IMBA Trail Solutions pro builder Stephen Mullins (center) working with CoGGs members at Sprirt Mountain (Photo courtesy Hansi Johnson)
The people of Duluth must have been pretty nice this year. Word came just before Christmas that the Cyclists of Gitchee-Gumee Shores (COGGS) have received a $250,000 grant from a Legacy Amendment fund to jump start development of a new 20-mile mountain biking trail system right in the heart of the city.
The Duluth Traverse will ultimately span the port town from Spirit Mountain to Amity Creek, from the bluffs of the St. Louis River valley to the crashing waves of Lake Superior. When completed, it will be the longest urban singletrack trail system in the nation, connecting several parks to each other which feature their own trail systems.
The Legacy grant comes only after five years of effort. And there are many years ahead and much work to do; this is not a project for the impatient or the lazy. Hansi Johnson is neither of those. One just has to follow his blog to see that (he recently captured several striking photos of riding a extra-fat tired Surly Pug bicycle on the ice of a St. Louis River reservoir).
The Midwest Regional Director for the International Mountain Biking Association (IMBA) has been by all accounts essential to the project’s success so far. Though Johnson lives outside Duluth, he travels the region helping local cycling groups develop trails in their communities. The Traverse will be in his backyard when complete. Johnson shared the news by noting this is about more than just a new riding opportunity:
It is great to see that off road cycling has become a movement about creating better communities, we have stepped out from singly pushing the “trail” and are now pushing “Trails” plural and how they can create positive lifestyles and change lives.
That might seem like lofty description of some narrow paths through the woods, but the plan is ambitious. The COGGS’ website describes a trail network that will improve opportunities to get out in the woods not just for bikers, but hikers, runners, skiers, snowshoers, and even equestrians:
This trail system will feature trail hubs with more extensive trail networks in Lester Park, Hartley Park, Piedmont-Brewer Park, Spirit Mountain and Mission Creek and then have trails connecting them all together. Our goal for this system is to create the first 100+ mile system of singletrack all within an urban environment. This will connect communities together via natural surface trails and also create an environment where everyone has trail access within a short distance of their home that they can walk, run or bike on.
It’s easy to see why so many groups and individuals would come together around the vision. In any good partnership, you do more together than what you can do alone, and this one is doing a lot. In addition to Johnson and his colleagues at IMBA and COGGS and its volunteers, key supporters of the project include the city of Duluth, notably its mayor Don Ness, and other trail groups in the city, representing the hikers, skiers, birders and average citizens who want more places to get out in the woods.
COGGS members building a technical section of trail in Piedmont Park (Photo courtesy Hansi Johnson)
The coalition has racked up success before this grant. Johnson told me in an email that COGGS has put vast amounts of volunteers hours into the city’s park restoring and closing old trails, as well as investing grant dollars in infrastructure improvements. This has taken a strain off the parks budget, while still improving the parks. This fall, they strongly supported a Parks and Libraries levy that was approved by voters on Election Day.
Mayor Ness recently proclaimed that he wants Duluth to be the “premier trail city in North America.” This isn’t just because there are a lot of mountain bikers or hikers in the town, but because the trail systems are seen as essential to the quality of life the city can offer, from health benefits to recreation opportunities to tourism dollars.
COGGS chairman Adam Sundberg said in a recent article in Northern Wilds that he sees the system having potential as a riding destination up there with other regional stars, reputation as a good place to live and raise a family: “We can have riding every bit as good as Rapid City, CAMBA [the Chequamegon area], UP of Michigan, but we have a town that is much more attractive for arts, culture, kids’ activities, shopping.”
A billboard advertising the Cuyuna trail system (Photo courtesy Hansi Johnson)
Just this summer, the biggest new mountain biking trail system in the state opened up amongst abandoned mine pits on the Iron Range at the new Cuyuna Country Recreation Area near Crosby. Johnson told Duluth-Superior Magazine that the park’s grand opening weekend this summer saw all the cafes in town entirely sold out of food.
Hopes are high for the Duluth Traverse. Right now, there is a map, trails scattered around the city, a bunch of dedicated folks, and now, some money to get things started, thanks to the voters and taxpayers of Minnesota. The entire system should cost about $1 million ultimately.
With the new funds, the partners will develop an implementation plan and begin work on the trail system at Lester Park. After that they will work on connector sections which will link trail networks to each other. Johnson wrote in an email that the grant will get things “rolling.”
In Sunday’s newspaper, Josephine Marcotty offered a well-rounded look at controversial new mining proposals in northeastern Minnesota, much of it at the doorstep of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. I have been reading, talking, and writing about sulfide mining for three-and-a-half years now. I am convinced that the extraction of copper, nickel and other metals in the Arrowhead would forever harm large swaths of our state. And the money and minerals do not outweigh that risk.
In her article, Marcotty said Minnesota is facing “its biggest environmental decision in a generation: Whether to open its arms to hard-rock mining, an industry that could bring thousands of jobs — and a record of environmental calamities — to the wildest and most beautiful corner of the state.”
This is indeed a decision for all Minnesotans to make. The Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness has been working for years to educate citizens, to raise awareness of what is proposed and what it could mean for Minnesota’s clean water, and to ensure we act as the good stewards of our land and water that previous generations did. This is necessary so our kids and grandkids will be able to drink from the lake on BWCAW trips, to eat fresh-caught fish, and to wander trackless woods.
This past weekend, the Friends met with officials from Twin Metals along Highway 1, near the Kawishiwi River and Birch Lake, to see where the company — a partnership between junior mining company Duluth Metals and Chilean mining giant Antofagasta — is doing exploratory drilling and to learn more about their plans. The group spent a couple hours touring the woods, talking and asking a lot of questions.
The Twin Metals employees said they intend to build a mine that will not pollute. They didn’t try to convince the Friends representatives in two short hours to forget their concerns, but rather listened and promised continued dialogue. They also spoke at length of “new, modern technology” and a commitment to “doing it right.” They believe they can do this without harming some of our state’s most cherished natural places.
The fact is that nobody opens up a mine planning to pollute. But yet it happens again and again. A 2006 study of such mines found that at least 85 percent of mines in wet environments like Minnesota caused unanticipated pollution.
Copper and nickel are sold on global markets at global prices. Unfortunately, in other countries, there are few environmental protections. This means metals can be mined cheaply, and sold cheaply. Those metals are what Twin Metals, PolyMet and others would have to compete with if they mine in Minnesota. Doing it right affects the bottom line, and digging deep below the earth to extract widely-scattered minerals is expensive in the first place. Preventing pollution carries price tags.
Twin Metals wants to mine in the forests of Stony River Township, near Ely. Something happened in the township two weeks ago that didn’t get much notice. Maybe it was overshadowed by the Pagami Creek Fire news, or maybe the weight of the event just didn’t register. The township’s board of supervisors unanimously passed a resolution calling on Minnesota to enact a moratorium on sulfide mining, and short of that, not allow any mining in the township.
Residents of the township have been hearing from the company and other mining proponents for years and after much consideration, decided they wanted to keep their community the way it is, a rural lake district, not one overrun by trucks and blasting and pollution. In a Duluth News-Tribune article about the resolution (subscription required), one of the supervisors who voted for it said it simply and said it best, “We’ve got clean water and a healthy forest and we want to keep it that way.”
The resolution is non-binding. State and federal governments will ultimately decide whether or not Twin Metals ever mines. But the supervisors of Stony River Township, and the community members who encouraged the resolution, have given an answer to this great environmental decision our state faces: Clean water will always be more valuable than any precious metal.
A week ago, I was waking up at my campsite on Lake Insula, in the Boundary Waters. It was going to be another beautiful day, the morning light seemingly soft and quiet. I made coffee and enjoyed the view west across the bay, where an old white pine stood tall over blowdown forest — mostly scrubby balsam and birch. Several miles behind the pine, a column of smoke rose from the horizon.
The next morning, the campsite was smoky. It wasn’t unbearable, but made for a scratchy throat. I wondered if we would have to move if the smoke didn’t lift. But by noon, the column was not stretched out toward us, but rose straight into the sky. A big stormlike cloud flowed east over our heads.
That evening, we went out fishing on the lake and watched the sun set behind the plume. I snapped a photo of my friend Wade, in the bow of the canoe, starting at the smoke. I did not imagine it would grace the front page of the Star Tribune just a couple days later.
On Monday, after we had gotten out of the woods, I posted a photo slideshow of the trip on YouTube. It has now been watched more than 2,800 times. The photos literally spread like wildfire as the Pagami Creek Fire blew up from 1,000 acres to 4,500 to 11,000 to suddenly 60,000 and then 100,000 acres.
Ultimately, in addition to the Star Tribune, the pictures showed up on MPR’s homepage, on KARE 11′s broadcasts, on KTTC in Rochester, and even the Door County Daily News, where smoke from the fire was noticeable hundreds of miles away.
Wednesday, I was interviewed by Bill Hudson of WCCO-TV about the experience. The headline for the story on the station’s website was sensational — our trip was neither “harrowing” nor an “escape” — and there were some problems with the chronology and other facts. Maybe I told the story disjointedly, or maybe it wasn’t exciting enough. I posted a full, factual account of the experience on my personal blog.
Now, the fire has moved on and so has the attention. Reporters have flocked to the north woods and there is a considerable amount of on-the-ground reporting being done. I have told my story enough times, anyway.
This fire has grabbed the attention of the whole state, it seems. The Boundary Waters is like nowhere else in Minnesota, nor even the country or the world. And now 10 percent of it has burned.
As far as I can tell from the fire progression maps, it looks like that whole half of the lake where we were camped for three nights was burned over a day or two after we left. A group of rangers out checking for visitors got caught out on the lake when the fire hit and had what sounds like a truly harrowing experience as the fire whipped up a windstorm and forced them to take cover under their fire shelters on a rocky island in the middle of the lake for an hour as hot embers and ash rained down on them. I wonder if that that centuries-old pine across from our campsite on Insula still stands.
This week, I have also thought a lot about the people who live at the edge of the Boundary Waters. I know what the smoke from just 4,500 acres looked like. It appears on the horizon like a mythical creature, out-of-control and possessing incredible destructive power. It is a force like an earthquake or a hurricane and we feel small against it.
The past couple days have been cool and calm, and there has even been some rain and snow, which has given firefighters a chance to regroup and bring in reinforcements. But the next couple days are forecast to be warmer and windier again.
While we were camped on Insula last week, a bald eagle frequently perched in a tree on an island across from us. It spent long hours there watching the lake. As we paddled across the lake on our way out, the eagle flew above us and past us and into the big white pine we had been admiring. I figure its nest was there. I wonder if it still is.
If the fire flares up again, though, I hope it is only white pines and eagle’s nests that suffer, not humans or homes. The boreal forest is meant to burn sometimes; our habitations are simply not.
When four of us arrived at the pair of portages from Lake One to Lake Two on Thursday morning, there were a dozen or so Forest Service personnel scattered along the trails. The Pagami Creek Fire, which had been started by lightning a couple weeks earlier, had moved toward this popular area of the wilderness, and threatened to run north into private property. A controlled burn of about 700 acres had been executed a couple days earlier to prevent the fire from spreading in this direction. The air was hazy, and occasionally a tree could be heard falling back in the woods, the result of either fire or water-softened soils from fire control sprinkler lines.
As I pulled on a Duluth pack, I ran into my old friend Thompson, who has been working as a wilderness ranger out of Ely for the past couple years. He and others were on a public safety crew, ensuring no visitors were harmed by the fire activity. He had been camped on Lake Two for 14 days, and would be heading back to town later that day.
We paddled across calm lakes eastward, soon putting the fire behind us. We arrived at Lake Insula late that afternoon, and picked a campsite featuring a huge beach and a view to the west, toward the direction where smoke from the fire was still visible on the horizon. We stayed on Insula for three nights and the shifting character of the smoke was a source of constant interest.
One morning, I woke up first as usual and started water boiling for coffee. The lake seemed hazier, and the smoke on the horizon less defined than previously. It occurred to me that we were now directly downwind, something I had been afraid would happen. As the morning progressed, it never got very smoky, but I’m not sure we could have stuck it out if that level of smoke had continued. Fortunately, the winds shifted and the smoke rose up off the lake by midday. It continued to blow overhead, and ash and crispy, half-burnt leaves fell on us all day long.
We left Insula on Sunday morning and started paddling back east, first into Hudson Lake and then Lake Four. The smoke plume was massive, and for the first day since we arrived, there was wind, blowing out of the northwest. While carrying the canoe over the quarter-mile portage between Insula and Hudson, a helicopter and an airplane few over, low to the ground. The helicopter passed over us again as we paddled hard against the wind on Hudson. For my friend Eric, who was home on leave from flying Blackhawk helicopters in Afghanistan, and who wanted nothing more than a few days of peace and quiet and certainly the absence of helicopters, the visit was unwelcome but accepted.
At the portage into Lake Four, another party pulled up to land and said the area was being evacuated. That was about all I gleaned, and we continued on our way. We paddled another couple miles before meeting a Forest Service canoe mid-lake. In addition to telling us that the area was being closed to visitors, they took the names of everyone in our party and said they would relay it back to people at the landing, who would check our names off the list when we arrived. We also saw a couple big canoes with motors on the back, an incongruous sight on the non-motorized wilderness lakes.
Crossing Lake Three, we got our best views of the fire and the smoke. We only saw a few distant flares of flame, but the plume had risen to some 25,000 feet in the sky, by pilot Eric’s estimation, and consumed much of the southern horizon. The smoke was luckily blowing away from us, to the south and east, and we paddled under sunny blue skies.
Our progress toward the landing was marked by Forest Service personnel positioned on shore seemingly every half-mile. As we would paddle past, they would talk into their radios. At the portages, groups of the hardhat-wearing young men volunteered to carry our gear over the portages. While I respected that they were just trying to keep the portages clear while dozens of groups were streaming out of the wilderness, I had to politely declined the offers, explaining I don’t come to the Boundary Waters to have other people carry my stuff.
We had another couple miles to paddle on Lake One and met one more canoe of Forest Service staff. The man in the back started by saying, “I’m sure you’re sick of talking to the Forest Service,” and then just confirmed we knew we had to leave.
While the fire was maybe 1,000 acres when we went into the woods on Thursday, estimates were that it was 4,500 acres yesterday. Word comes today that it is believed to have grown to 11,000 acres, fueled by the dry air and strong winds. It is being allowed to burn for the most part, as fires are a natural part of the ecosystem and wilderness is uniquely managed to let natural processes occur. A few efforts are being made to control the fire where it threatens to escape the wilderness and potentially harm private property.
Check out the below slideshow of photos of the fire:
I spent Thursday and Friday last week playing tour guide for a reporter in the woods of northern Minnesota. The trip was personally rewarding because in seeking to provide a good story for the reporter, I experienced one myself.
My journey north on Thursday took me to Two Harbors and then straight north to visit a man who has read everything Thoreau ever wrote and owns a canoe Garrison Keillor once paddled. Friday afternoon was foggy as I drove home via a circuitous route on lonely National Forest roads. I went 20 miles at a time or more without seeing another vehicle.
There was pretty scenery, but there was also interesting scenes. I documented the trip with some photos in the slideshow below.
I have published two volumes of a chapbook titled "Esker." The most recent volume, "Nowhere Else But Here," was released in January 2010. It features writings from every day of June 2009 in an old Japanese form called haibun.
Posted: December 28th, 2011 
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I spent Thursday and Friday last week playing tour guide for a reporter in the woods of northern Minnesota. The trip was personally rewarding because in seeking to provide a good story for the reporter, I experienced one myself.
