, but because I really want people to camp. Car camping in an organized campground may not be the most adventurous, wild thing you've ever done. But compared to another night at home around the TV or in a generic motel room, it's memorable, challenging, and fun.

Winter rolling along

I've gotten so used to squeezing in ski times when the weather allows, in those wondrous days in January or February when we finally get some snow. This year, I've been able to stop that panicked feeling of "if I don't ski today, I won't ever ski again." We've been skiing in Duluth for over two and a half months.

Here is a picture of the Piedmont ski trails in Duluth, my regular haunt.

Ach! The tragedy! Der Pisten-Bully ist kaput

The groomers at the city of Duluth have been doing a great job turning "luge run" trails, frozen over by time, rain, and 30-below nights, into reasonable ski trails again with their deep-tilling groomer. But, according to the ski trail hotline (218-730-4321), the groomer is broken. Badly. It won't be back out for a while.

Which gets me thinking. How important is this technology to my pristine outdoor experience? Not only do I drive my high-tech car miles to the trailhead, but I really like the trails that have been run over first by the even higher-tech groomer.

Back in the day, when I was working up in Ely at Camp Widjiwagan and skiing on the trails out the back door, it was a huge deal to go out and snowshoe the trails after a big snow, then ski them afterward to set the track. But mostly they all got skied in. "Skier-groomed" is the term, I think. Then I discovered the thrill of groomed trails and nearly never looked back. My kids have learned on groomed trails and hardly know what to do with themselves without an even set track.

Well, yeah, it was nice. But City of Duluth groomers, get that part or whatever it is you need quick, okay?

Lots of snow...we need snow

According to the weather folks, we have about 12" of snow on the ground here in Duluth, or about average in terms of percentile. I've been skiing for two months already. But we need snow...new, fresh snow. Yesterday the forecasters tempted us with visions of 4-6" of new stuff, but only a half-inch fell. Tragedy.

Maybe drive to Brule and the Afterhours Trail?

Two websites you gotta bookmark for monitoring winter conditions in Minnesota:


This is updated every week (on Thursday) and gives you snow depth statewide. One map gives you the current snow depth, and the other shows you how this week's snowdepth compares to snowdepth historically, i.e. what percentile this amount of snow falls into compared to other years.
http://climate.umn.edu/doc/snowmap.htm

This shows Lake Superior conditions. Click through to the latest "Great Lakes Surface Environmental Analysis." It combines lake surface water temperatures with current ice coverage. Yes, Lake Superior is frozen over as far as my eye can see, but there's still open water in the middle. The crazy ice anglers are headed out from the mouth of the Lester River.
http://coastwatch.glerl.noaa.gov/glsea/

Making snow

Night before last I got to play Mother Nature. At Chester Bowl, the tiny little in-town downhill ski area in Duluth, I volunteered for the first shift on the snow gun. It was 11 degrees, apparently great snowmaking weather.

As soon as the chairlift stopped and the last of the little snowboard dudes made it down the hill, we hiked up the hill and set it all up. Big serious power cord ran down the hill to one of the lift poles. Fire hose went across the hill to a water pipe. The pump started up, the water flowed, I threw the valve and voila, snow!

In one machine, in one set up of pipes and power, all those little miracles that add up to snowfall had been captured and focused. Instead of a warm air mass bringing Gulf of Mexico moisture, it was the a pipe and a pump pulling water from Chester Creek. Instead of ...well... some chemical-physical process in the upper atmosphere, it was the "moleculizer" in the snow gun.

On one of my hourly trips up the hill to check on the machine, I made a point of walking up into the snow, to feel it on the breeze and under my feet as I'd experienced so many real snowfalls before. It felt okay.

And for all that machinery, all that work, it was as much snow as a good lake-effect storm would bring. Only it was in a tiny area, half the size of our little backyard.

Which, to me, makes the power and breadth of a real storm that much more impressive. Instead of just a few hundred square feet. a good storm dumps over hundreds of square miles.

But it was pretty cool to be part of it, for a bit.

Dog on the trail

How badly should we hate the person who brings their dogs on groomed ski trails? How shady are those shades of gray?

I got out on the Magney ski trails here in Duluth on Saturday. Magney is Duluth's wilderness giant, way out on the west side of town in the thick of old growth maple forests. It was mid-late afternoon and only about a degree above zero, so I was just a little anxious to get through the ski soon. The idea did occur to me of wrapping myself around a tree on one of those downhills, breaking my neck and freezing to death. So I took one of the official short cuts, and rather than the glorious full 7K loop I ended up at about 5K.

Right before I got back on the main loop, a very fast skier came down the main loop on a great long downhill. And right behind him was his dog, some mid-size blue-ish dog, bounding along and keeping up with the speedy master.

The trails had been groomed a few days before and there was a light inch of snow on top of the grooming. So a mid-size dog wouldn't break through the crust. I'm not a trail Nazi. I don't snarl at people going the wrong way or even yell at folks two abreast on a double-tracked trail. If I'd had the chance to converse with this guy and his dog, I probably wouldn't have said anything.

Of course, speedy skier lapped me way too soon, along with his dog. It turns out that I know the guy. He's actually a famous Duluth skier and musician and entrepeneur. And he said, right off as he zoomed past "Hey, I'm a lawwbreaker." He explained that he got on the trails thinking they hadn't been groomed.

And the hound wasn't really affecting the trail, right?

But I wished I could have brought our dog along. She would have crashed through the snowcrust and ruined everything.

Dogs don't belong on groomed ski trails. But it was darn cute.

Ski program cancelled due to snow

It's 7:30 PM. I was supposed to be in Saint Paul right now, starting a program on Skiing the North Shore for the weekly meeting of the Rovers. But, based on the forecast last night for today, both in Duluth and the Twin Cities, I cancelled. I was excited about meeting the Rovers and finding out more about their club and activities.

Ironic, though...ski program cancelled due to snow. Normally it's been the other way around.

Ah, snow! Ah, Piedmont!

Just got out for my first ski of the year...ahhhh, nice. It snowed heavily on Saturday the 1st to kick off December in style. After shoveling out over the weekend and working all day Monday, this was my first chance to get out on the trails.

I went to Piedmont, one of those gems of a trail found here in Duluth. It's my regular backyard trail, except it's a ten-minute drive up there. And more snow was falling. So the drive was scary. But the skiing was fine.

When I first moved back to Duluth, I was a cynic about Piedmont. Too quaint. Too small. No Lycra to be seen. But over the years I've come to really love the trail. Jerry Nowak built it himself decades ago and eventually handed it over to the City of Duluth. Jerry still installs the goofy signs, though those weren't up yet.

Piedmont is basically one loop of about 4K, with some short-cuts and a newer advanced loop that sweeps down off the hillside. First ski of the year I take it very easy, so 4K was perfect. I don't know if they're called abductors or adductors, but there are these muscles or tendons in my thighs that get amazingly sore two days after the first ski of the year.

The snow was already falling hard. By the time I finished the loop, my ski track was smoothed over with new snow. Now the snow is just dumping from the sky here down by the lake. Real lake-effect snow, right here on Park Point.

Ah!!

Snow, snow, snow!

Tomorrow is December 1. In some trained sense of right and wrong, as of tomorrow I will begin to feel like I should be skiing. If it's November, skiing is a rare privilege. We were living in Ely in 1991 with the big Halloween blizzard, and those 38" of snow kept the ground covered until spring. But that was freaky. In December, skiing feels like a right, not a privilege. I am a Minnesotan, and I deserve to ski in December.

As of today (November still), there is just a coating of snow, maybe an inch on the ground here by the lakeshore on Park Point. But tomorrow is December and I want to ski. Fortunately, the weather gurus are thinking along the same lines. Forecasts call for up to a foot of snow in the area.

Wow. Wouldn't it be nice. We've had a lot of years now when my birthright of December 1 skiing has been rudely denied by the forces of evil. So much so that I've grown used to the injustice. So a good blast tomorrow will somehow set the world, at least my world, right again.

Amazing Lester Park trail

Just when I thought that the City of Duluth had rolled up the carpet and closed shop, their work crews pulled out a miracle.

The short loop up and down Amity Creek in Lester Park had always been incredibly scenic, with the mightiest white pines in town, a terrific waterfall, one and sometimes two footbridges crossing it. When my firstborn child was just a few days old I walked with him in the sling around the loop and, sort of like a North Woods christening, laid him out on the sling on a needle-covered boulder and stepped back just enough to take a picture.

But the trail was falling into the river. Wooden benches alongside the trail had tried in vain to stop solifluction, that insidious creep of soil downslope. Washouts from above broke out of inadequate culverts and made for impossible sidelong leaps.

When I was last there, in May or June, yellow caution tape was up and I felt sure that city attorneys were closing it off for good.

But, poodle in tow (or rather, in the tow of the poodle), I revisited the loop today, anxious about what I might find, prepared to bushwack into the forest.

And who would have guessed that the city (or someone!) had rescued the trail?! Brand new decking replaced washed out culverts. More impressively, the old wooden seating/retaining walls had been fully replaced with, get this, heavy metal, state park style footbridges on massive cement footings.

It's always hard to keep trails in river valleys. Erosion will win, over time. But this effort by the City of Duluth to retain access to this beautiful river gorge should be applauded regionwide.

North Shore trails I wish were there

Sure, the North Shore has a lot of hiking trails. Just for kicks today I came up with a list of 50 good trails, and that only included my favorite sections of the Superior Hiking Trail.

But what about the trails that aren't there yet?

Pigeon Point is a 2-3 mile long peninsula that makes up the most easterly part of the state of Minnesota. It has Michigan on its south side and Ontario on its north side. It is rugged and wild and, as far as I can tell, inaccessible by land.

There is a nice new trail right across the bay on the Ontario side. It starts at the Ontario travel information centre just past the border crossing, skirts an interesting bay, then climbs up Finger Point to a great overlook with, of all things, a huge wooden cut-out of Lake Superior. But Pigeon Point has no trail.

I zoomed in with Google Earth: nothing like a cabin or trail or road. I check at the Duluth Public Library's great set of bound USGS topos. The USGS had to stretch out the quad for an extra mile or so to include the tip of the point, but there was only one sign of human habitation there, a little black square indicating a single building on a beach at "the narrows."

Now that would be a cool trail, connected up with Grand Portage State Park.

I'll be seeing Rick Novitsky of Grand Portage State Park tomorrow...maybe I'll bend his ear a bit.

More trails I wish were there? I'll keep thinking about it.

Let the wild rumpus begin

Strong northwest winds are blowing across Lake Superior today. They're cold enough that they're going to create lake-effect snow on the South Shore. Ironwood, Michigan is under a winter storm warning already.

So, fellow skiers...are you ready to rock and roll? Ready for five months of anticipation, of reading long-term forecasts, of planning your weekend around snowfall totals? Do you have Skinnyski.com on your short list of bookmarks?

I won't be headed for the UP this weekend; my skis aren't even out of the attic yet. But we are fully past the turn of the seasons from summer to winter. The leaves are off the trees, the ground is hardening up. It's time to start planning for snow.

Making a Great Lake Superior

Just spent two days at the Making a Great Lake Superior conference here in Duluth, with a few hundred scientists, educators, government folks and some just plain folks. The single-most discussed topic was climate change in the Lake Superior region. As pie-in-the-sky optimistic as I can be, there wasn't much good news, at least in terms of winter outdoor recreation. The models agree that it will get drier and warmer on the North Shore over the next 50 years.

Now would be a great time to open a business offering guided canyoneering trips along the North Shore rivers.

North Shore rivers running wild

And I do mean wild. I wish I'd been on the North Shore this weekend, because things were just rocking. Roads washing out. The rivers practically busting out of their banks. There were some great photos in the Lake County News-Chronicle, also available online. Stunning. Makes you realize why the river banks are so wide, exposing so much bare rock most of the time.

Lake Superior water levels should take a small step up after this. It came too late for the trees, but it's perfect for the lake. Instead of soaking into the soil for plants to take up, it's rushing straight down to the big lake.

Go rain!

Snow buntings

Snow buntings are cool. There are a very few birds that seem to come through at the hinge of the seasons, when one time of year fizzles out and another starts to flame. Snow buntings are one of those. I suppose if their name was "lily buntings," I wouldn't feel the same way. But they skitter across the roads and fields like the first flakes of snow, whirl in their little flocks like a bit of a blizzard.

I've been seeing them for about a week. Summer was so dry here, and the fall so far so wet, things are weird phenologically. But it feels like about the right time for the snow buntings.

Snow buntings are notorious unsavvy in terms of cars and people. In fact, I think I killed one a few days back as a little flock rose from Highway 61 as I was driving into Two Harbors. I don't ever like killing a bird like that, but it's a testimony to their wildness. They must breed somewhere north and wild...apparently they are tundra birds, which makes sense because they seem to prefer open fields and...unfortunately...roads.

So, as the tamaracks burn out summer with their autumn gold, the snow buntings flutter down in with the first flakes of winter.