Minnesota Trails

Trails of Brotherly Dedication

By: Pamela Eyden, Outdoor Writer

When Brother Jerome and Brother John of Saint Mary’s University in Winona, Minn., first started cross-country skiing in the 1960s and 70s, there were no meaningful ski trails around Winona.

They skiied the frozen Mississippi River backwaters, but backwaters are flat, so they started eyeing the hills behind campus where they had to bushwhack up a rough, heavily wooded ravine to the top of St. Yon’s Valley.

Classic Ski Weekend at Flathorn Gegoka

By Rudi Hargesheimer, Outdoor Writer/Photographer

I thought I had graduated to the perfection of the North Shore’s best cross-country ski trails long time ago.

Beautiful ski trails are everywhere in the Arrowhead’s big snow belt with twelve feet wide, skate lane on the left, classic track on the right. Guaranteed grooming creates a fast and firm deck for super fun skiing.

An abrupt stop to that awaited our group of ten on a trip to the Flathorn Gegoka Ski Area. We re-discovered old style classic single-track skiing, tight woods yet nicely groomed trails. Our group shared two simple cabins, at a rustic but very nice resort. I felt we stepped back in time.

Carrol Henderson: Watching Over Wildlife

By Pamela Eyden, Outdoor Writer

Carol Henderson’s success is measured in wildlife perserved.

As supervisor of the Minnesota’s Nongame Wildlife Program he protects the birds and wildlife we love.

Take trumpeter swans. These birds have a wingspan of about seven feet and are the largest water bird on earth. When Henderson wrote a conservation plan for them in 1981, they were gone from Minnesota for 100 years. Their habitat had been turned to farmland and they’d been overhunted for their elegant white feathers. After 30 years of persistence in the trumpeter swan project, more than 2,000 adult birds nest in Minnesota’s wetlands and the population has doubled in the last five years alone.

    Harmony–to be at peace with nature–is one reason people visit Minnesota state parks.            

    Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park, unique among Minnesota parks having neither a body of water for recreation nor a registered historic site, has nearly 3,000 acres of beauty, all of its own.

   It was one of those perfect Minnesota spring days, lush green leaves on the trees, brilliant blue sky and a slight breeze cooling the 65-degree air.

            According to lobbyist, Judy Erickson, the last day of the 2008 legislature was a perfect day to pass a last minute $20 million appropriation bill to establish Lake Vermilion State Park.

“A trail eases our way, but it also narrows your focus,” Paul Gruchow.

        The 64-mile Border Route Trail can be merciless with its steep grades, thick forests and rocky trails.

    It can also be the most beautiful trail you’ll ever hike. Nestled between the Canadian border and the Gunflint Trail, it offers with majestic views of Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, with lots of plant and wildlife.

The grass is cold and so are my toes. I’m carrying my shoes and socks, walking barefoot alongside two avid barefoot hikers at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan.

Joseph Nicollet rode in the middle of a trading canoe taking notes.

Teddy Schaefer and Peter Gustafson pulled up on their mountain bikes after pedaling through some of the 23-mile Cuyuna Country State Recreational Mountain Bike trail last fall. They proclaimed in unison, “awesome!” 

Last summer, Bill Nedderman made a detour. As he planned the route for a solo kayak trip from Rocky Mountain House in Alberta to Montreal, Quebec, retracing an old voyageur trail, he didn't want to repeat a path he had already traveled along the U.S.-Canada border in the Boundary Waters.