Underwater Ice-scapes
Footage from the icy shallows of January.
Footage from the icy shallows of January.
The Superior Hiking Trail Association, headquartered in Two Harbors, is seeking a dynamic leader to serve in the role of executive director.
The SHTA is dedicated to constructing, maintaining and promoting a world-class 310-mile natural surface trail paralleling Lake Superior from Wisconsin to Ontario. The 5,000-plus member organization has a small knowledgeable staff, a passionate group of volunteers and a committed, active board of directors dedicated to the success of a new strategic plan.
I would NOT do this further up the trail where there are sheer drops.
Abandoned car on the train tracks by the Lakewalk — just beneath Lake Place Ice Skating Rink Park.
In this video, Dawn LaPointe of Radiant Spirit Gallery explores a section of Lake Superior’s North Shore on a day when temperatures hovered around -10°F.
Hiking through the Castle Danger area in 2013 I came to a sign informing me the Encampment River Bridge was out. No big deal, I thought. I’ll hike elsewhere and pick up this section next year.
To this day there is no Encampment River Bridge. It was washed out in the Historic Summer Solstice Flood Disaster of 2012, along with about $50 million worth of other stuff in northeastern Minnesota. What I found out by talking to other people who had hiked through the area is the Encampment River is not typically deep and gushing, so unless there’s been a heavy rain it’s easy to cross without a bridge.
With that knowledge I made plans for my final hike of 2014, from Silver Lake Township Road 617 at Castle Danger to Lake County Road 301. Saturday, Oct. 11, looked good on my calendar as one of the last days one might confidently expect nice weather before colder days set in.
Of course, there are forces other than weather and natural disasters aligning to alter whatever plans we might have for our lives. Six days before my hike, a great friend and mentor died in his sleep.
Kicked into action by Kerc’s post below, I offer up another Where in Duluth?, taken today. I don’t know who the kid is. I think he lives there.
With underwater pancake ice.
By the fall of 2014 I had fewer than 50 miles of walking left to complete the Superior Hiking Trail. That might seem easy enough to knock out in a couple days, but it wasn’t a single stretch I had to cover, it was short segments stretched out over hundreds of miles. So I was picking them off three miles here and eight miles there.
An example of how it sometimes broke down: Rather than do the 6.4-mile Rossini Road to Fox Farm Road segment with cars at each end, or hike through and then go all the way back, I chose to break it into two trips on two separate days — Rossini Road to the West Branch of Knife River, then Fox Farm Road to the same spot, going both directions on each hike rather than one 12.8 miler.
Of course, by driving one car to the same area twice, instead of two cars once, I didn’t save any gas or spare the environment any emissions — and I doubled my time spent in the car — so it was a dumb thing to do … even though it seemed intelligent at the time.
The highlight of that first hike in early September was either a mushroom or some kind of yellow porcelain trailside birdbath.
On those summer days when the water is clear and warm, Lake Superior becomes the greatest swimming pool in the world. Remember, summer is coming back in just a few months!
Been waiting to post this for deep winter: a few seconds of crystal clear underwater summertime Lake Superior.
