Northern Light Overlook Trail

The North Shore Hiking Guide describes it as “Difficult but short.” A more accurate description of the Northern Light Overlook Trail off the Gunflint Trail north of Grand Marais would be “Difficult, almost vertical, one-half-mile climb that seems infinite, over exposed roots, sharp rocks, large outcroppings, moss and mud. The breeze will disappear soon after you leave the parking lot and begin the climb through the woods. A variety of bugs will welcome you, keep you constant company, and suck your blood. Take water so you can at least feel like you’re doing something to survive. Also take identification, just in case. If you think the trek up is tough, be prepared for the lack of sure footing on the way down. Note that you’re the only one on the trail. There’s a reason for this.”

But the guide does get one thing right: “Outstanding vistas in several directions above Northern Light Lake.”

Smoke On the North Shore

When I escaped the extreme heat warning in Iowa yesterday for the relatively cool upper-70s on the North Shore of Lake Superior, I never expected to be greeted by an air pollution health alert caused by a fire further north in Ontario:

Smoke From A Distant Fire

Tuesday, July 19, 2011 10:23 a.m. CDT

Caption: Wildfire smoke

DULUTH, MN (KDAL) - The smell of smoke in the Twin Ports and across much of northeastern Minnesota Tuesday morning can be traced to wildfires in northwestern Ontario, Canada. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency has issued an air pollution health alert due to the elevated particles in the air through early afternoon. Groups sensitive to that type of pollution might want to postpone or reduce vigorous outdoor activity. The health alert includes most of northeast Minnesota including Duluth, International Falls and Grand Portage. A wind shift and potential showers later today is expected to clear out the smoke and improve the air quality.

As I shuffled through the ice-age cobble rocks lining Sugarloaf Cove this morning, I noticed the haze spoiling the chance for scenic photos, but thought it was caused by the relative warmth of the air (75 degrees at 11 a.m.) over the still, cool water. Driving east to Grand Marais, though, I heard on the weather of the pollution alert and thought maybe I should rethink my afternoon bike ride. But a moderate hike following one of the many streams and rivers up to an overlook of Superior probably would be OK. Just not as scenic. But I’ll take the scenic stealing smoke over the sweltering excessive heat that those south of here are suffering.

Flat Tire

I hadn’t changed a flat tire since August 1978 (I recall specifically for a number of reasons, most regarding my frustration and anger, including the flinging of several non-essential parts over a fence across the side of the road). When I first started driving in the mid-60s and early 70s, flat tires were a common experience. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn (I can’t recall) that I had at least one flat tire on each of the first five of my cars (the fifth being the August 1978 flat). Back then it wasn’t uncommon to see some poor schmuck pulled off the road, wrestling with a jack and flat tire and sweating and cursing and in general having an existential inner monologue about the nature of automotive fate. But tire technology took an apparent turn for the better, the more reliable, beginning in the late 70s, and it’s become much more rare to see that schmuck in existential crisis beside the road.

Unless you happen to have been driving the other day along a desolate stretch of Minnesota Highway 61 on the North Shore of Lake Superior. That would have been me out there, about 50 miles south of Grand Marais, just on the east edge of Beaver Bay (population 170). There are two gas stations in Beaver Bay, but one is just a convenience store with pumps and the other just a relic from the past with two gas pumps and a teenage boy who wondered what someone from Iowa was doing all the way up here in the first place. I have a roadside auto plan, but when I checked my cellphone all I saw was “No Signal,” and I don’t know that I would have been able to get someone up from Duluth in any timely manner. So I had no choice but to do something I hadn’t done in 32 years — I first had to take my bike off the back of the car and my fishing gear and luggage out in order to get to the jack, tools, and spare; then had to consult the manual to try to understand how to work something that didn’t look at all like a jack from my youth; and finally figuring things out and muscling the lug nuts off, wrestling the flat off, and getting the “donut” spare positioned and tightened. And repacking my luggage, fishing gear, and bike.

My first hope was that I could get a new set of tires in Two Harbors (population 3616), 28 miles down the shore. (My car is all-wheel drive, so because there would be even a slight variance in the tread, I couldn’t just repair the flat or buy just one new tire; and I’d recently been thinking I needed new tires anyway.) But the only place in Two Harbors that had tires was an auto dealership, and they didn’t have the size of tires I needed. So they pointed me down the shore to Duluth (population 87,000) and the Expert Tire store, and I drove the 40 miles down the expressway at 50 mph, through the city, and without problem to the tire store. And everything from there was fine. Expert had four tires for me (though I did have to get the deluxe in the size I needed because that’s the only model they had four tires for); they could get them installed in a couple of hours; and it was noon and there was a decent restaurant/tavern just a couple of blocks away where I could have a slow lunch and check my email and read newspapers using their wireless.

In the end, things went much more smoothly than I first feared, but that fear was based on memories of experience from over 30 years ago. Things have changed greatly since then (not least of which my having the means to handle this kind of situation, technologically, temperamentally, and financially). And there was no more than an initial frustration and anxiety, no cursing the gulls laughing from above the lake, nothing thrown over fences or trees beside the road. It’s a mellower time, a mellower schmuck.

Superior North Shore

A perfect day on the North Shore of Lake Superior (sun, partly cloudy, 78 degrees), and a solo walk on Pincushion Mountain, three or four miles. Very few other people, a family of four, a couple, and two other solo men; this is mostly a cross-country ski trail, not a hiking trail. For no reason but nothing else to do I try without any knowledge at all to identify the dozen or so bird calls I hear of the birds I cannot see and could not recognize if I had brought my binoculars and bird book. I imagine coming upon a moose or bear or even wolf, but know there aren’t any here in what is only marginally wilderness (how backcountry can it be to hear the semis occasionally boring down Minnesota Highway 61 some 1000 feet below). The trail is broad, about eight feet across, and recently mown, and mostly in sun, and not at all a backwoods feel. But the granite outcropping that rises at trail’s end at mountain crest is impressive and offers a 360-degree view of Grand Marais and the Gunflint Trail and Lake Superior and further to Canada. And then near the return to the trailhead, lost in the woods and bird calls and occasional views across the lake, my cellphone rings. It’s Mike from the bike shop in Grand Marais and they’ve fixed my warped wheel. I say I’ll be there in half an hour. And any sense of wilderness vanishes with “End Call.”