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It took plenty of sisu to settle Embarrass.
It's the consistently coldest spot in the Lower 48; arctic blasts blow up against the Laurentian Divide and pool over the township, which set a record of 64 below in 1996. The soil is poor, allowing farmers to do little more than grow potatoes and raise a few cows.
The very word Embarrass is French for obstacle, and comes from French voyageurs' opinion of the local river: curvy as a corkscrew and usually too low to navigate.
The Iron Range never has been for anyone who didn’t want to sweat.
Ever since iron ore was discovered on the shores of Lake Vermilion, this strip of Minnesota has drawn people who wanted to work. One of the world’s richest deposits of iron ore lay under the forest, and waves of Finns, Slovenes, Italians, Swedes, Croatians, Poles, Germans and Serbs came to shovel it out.
On the Vermillion Range, hard ore lay in vertical shafts, and the Soudan mine near Ely eventually reached seven football fields into the Earth. To the south, softer ore lay along a wooded ridge of hills, an exposed stretch of the Laurentian Divide that the Ojibwe called the sleeping giant, or Mesabi. The Mesabi Range runs nearly 120 miles, from just east of Grand Rapids to Hoyt Lakes, and its ore could be dug out of open pits.
For cross-country skiers, Giants Ridge has it all: Plentiful snow. Scenery. Sixty kilometers of groomed trails.
Best of all, it has chairlifts.
Alpine skiers aren’t the only ones who think downhills are more fun than uphills. Nordic skiers also like to put gravity on their side, especially those who are trying to learn how to skate.