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Heirs to a hideaway

High above Minnesota's North Shore, a spot at Tettegouche Camp is as prized as ever.

Every week, a few dozen people join an exclusive club high above Minnesota's North Shore.

To get there, they lug all their food and gear 1¾ miles up and down a steep hill. They draw their own water and make their own fires. They clean and then lug their garbage over the same hill.

And they consider themselves lucky.

"This is luxurious," said Nicole Shipley of Coon Rapids, who was enjoying a belated honeymoon at the Tettegouche Camp with her husband, Jim. "It's so nice being out in the middle of nowhere."

A century ago, a group of Duluth businessmen thought so, too. In 1910, they bought 1,000 acres along the shores of Mic Mac Lake from Alger, Smith & Co., whose loggers had named it for an Algonquin tribe in their native New Brunswick. They'd spared a few red and white pines and called the spot Tettegouche, Algonquin for "the retreat," and the new owners adopted the name.

The members of the Tettegouche Club built a lodge, dining hall, boathouse and cabins, and then they settled in to fish and relax. In 1921, Duluth ore merchant Clement Quinn bought out the others and added another 1,000 acres to the preserve, which he kept for half a century before selling to descendants of a Duluth lumber baron.

They also wanted the land preserved, so they sold it to the Nature Conservancy, which sold it to the state. The state added the land to Baptism River State Park, which, in 1979, became Tettegouche State Park.

Now taxpayers own the Tettegouche Club, and boy, do we enjoy it.

It's called Tettegouche Camp now, and the dining hall and butler's cabin are long gone. But a spiffy new bath house has replaced the old one, and in summer, geraniums overflow from window boxes just as they did in the 1920s. Firewood is provided for heating stoves, and the four cabins have electricity; while campers won't be sitting down to a breakfast of partridge and popovers, as Mr. Quinn did, they can whip up eggs and bacon in their own kitchens.

It's cushy, as far as camping goes. But the splendid solitude is what makes it one of the most prized reservations in Minnesota's state-park system; often, weekends are reserved a year in advance, in the first hour they become available.

Luckily, my friend Deb plans ahead, and one January, she and I and members of the Minnesota Rovers Outdoors Club made the pilgrimage north. At the park headquarters near Silver Bay, assistant park manager Gary Hoeft gave us the keys and directions.

"Don't get lost; with the budget cuts and all, we don't have a rescue dog anymore," he joked.

Before we headed to the far side of the park, we walked across the parking lot and over to Shovel Point on Lake Superior, then back along the clifftop trail to the mouth of the Baptism River. In 1886, another fishing club owned this land; the mayor of St. Paul was president, and James J. Hill owned three shares.

The Baptism River Club soon built a clubhouse on the other side of the river's mouth, and members came up from Duluth and the Twin Cities to fish for trout. Ironically, fishing had declined by the time the Tettegouche Club formed, partly because of Alger-Smith's logging, which increased runoff on the river. In 1945, the state acquired the club's land for a park and later burned the clubhouse down.

After our walk, we drove up Minnesota 1, past the park's deluxe Illgen Falls Cabin and around the western flank of the park to the Tettegouche Camp parking lot. Then we got out our backpacks and piled plastic toboggans with food, skis, boots, snowshoes, boxed wine, board games, kindling — way too much, in fact.

We had ice and crusty snow on which to slide our toboggans, but still we broke a sweat right away, and our thighs started to burn as we struggled up the hill. A park ranger sped past on an ATV, averting his eyes for fear someone would ask for a ride.

"How do you think the explorers did it, and without even a clear-cut road?" Sarah said.

As soon as we arrived, we got the fires going and started a meal of jambalaya and salad. By the time dinner was over, the big lodge was toasty, so we convened there to play Cranium and card games.

We had visitors in the morning — three ice fishermen, who walked through the camp and over to the far side of Mic Mac Lake, where it's deepest. We had agonized over what to bring — classic skis, skate skis, snowshoes? — but the only thing we could have used was ice skates, which none of us brought. Usually, the Sawtooth Mountains have plenty of snow; not this year.

"I used to go ice fishing, but I gave it up for cross-country skiing, and now I can't do either," Jim said.

So we decided to hike to 70-foot High Falls, on the other side of the park. Our skis were useless, but our ski poles were invaluable; when we took a detour to Mount Trudee, the trail was covered with ice.

"This is good training for broomball," Lauren said. "You have to get your ice legs, and this is all short, choppy steps."

Distracted by a pretty icefall on Raven Rock, we missed the hiking trail to High Falls and ended up on a wide cross-country ski trail, where we followed the frozen tracks of fishers, deer and wolves. The uphill spur back to the Superior Hiking Trail was a river of ice, and we picked our way gingerly along its edges.

"I'm going to be a good old lady, because I know how to shuffle-walk," Deb said.

We could hear the roar of High Falls, the highest waterfall in Minnesota if you don't count the 120-foot High Falls on the Pigeon River, which Minnesota shares with Ontario. Crossing the river on a low suspension bridge, we settled down next to the falls so we could eat lunch while watching the white-gold froth crash into a pool and disappear under ice.

The cedar-lined path back to the main trail was steep and icy, and finally I remembered I had a pair of cheap boot crampons in my pocket. They worked great, but I'd barely had them on for five minutes when Alecia took a nasty tumble, followed by Melissa; I gave one a crampon, and the other my poles.

Then we all had an edge, but we were dreading the Drainpipe, a nearly vertical stretch of the Superior Hiking Trail. Its shadowy base looked like Middle-Earth, with piles of fractured rock and thick roots that snaked up from cedar trees and clamped boulders in a death grip.

But up was a lot easier than down would have been, and at the top we were relieved to find snow on the trail, not ice. Still, we barely made it home by dark; we'd been hiking for 5½ hours, and most of us were looking forward to wine and ibuprofen.

After dinner, we went to the lodge, where Jim and Nicole Shipley were practicing juggling. They'd cooked Cornish game hens in their wood stove, and Jim Shipley explained his method: Let the logs burn into charcoal, twist aluminum foil into a little platform, fill the hens with Stovetop stuffing and butter, wrap them in five layers of foil, cook for half an hour, turn, cook for another half an hour and then listen for sizzling.

People have all kinds of tricks to enhance their stays at Tettegouche Camp. The Shipleys also had been gleaning tips from the journal in Cabin D, the smallest.

"Our tip for you is, 'Don't put your pajamas on the stove to dry,' " Nicole Shipley said with a laugh.

In Cabin C, the people who stayed over Christmas had seen a wolf on the frozen lake: "The most amazing thing to do is lay on the ice at night and look at stars," wrote Phoebe, 14. In October, Maisey J. wrote, "Eat all your food so you don't have to carry it back." Kathy and Dan of Minneapolis wrote, "Almost 30 years in Minnesota and we just now discovered this camp! So many years wasted!"

It was hard to leave, so Deb and I didn't — right away, anyway. The others took the keys back, and we stashed our packs and walked across Mic Mac to an open channel, where a boardwalk led to Nipisiquit Lake.

We saw no one, but there were signs of activity everywhere: in a giant beaver lodge, the tapping of a woodpecker, a hole in the snow littered with a mouse's chewed-up pinecone. Near a trail sign, two squirrels chased each other in cartoonish circles until they noticed us and abruptly raced in opposite directions.

We circled Nicado Lake, climbed Mount Baldy and then, too soon, were back at camp. Then we did have to leave. On the way back to the car, we saw the new guests coming up the hill. They looked a little winded, but they were smiling.

At Tettegouche, everyone's happy to be a member of the club.

Trip Tips: Tettegouche Camp

Getting there: From the Twin Cities, it's a 3½-hour drive to Tettegouche (pronounced TETT-a-goosh) State Park, just past Silver Bay. It's another 10 miles to the parking lot off County Road 402, then a tough 1¾-mile hike that can take an hour. Try to get everything into a backpack; if you have excess gear, haul it on plastic toboggans in winter and wagons in summer.

Accommodations: The four cabins on Tettegouche's Mic Mac Lake rent for $65-$95 on weekdays from November through May and $90-$120 on weekends, holidays and daily from June through October. Cabin B, which is right on the lake and has two bedrooms, is most popular, $95-$120. The rate is for two people; additional people 12 and older are $10 per night. A canoe is included.

Cabins A, B and C have two bunk beds, each with a twin and a full-size mattress. Cabin D has one full-size bed. Guests must bring their own bedding and towels and clean the cabin before they leave. Garbage must be hauled out.

Kitchens include plates, pans and utensils but have no running water. There's an electric range and a small refrigerator. Bring dishwashing soap, coffee filters and dish towels as well as food.

There's a heated central shower house and a big lodge with two wood stoves. Wood is provided; bring firestarters, matches and kindling.

Reservations: They can be made a year in advance at 866-857-2757 or www.stayatmnparks.com; reservation fee is $8.50, and reservations can be made daily between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. (after the first day of availability, on-line reservations can be made 24 hours a day).

Illgen Falls Cabin: A mile and a half north of the park office, off Minnesota 1, the handicapped-accessible house at the top of 45-foot Illgen Falls has two bedrooms, bathroom, deck, gas grill, gas fireplace and kitchen with microwave, full refrigerator-freezer, computerized oven and glass-ceramic range. The rate for two is $120 weekdays from November through May and $160 on weekends, holidays and daily from June through October. Bedding is not provided.

Information: Call the park at 218-226-6365, www.mnstateparks.info.

Last updated on December 5, 2008