The Blood Cave, or "Holy crap, this thing is HUGE!"

If you haven't yet read part one of this story, please scroll down to the next post first.

I'd hardly call my interest in finding and exploring mostly forgotten-about places an "abandoned railroad fetish." It just so happens that old railroad grades are usually easy to mountain bike, and there's often interesting sights along them.

Now I'd found one and had to ride it this summer. I couldn't wait another year to see the now-confirmed tunnel and trestle. Some Googling revealed that the railroad grade had once been the main line into Duluth for the Duluth, Winnipeg, and Pacific Railway. The tunnel was blasted under Ely's Peak in 1912. The last train ran here in 1984, when the rails were rerouted to accommodate the construction of I-35. But the tunnel was still open (a friend who grew up in Duluth told me, "That's where all the stoner kids hang out").

Jenni and I went to her family's cabin the weekend of July 12-13. We'd planned on lots of canoeing but high winds, rain, and generally crapola weather kept us off the lake and cooped up in the cabin. By the time we were headed home on Sunday, we were itching to do something, anything. The sun popped out before we reached Duluth, and we had the bikes in the car.

It was time to launch an assault on the grade!

We parked at the end of the Munger Trail. Our plan was to do an out-and-back, out on the grade, back on the paved Munger Trail. We crossed Grand Avenue, passed the Lake Superior Zoo, and biked through a park. Up through the trees, the grade came into view in the form of an old concrete arch bridge crossing a gravel road.

We hiked the bikes up the slope and walked across that bridge, and an adjacent arch over a tumbling stream. The old ties were still in place on both bridges.

From there, it was smooth, easy riding. The grade was just wide enough for an ATV, and the surface was a mix of sand, gravel, and small rocks. Before long were were at Spirit Mountain. Here, part of the grade had been bulldozed. We followed some single-track through the woods. I had a spectacular head-over-handlebars wipe-out on a steep hill, but it was the sort of slow-motion affair that leaves one bruised, not bloodied.

Minutes later, we were out of the shade and crossing the sunny, grassy slope of Spirit Mountain's Four Pipe run. Ahead, just as I'd seen it in winter, the grade continued into the woods. We pressed on.

We passed a couple of near washouts, but generally the trail was easy, the climb gradual. "This is easy riding," I said to Jenni. Shouldn't have announced it: just up ahead was a long stretch of rocks...the kind you find spread along railroad tracks. I downshifted and picked my way through them. Nearly fell a couple of times, but made it to the end. Jenni was a ways back.

Now, I saw another bright sunny patch ahead. It seemed to have ties and railings...

The trestle!

Yes, this was it. I got off my bike, set it down, and assessed. The wood plank walkway along each side was in bad shape, cracked and rotted in places. The railing was up, but I wouldn't have trusted the weight of a fly to it. As for the bridge itself? Ties. There was no "deck" - just massive old ties with two-inch gaps of open space between. I muttered a volley of curses: I don't even like going up a flight of stairs with spaces between the steps.

I scrambled a few feet down the bank to get a better look at what we were about to cross. The bridge was a long longer from this perspective. And high - 50 or 60 feet above the rushing brook beneath it.

By now, Jenni had arrived. "Holy crap this thing is HUGE!" I exclaimed. Cue ominous movie soundtrack music.

She showed no fear and walked right onto it, stopping in the middle. She's brave, I thought. I picked up my bike and started stepped forward. The two-inch slices of foliage below quickly dropped away. I fought off the dizziness that inevitably accompanies high places.

But the gaps were too much. I had a death grip on my bike and my heart was pounding. The other side seemed no closer. The beam, I thought. The metal beam under the ties on each side of the bridge would give the illusion of something solid. I moved closer to the edge. This worked well...I caught a few glimpses of the drop beneath me, but mostly just saw the metal girder. Of course, now I was only a couple of feet from the rotting, busted walkway at the edge of the bridge, but whatever.

"Be careful, there's a couple of ties loose!" Jenni warned from up ahead. That's why she had stopped. Apparently, she told me later, I stepped right across the first one without realizing it. But the second one was very noticeable: it sank slightly and wobbled against the bolts holding it in place. I'm glad I'm over the beam, I thought, or I would wet my pants. But the highest part of the bridge was behind me now. Relax, I kept telling myself. Relax. And finally, I stepped onto blessedly solid ground.

Whew.

Not even a hundred yards later was another trestle, but this one was much smaller and over shallow ravine. After the bridge of towering terror that I'd just crossed, this was cake. From there, the grade opened up as it traversed the hillside. We had great views of St. Louis Bay and an eagle that soared above. We rode through several shadowy rock cuts, just wide enough to squeeze a train through. The shady basaltic narrows harbored refreshing cool air.

Suddenly, a mountain biker materialized in front of us. I'm not sure who was more surprised, but it was a pleasant discovery that we were not the only ones enjoying this hidden-but-scenic trail. We nodded hellos and as he disappeared behind us, I wondered if he would bike or walk across the high trestle.

Just about the time I was getting antsy for the tunnel the hill above us became markedly higher. Cliffs towered. And then, there it was...a gigantic black void in the cliff, like the gaping maw of a creature waiting to swallow us whole. There was no light at the other end.

I trotted up to the entrance for a photo op. I still couldn't see light, and I felt a breeze coming out of the tunnel mouth. On the boulders around my feet, someone had painted "BLOOD CAVE." "DANGER." "WARNING." Arrows pointing inside. How quaint.

It was damn dark in there, but before the entrance had receded from view we saw the glint of light off the rocks near the other end. Soon we were stepping back into the sunlight. "YOU MADE IT" the graffiti announced. So much for the Blood Cave. The potheads ought to go visit the Trestle of Death and see how they fare there.

On second thought, that's probably not a good idea.

After the tunnel, we had one more trestle to cross. This one was shorter, and perhaps 35 feet high, above an old gravel pit road. It also lacked the busted-but-oddly-reassuring railings, and in fact felt much more exposed that its predecessor. But of course I made it, well behind Jenni and my heart pounding like a timpani.

From there, it was literally all downhill. We got off the grade at the western terminus of Skyline Drive, crossed Midway Road, and a few minutes later were enjoying a fast seven-mile ride downhill back to Duluth and the parking lot.

Experience the Blood Cave and the Trestle of Death yourself: Gallery of photos here.

A trail, a trestle, a tunnel

OK, I confess. I'm a bit of an Internet geek. (That's probably no surprise to you, with the whole blog-and-website-about-the-canoe-trip thing.) But of all the goodies available on what my aunt refers to as the World Wide Waste-of-time, none captivates me like Google Maps. Interactive, zoomable maps with satellite photo overlays - sweet bliss.

See, I'm a bit of a map geek, too. I love poring over catrographs of, well, just about anything, and wondering what the landscape looks like right about there.

Google Maps were exciting enough, but Google had to go and up the ante with Google Earth. You're probably heard of it...it's a free downloadable program that shows you the Earth in three dimensions. Satellite photos, elevation data, "click this dot to see a photo of this place" - it's a wonder I ever get off the computer. (Jenni often drags me.)

One of my more pervasive habits is looking up places I know, and go to frequently, to see what might be worth exploring around them. A lake? A trail? A leftover relic of history?

That's exactly how I "discovered" Sportsman's Island.

But the island wasn't the only curiosity I've sought out. I've skied at Spirit Mountain in Duluth a few times. While carving up the slopes at the far end of the ski area, on more than one occasion I've noticed what appeared to be a flat, one-lane road cutting off from the slope and into the woods. Mountain biking on old logging railroad grades near the Gunflint Trail led me to suspect it might be a railroad grade. But cutting across a ski slope?

A few months ago, I pulled up Google Earth and zoomed into Spirit Mountain to see what I could find. The grade was easy to pick out. In the summertime image, it was a line of gravel transversing the mountain. As I zoomed out, I could see that it ran perpendicular to the slope of Duluth's big hill for several miles. North of Spirit Mountain, it soon entered an industrial area of the city - a telltale sign of a railroad grade.

On the other side of Spirit Mountain, the grade continued southwest, cutting along the hill about halfway up. It ran generally parallel to the Willard Munger State Trail, but seemed to promise better views. And it looked bike-friendly.

I traced all the way back to I-35. Nearby, it met up with active railroad tracks. A railroad grade indeed! But one thing was peculiar: about two-thirds of the way along the grade, it abruptly ended at a prominent rock outcrop, and continued again on the far side.

A tunnel? Could it possibly be a tunnel?

Looking for confirmation, I pulled up Microsoft Live Maps with its "Bird's eye" view. Not satellite photos, this is an actual mosaic of aerial photos from perspective angles. Coverage is spotty, but Duluth was one of the cities with these views. Spirit Mountain was an easy find, and I picked up the grade's dirt line and followed it southwest. Halfway to where I thought the tunnel should be, I shouted with surprise: Spanning a deep, narrow ravine was a large metal railroad trestle!

Tracing the grade further southwest, I saw now that it threaded several impressive rock cuts before, sure enough, ending at a rock wall with a dark opening. There it was, in all its glory: the tunnel.

A trestle and a tunnel! I thought these kinds of things only existed out west.

I had to see it. I had to mountain bike it. I showed my discovery to Jenni, who was thankfully interested in checking it out. (She accused me of having some kind of "abandoned railroad fetish," but whatever.)

The question was when?

As it would turn out, sooner than we thought.

In the interest of quasi-shorter blog posts, TO BE CONTINUED...

First Photo Gallery

You read about our July 4 Mississippi kayaking adventure...now see the photos! We have our first slide show photo gallery up and running at GunflintToElyCanoe.com. Check it out here, for more images of the river, the giant storm sewer outlet, and mysterious Sportsman's Island.

Next on the agenda: a trip to Bear Island Lake, our "finish line" in September, and a chance to do more canoeing.

Down the Mississippi to Sportsman's Island

The river has always been a backdrop.

As I kid, I spent many happy hours exploring the river bottoms and islands in the Mississippi River valley south of St. Cloud. During my teenage years, this environment taught me about nature, photography, and why it’s a bad idea to traipse through a patch of stinging nettles while wearing shorts. I attended high school in sight of the river and went to college along its oak-crowned banks. Through spring floods, summer dry spells, and winter’s ice, the Mississippi has always been there. And it always will be, part of the comfort of returning home when so much else in the world is ever changing.

So it seemed appropriate, even if not consciously so, that this should be the place of the first river kayak expedition with my wife. My parents had invited Jenni and me to their St. Cloud home for a Fourth of July barbecue, which sounded good, provided we could work in a real paddling adventure. So we hauled the kayaks along with us; my dad agreed to run us up to St. Cloud and drop us off along the river. We'd kayak several miles south and land at my parents' house in time for lunch.

The Fourth was as perfect a summer day as we can imagine here in Minnesota. Blue sky flecked with cottony puffs of cloud, 80 degrees, and a light breeze. I was doubly looking forward to the trip: It was the first real paddling expedition Jenni and I had embarked upon this year, and it was through a stretch of the river I knew well, yet had never navigated by water.

The drop-off point was Wilson Park - site of St. Cloud's annual Fourth of July fireworks display - where we put in at the Mississippi boat launch. After a thorough daubing of sunscreen, we paddled away from the dock and inlet and onto the river itself.

The athletic field of my high school passed on our right, but we hugged the high left bank. Kayaking is more interesting when you're closer to the shore. Downtown St. Cloud's three bridges came into view, bridges I know well but had never seen from this perspective. We passed several docks with moored pontoon boats along the shore - who knew there were docks here! - and then began our dizzying pass underneath the massive railroad bridge that connected the east St. Cloud with the rail yards on the west side of town. Veterans Bridge carrying St. Germain Street was next, with the rumble of unseen traffic above our heads.

Farther along, we paused to investigate the gaping maw of a storm sewer pipe along the shore. Chilly air poured out of blackness, and steam rose from the outlet. I couldn't help but wonder: How far back underground does the pipe go? Has anyone ever explored it? Would anyone dare?

As we passed downtown, DeSoto Bridge loomed ahead. This bridge, carrying State Highway 23 across the river, was the most major of the city's Mississippi road crossings, carrying 31,000 vehicles a day. Was is the key word. As we approached, the bridge was eerily quiet. It was closed by the state in March after bridge inspectors discovered some bending in its gusset plates. If you're a Minnesotan, you know the term "gusset plates" well: It was these metal plates, which bolt multiple girders together, that failed on the I-35W bridge in downtown Minneapolis nearly a year ago, causing its collapse. In the hyper-sensitive infrastructure environment that has followed, no bridge is above scrutiny. When inspectors found the bending gusset plate issue on the St. Cloud bridge - a fracture-critical bridge similar in design to the 35W bridge - they closed it, for good as it would turn out. It's scheduled to be replaced in 2009, with work starting just a couple of months from now.

So it was a little strange to be paddling underneath this black metal behemoth, knowing that I had walked and biked across it many times, but soon it would exist no more.

Jenni was getting impatient with my frequent stops for picture-taking, so I stowed the camera as the doomed DeSoto Bridge receded behind us. We made good time along the tall, wooded banks of the river. St. Cloud State University - our alma mater - slid by atop the far bank. By now, University Bridge was in sight as we could hear the distant rush of falling water...the St. Cloud Dam.

We pulled out of the river just upstream from the bridge. Eroded portage steps marked the landing at the edge of Munsinger Gardens. Anticipating turbulent waters ahead, I stowed my camera in the watertight forward hold of my kayak and we portaged around the dam.

Getting in was not as friendly as getting out. We had to carry the kayaks down a steep slope of rocky riprap to reach the river. Though very little water was going over most of the dam, the top gate had been lowered along the section closest to us, kicking up a narrow-but-fast current not far from shore. In contrast to the lake-like feel of the pool above the dam, here the water was fast moving and wavy.

We launched and were quickly carried downstream, past just-submerged rocks and through riffles. The most expedient route would have been to stick to the main channel, but we were in the mood to explore and headed to a side channel, one of many among the Beaver Islands. Zebulon Pike had explored these same channels 200 years earlier.

In some places, the water was only a few inches deep and our paddles scraped bottom...but the ride was fast. When I commented on the "rapids," Jenni corrected me: "These aren't rapids. Rapids have a drop." Oh...well, waves and rocks or whatever you want to call them were plenty exciting.

And then we ran aground. We were among the islands now, at the juncture of a couple of channels. Just that fast, the bottom came up to within a couple of inches of the surface, and with a gravelly crunch, we were stuck. We had to push off the bottom to get moving again, only to run aground a short distance later. We hopped out of the kayaks and walked down the channel for 50 yards, debating whether to continue or to try floating again. When another party of a canoe and two kayaks passed on the channel ahead, we opted to float.

The river was full of boulders here. The current picked up. Ahead, I could see a distinct line among the boulders of the river: a drop. Hello, rapids. It was just a few inches, thankfully, and with a little paddling, the kayaks slid right over it. Then another small drop, this time with waves beyond. By now, I'd recognized the "V" formed by fast current between rocks, so I aimed for it and sliced through the choppy water.

Wow. Crap that was exciting. This wasn't even Class I whitewater, and I was already sufficiently thrilled. I was also beginning to see that while our lovely long kayaks were great for tracking on a windy and wavy lake, they weren't adept at maneuvering around rocks in the swift, shallow currents of the Mississippi. Not at all like a canoe. This was confirmed a short time later when I took submerged rock head-on and felt it slide underneath me along the hull. Scraaape. Cringe.

We rejoined the main river and paddled across the channel, aiming upstream because of the current. It was a bizarre sensation, like going forward and backward at the same time. My stomach wrenched and I felt a wave of seasickness ripple through my body. Thankfully, it passed quickly.

Across the main channel, we turned into another shallow reach, this one a calm backwater, and paddled upstream. Foot-long carp darted away from the shadows of our boats as we passed. Around a bend, an extraordinary sight: the bridge to Sportsman's Island. This intriguing place had once been a park - my dad and his siblings had vague memories of going there as children in the late 1950s or early ’60s. Sometime later, perhaps the ’70s, the park was closed, abandoned for reasons unknown.

The rusting truss bridge connecting the island to the shore still stands, but its deck long ago fell apart and daylight shines through portions of the severely rusted girders. Jenni and I pulled up next to the bridge, carefully stepped around poison ivy, and climbed up the bank to the island.

There, we found the hulk of a decades-old car, grass growing through the engine compartment. Several rusting metal buildings stood watch over an open area. One, with old refrigerators and freezers and a few wide windows, we deduced to be a concessions building. Another was obviously a picnic shelter. A backstop rose out of waist-high grass, overlooking an empty field where a baseball diamond had been. There was even a rusty merry-go-round, still capable of spinning despite its disheveled condition.

Exploring these remains, I couldn't help but feel like we were seeing the leftovers of a bombed-out civilization. What happened to Sportsman's Island? As Jenni said, “This would be such a neat place for a park today.” Why wasn't this prime locale still open for recreation? What caused it to be abandoned so hastily?

We'll likely never know.

We tiptoed around the poison ivy and put the boats back in the water. More carp fled, leaving puffs of sediment beneath the surface. Soon we were back on the main river; a half hour later we were passing Putnam's Island, a place I'd explored on foot many of times. Around a bend, we cut into a shallow side channel, then turned upstream to land at the shore below my parents' home.

Every fireworks show has a grand finale. So did our Fourth of July adventure:
hauling two 17-foot, 63-pound kayaks up 70 feet of baking hot sand bank covered with prickly junipers. And that, not the paddling itself, is why I was sore for the rest of the weekend.

Look for a photo gallery of our little river ramble on GunflintToElyCanoe.com later this week.

The kayaks come home

OK, here we are back after a little hiatus with, finally, a kayak update. June 13 seems like ages ago. But that's the day we welcomed our gorgeous new kayaks home.

I took the day off of work to drive down to Winona, location of Current Designs' manufacturing facility. Jenni had to work, so my dad joined me. He has more expertise than I when it comes to lashing things to vehicles, and I though that knowledge might come in handy. The drive to Winona - down Highway 52, through Rochester, and then east on I-90 - was easy and we were at the Wenonah Canoe headquarters by 9 a.m.

There, we met Mike Cichanowski, owner and CEO of Wenonah Canoe and Current Designs. Mike's the guy who founded Wenonah 40 years ago! He was kind enough to arrange a factory tour for us, and personally showed us through the canoe manufacturing campus. For as well-known as the Wenonah brand is - at least here in Minnesota - I was surprised how compact the whole operation was. It's a cluster of nondescript-looking buildings tucked at the edge of an industrial park. But within, magic. As we walked through the factory, we saw the entire gestation of a canoe. I was particularly interested in how a Kevlar canoe was made. The Kevlar starts in rolls of cloth-like material, is cut and shaped in molds, fitted to a frame, and laminated with a gleaming layer of gel-coat. The pride Wenonah's craftsmen took in building these boats was obvious.

Next, we passed into a warehouse, with rows and rows of canoes lined into corrals along the wall. Mike explained that the majority of the boats were made-to-order, even custom built; everything we saw had been spoken for and was bound for the destination where its owners awaited. We learned that Wenonah ships a fair number of boats to Europe, especially Germany. How do they do it? By packing canoes and kayks into truck-sized metal containers and sending them across the pond on a container ship. Kind of cool that Wenonah canoes must sail the ocean to get to the lakes and rivers of Europe.

When our conversation touched the comparatively light weight of Kevlar canoes, Mike picked up a sleek honey-hued canoe, set it down on the wood-chipped floor, and invited us to give it a lift. Used to the 50-year-old aluminum canoes at our cabin, my dad and I bent down and prepared to heft each end. The canoe practically leapt into our hands! Mike said it was a scant 38 pounds. I'd never touched a Kevlar canoe before...but after that experience, I expect Jenni and I will get one someday. I want one. (And it made me seriously consider renting one for our big canoe trip in September.)

Next, it was off to the Current Designs factory building - a few minutes' drive away - where another team of skilled men and women were building kayaks. Here, two manufacturing lines were housed within one warehouse-sized building. On one side, fiberglass boats were being assembled. Molds adorned one wall, and across the floor, a number of boats were in various stages of construction. The top and bottom of the hull were molded separately using a vacuum-bag laminate process, then joined together at the seams, fitted with bulkheads, and finished with a silky smooth layer of gel-coat.

Passing through a door in the wall dividing the space, we found ourselves in the midst of the rotomolded polyethylene kayak line. At one corner of the space, a monster black oven, big enough to swallow a kayak, slowly rocked end to end. Complex-looking metal molds, recognizable by their rough kayak shape, sat on the cement nearby. This was where the boats were created: powered plastic was placed in the mold, which was put in the oven. As the powder began to melt, the rocking of the oven ensured it would flow evenly throughout the mold. Once this "baking" process is complete, the mold comes out and the new kayak is allowed to cool. As it cools, it shrinks by several inches, so the mold has to be engineered larger than the actual boat. How they figure out exactly what size to make the mold is beyond me, but they've obviously got it down. Once the boat has cooled, it's removed, any excess bits of plastic are trimmed off, and the kayak is finished with bulkheads, a seat, rudder, deck rigging, and so forth.

It's easier for Current Designs to design a new fiberglass kayak: its crew can create new molds themselves. Designing the complex metal molds for the plastic kayaks is a much more time and cost intensive process. But once the mold is ready, Current Designs can turn out a half-dozen or more plastic kayaks a day, compared to two or three fiberglass boats.

While my dad and I were in the midst of this fascinating tour, some of the awesome Current Designs folks grabbed the two kayaks that would be Jenni's and mine. By the time we got back to the car, the kayaks, wrapped for the journey in plastic and foam - were already loaded and secured strapped to the roof rack (see the photo above). They were solid as a rock - it makes sense that these guys knew how to lash kayaks to a car - and it was a good thing, because we endured a gusty drive home.

That evening, Jenni and I launched our Storm GTs on Rice Lake here in Maple Grove. We put in at a city park and pushed off into an evening of paddling bliss. We found our boats to be fast, stable, nimble on waves, and comfortable to sit in. All in all, paddling is a joy!

We've been out a few times since then on a couple of the lakes here in Maple Grove. Paddling across calm water at sunset is heaven, whether you're in the Boundary Waters or the Twin Cities suburbs. In our few evening jaunts, we've glided past flotillas of ducks and geese, watched a deer come to drink at the shore, spied on a snapping turtle that was as big as a dinner platter, and paid a visit to a pelican. We've followed canals from Rice Lake under Interstate 94 and into secluded wetlands hiding in the midst of suburbia, just out of sight of Maple Grove's busy thoroughfares.

I loved kayaking at my cabin, but now that I have a boat of my own, I can say with confidence that I'm an addict.

With the Fourth of July upon us, we're marking the holiday with our first mini-expedition. We are bound for St. Cloud, where the plan is to paddle from the city down the Mississippi River, through the wild Beaver Islands, to end at my folks' place just in time for lunch. If all goes well, we might have some pictures to post by the end of the weekend.

I'll close with a photo taken last Saturday, while I was spectating - from my kayak! - at the start of the City of Lakes Tri-Loppet race, which began on Lake Calhoun with a canoe/kayak race. What you can't see is the grin behind the camera.

A big, hearty thank you to Mike Cichanowski and all of the great people at Current Designs and Wenonah Canoe for helping us realize our kayaking dreams!