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Other stories in "Fall"

• This weekend
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• Bash on a bike trail
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• Closing the deal
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• Ely's blue over hues
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• Eyes on the skies
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• Price check/A northwoods weekend
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• Hot tip/A different North Shore
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• On the road/A fall drive along the St. Croix
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• 10 great trails to ride in fall
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• In river towns, favorites debut anew
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• Go swan watching
  

Go on a trail-clearing trip

If you enjoy a hike, help make it possible for others.

Have you ever wondered who keeps your favorite hiking trail open?

It's not Mother Nature. She's the one downing the trees and making the brush grow over the path.

The U.S. Forest Service and state Department of Natural Resources try to keep many trails open, but they can't do it alone. So, every spring and fall, they count on volunteers to pitch in and help.

In fall, many hiking and outdoors organizations organize trail-clearing trips that combine work with time to enjoy the changing colors in the forest.

One of the groups is the Minnesota Rovers Outing Club, which planned and built the 65-mile Border Route Trail in the 1970s and still maintains it. For more than a decade, longtime member Tom Harris of Brooklyn Park has led one of the fall trail-clearing trips; he says that's how he repays the people who maintain the trails he hikes in the mountains out West as well as at home.

"This is a local trail, and we can keep it open and pay our dues back," he says. "It's also a lot of fun, to get out in the woods and hack and smash and throw stuff around. And every once in a while, we'll have some hikers come along, and they're really happy with us."

Part of the Border Route Trail is in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and Harris prefers the quiet, nonmechanized clearing that is required there. But volunteers can swing a chainsaw on other stretches of the trail, though they may have to be certified to use one first.

Harris' group will drive up to the Gunflint Trail Thursday night and return next Sunday. Cost is $65, including food on the trail and transportation from Roseville; camping equipment can be borrowed from the Rovers equipment cage. For information about volunteering, call Harris at 763-391-0774. For information about the Rovers, click on www.mnrovers.org.

Longtime Rovers member Ed Solstad leads a mechanized clearing trip to the Gunflint section of the Border Route Trail. Cost is $65, including food on the trail, transportation and lodgings at Heston's Resort. For more information, call Solstad at 612-822-0569.

The North Stars Ski Touring Club also plans fall trips to help clear the ski trails they use. Volunteers are hosted by resorts and pay a $25 deposit that is refunded later.

Trail-clearing trips go to Camp du Nord near Ely; the National Forest Lodge, up Minnesota 1 from the North Shore; the Gunflint Lodge on the Gunflint Trail; the Banadad Trail from a Boundary Country cabin and yurt; and North Shore trails from several North Shore resorts.

For more information about the trips, click on www.north-stars.org.

Many resorts also host their own work weekends in late fall, after the fall-color tourist season ends. Gunflint Lodge hosts them on the first two weekends in November. Guests are expected to work five hours on Saturday mornings; cost includes accommodations in a cabin with fireplace, sauna and whirlpool spa (best cabin available, on a first-come, first-served basis) and a barbecued-chicken buffet dinner.

For more information, call 1-800-328-3325 or click on www.gunflint.com.

Among the trail clubs that also welcome volunteers are:

Superior Hiking Trail Association, which maintains the Superior Hiking Trail between Duluth and the Canadian border; 218-834-2700, www.shta.org.

Kekakabic Trail Club, which maintains backpacking trails in Superior National Forest and the BWCA Wilderness; 800-818-4453, 651-254-9885, www.kek.org.

Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation, which is building and maintains the 1,000-mile Ice Age National Scenic Trail across Wisconsin; 800-227-0046, www.iceagetrail.org.

North Country Trail Association, which is building and maintains a 4,000-mile path from North Dakota to New York; 866-445-3628, www.northcountrytrail.org.

Last updated on September 9, 2008