Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji, continuing their second century of service to the community, member FDIC.

[Music] [Music] Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm Producer/Director Scott Knudson.

In this episode, Producer/Director Randy Cadwell takes us for a hike to meet the people and places of the North Country Trail.

[Music] [Music] Well, I'm in the middle of walking the North Country Trail, walking from North Dakota to Vermont.

This is the first time I've done this trail.

I've done sections of this trail, such as the Superior Hiking Trail.

I've done parts of the Border Route Trail, but I've never thru-hiked any of it.

This section of the North Country Trail in Minnesota has been absolutely pure heaven, absolutely.

I mean the pine trees, the lakes, the loons calling.

It's been absolutely pure bliss.

[Music] The North Country Trail, or officially the North Country National Scenic Trail, is a very long footpath, about 5,000 miles in length, that goes from Lake Sakakawea State Park at the West End in North Dakota, all the way to the Appalachian Trail in Vermont.

So back in the 1960's, I think it was the Johnson Administration, asked for a study to look at copying the Appalachian Trail in other parts of the United States.

And there was a report, I think it was Trails for America that said, "Yeah, we should have this system of trails all across the United States."

And it identified a couple different opportunities.

The North Country Trail was one of those.

The U.S Forest Service actually had a trail called the North Country Trail in northern Wisconsin that went across the Chequamegon National Forest, and they had the idea of connecting all of their national forests and the national grassland in North Dakota across the northern tier of the United States.

And so, kind of the combination of those two things led to this idea of the North Country Trail.

And then it was 1980 when Congress officially created it.

And then in 1982, the North Country Trail Association, the non-profit that's really trying to build and maintain this trail through a network of volunteers, was formed.

And ever since then, we've been, you know, out here working hard and really what we've accomplished is pretty amazing.

I mean 3,000 miles of trail, plus, in 40 years without a lot of funding, without a lot of support from the federal government.

It's been really amazing, and it's still a work in progress.

We've got over 3,100 miles of trail on the ground, so footpath that you can get out and walk.

And then the rest of it is road walks that pieces those off-road trail sections together.

[Music] The North Country Trail enters Minnesota at Fort Abercrombie, which is right on the other side, on the North Dakota side, so it crosses the Red River.

And then, originally, it was supposed to go south down to Wahpeton and then cross back into Minnesota at Breckenridge, and that was all going to be on abandoned railroad grades that were, those opportunities are gone.

The railroad, you know, abandoned those and it reverted back to the private landowners.

So instead, from Abercrombie the trail goes east over to Rothsay and then from Rothsay it goes down to Fergus Falls.

Fantastic trail, has some great hiking through prairie opportunities and it also goes right through downtown Fergus Falls.

We call that the urban loop.

And there aren't a lot of cities that have the urban loop in them.

My name is Gaylan Mathesen and I'm with the Minnesota Waters and Prairie Chapter of the North Country Trail.

This is One Mile Lake Prairie.

This really is such a beautiful open area, very hilly, a lot of grasses, wildflowers.

You see little ponds here and there.

You see ducks.

So it's just a sense of being right out on the open prairie.

You get the nice breezes going, the wind--it's almost like watching waves as the wind makes its way through the grasses.

It's beautiful to watch.

You can get up on some of these hills and some beautiful overlook of the city.

And we've really enjoyed watching people make use of these trails, you know, to see families out on these trails is so rewarding.

And then from there it heads up towards Maplewood State Park, Tamarack National Wildlife Refuge.

Sometimes we'll get 25 hikers, but I realize the weather was just a bit iffy today, so we just want to enjoy the day in the spring.

Find the signs of spring, the wildflowers, the birds that we'll be hearing.

I went to the very first meeting.

It was an organizational meeting.

I thought it was going to be a hiking club.

Little did I know that I'd spend hours and miles helping build trail but it's been a great experience.

So is it the oriole that's singing?

I believe the oriole.

And then it comes up here to Itasca.

In 1999 we also made a trip.

Valley City was hosting the North Country Trail Association meeting that year, so that was our first exposure to it.

Then Carter got out on the trail.

I started the hike near Remer, Minnesota.

I forget how long that was but, on that hike, I met Jerry Trout.

He mentioned we could be working on the trail and form a chapter because he's a big organizer and so that's how we got started on it, the Itasca Moraine.

And then it kind of swings and goes to the east, heads over towards the Chippewa National Forest, which was the original section of the North Country Trail in Minnesota going back to the mid 80's.

And then, from there, our route changes.

It follows what we call the Arrowhead Reroute, so rather than from near Remer, going down towards Jay Cook State Park in Wisconsin.

And now we'll go up to Grand Rapids where we have some new trail that we're building, and then it'll go all the way up to Ely.

And then through the Boundary Waters on the Kekekabic Trail and the Border Route Trail.

Kekekabic is a 39 mile wilderness trail that goes right through the heart of the Boundary Waters.

The word kekekabic comes from the Ojibwe language, which means hawk iron cliffs.

The Kekekabic trail started back in the1930's and it was built as a forest service by the Forest Service and the CCC.

And it really was built to get firefighters into a fire tower out at Kekekobic Lake, so it served that purpose for a number of years.

In the 1960's, the Forest Service turned it into a backpacking trail, and then for about the next 25 years it was a hiking trail.

But then, finally, it just got to be so hard to maintain and the Forest Service was ready to abandon the trail.

And at that point, in 1990, a very dedicated group of volunteers took it over, cleared the trail, and preserved it for us today.

The North Country Trail and the Kek, they're a beginning to an end.

The North Country Trail is around 5,000 miles and so if you get a break in the middle of that 5,000 miles, what you got maybe a 2,000 mile section and a 3,000 mile section?

So, having those continuous is really important, and it's really important to have the same trail.

People expect to see a trail, so you want to have the same kind of conditions, not the same trail.

People expect the Kek to be a rough trail.

It's a primitive trail.

The Border Route Trail is 65 miles long.

It's a hiking trail that spans from the 270 Degree Overlook of the Superior Hiking Trail.

So beautiful.

Oh my gosh.

It's unbelievable.

It goes 27 miles of trail outside the Boundary Waters, and then there's another about 30 miles through the wilderness.

And then after that an additional 30 miles to the Kekekabic Trail.

So it connects the Superior Hiking Trail to the Kekekabic Trail.

The Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness is a designated Wilderness Area, so it does require certain permitting and there are rules so that you do limit your impact while you're in that area.

For example, when we're maintaining and marking the trail there's like no blazes allowed, so it can be difficult to navigate while you're in that area, but it does also pose kind of like a fun challenge for a more experienced hiker.

The Border Route Trail follows the Canadian border, so as you're hiking along it you get up to like some very impressive overlooks of Canada and lakes and stuff in Minnesota.

So it's very beautiful.

And then it follows the Superior Hiking Trail for about 300 miles down to Duluth.

Today we're here on the Superior Hiking Trail in Duluth, Minnesota, where 42 miles of our trail exists.

We are a 300 plus mile footpath that traverses the rocky ridge of Lake Superior.

The Superior Hiking Trail was really a vision of land managers coming together with local lodge and inn owners along the North Shore envisioning, through hiking, a long trail that would connect Minnesota's North Shore to Canada.

We didn't make it into Canada or around the lake, but we made it darn near close.

So we've been in existence for 36 years.

We manage and maintain all 300 plus miles.

We have 94 primitive campsites along the way and approximately 60 trailheads, access points.

We do have a lot of elevation loss and gain throughout our entire trail system because you're really going peak to peak along the trail and in between are ravines.

Whether that's creek or river.

So you cross a lot of different bodies of water, waterfalls, and interact with just a lot of different topography within the 300 miles.

It does make kind of a grand circle through Northern Minnesota and people say, you know, well, why does it go so far out of the way?

You know the tip of the Arrowhead is a long ways from, you know, the Chippewa National Forest, but it's got some of the best scenery in all of Minnesota and that's what our trail is about.

It is taking people to the best places for them to have superb outdoor recreation experiences.

That's what the National Trail System Act calls for.

We don't want this trail to just be the easiest or the quickest or maybe the most boring way to get across the landscape.

We want to have the best experience.

And hiking through the Boundary Waters and then hiking down the North Shore is definitely that way.

That's the case here in Minnesota.

That's how we maximize the experience on the North Country Trail.

If it all looks the same people are going to go yeah, that's a nice trail.

I don't know if I need to hike that again.

But if people are wondering, I wonder what's around that next corner, it's going to keep them coming out there.

And so when we're building the trail and laying it out we try to maximize that variety because that's going to provide that great experience.

This trail really exists because land management partners and private landowners, state forests, national forests, county forests, they all recognize that this trail is a good thing for citizens.

If they don't have to do a lot of work, if they can provide the land for the trail to go on and then our volunteers will do the work and we'll fundraise and we'll come up with the money, it's a perfect combination because we help them accomplish their mission by providing public recreation at no cost to them.

So we're very supportive of all the land management partners and the private landowners who host the trail because without them, you know, we'd be walking roads.

So we have some plans that show where we want the trail to go, and we maximize public land as much as possible.

But, you know, when you get south of Highway 34, heading down towards Maplewood and Fergus Falls and then certainly across the Red River Valley there's very little public land, and so we're dependent on private landowners seeing the value of this trail and being willing to entertain the idea of the trail crossing their land.

We're asking them, you know, could we put the trail somewhere on your land and we recognize that, you know, they're doing stuff with their land and so we can't go wherever we think the best place for the trail is.

It's kind of that partnership, you know, a lot of give and take.

We'll ask the landowner like, well, where can we be on your land that isn't going to impact what you're doing.

You know by allowing the public to use their land, as long as they don't charge admission, they're covered.

They're not going to be held liable if somebody's injured while recreating on their private land.

We would love the public to know that hikers are not going to damage anything.

The trail itself is not very intrusive, so we'd love for more private landowners to join with us so we could get off these long road walks.

When we make a new trail we have like an 18 inch wide tread width that we try to dig up, and then we have a four foot wide clearing, eight feet tall.

I believe that's a National Park Service standard.

So this is Side Hill Trail.

We kind of, you know, build it into the side slope, and it's very sustainable.

Like any water that comes rushing down the hillside should just drain right across the trail, and if it does intercept the trail we have little drains like this.

You know the water will come down, run down the trail, and then hopefully run off the trail.

And the whole idea with building a hiking trail is to keep the hikers on the trail, keep the water off.

So that is the way that the trail is going to be as sustainable as possible, and it's going to minimize the impact.

Volunteers with their local group, they have responsibility for a section of the trail, and they figure out how they can build and maintain, promote, and protect that section of the trail.

And then they hand it off to the next chapter, you know, further to the east or further to the west and we work with those chapters.

And when I say we, the staff of the North Country Trail Association and the National Park Service, we try to support their work, you know, through training, through grants, through, you know, coordination with land management partners, you know, a lot of that bureaucracy kind of stuff.

Simply put, without our volunteers, the trail would not exist.

They figured out where the trail should go, they cleared it, they built it, they maintain it, they promote it, they get out there and lead guided hikes on the trail to introduce new people to the trail.

Our volunteers are amazing.

It's people who say, you know, I've really done a lot of hiking in my life and I want to give back, and so they get involved with the North Country Trail Association.

Maybe they adopt a section of their trail that they maintain on their own.

Or maybe they join the chapter's trail crew which goes out maybe every Wednesday to work on a section of the trail.

It's my favorite part of, you know, this job, this type of work.

You know we work in beautiful places, but we get to work with amazing people.

For many years I just assumed, you know, the government did it or federal employees or whatever, and so it's been real eye-opening for me to know that so much of this is done by volunteers.

The trail is, I say, highly orchestrated.

And then also part magic.

The magic is really the volunteers and the community behind the trails.

I grew up hiking on the North Country Trail without even knowing it.

Then I realized that it was this whole humongous National Scenic Trail that's the longest National Scenic Trail and how big of a deal it is and how cool it is and how gorgeous it is.

And then I just wanted to be more involved, and so I joined the Star of the North Chapter because that's my local chapter and I did some trail maintenance with them, and it was just so fun.

and I don't know... Just Hike It Build It Love It, isn't that the motto of the trail?

Hike It Build It Love It.

So, doing that.

Folks feel a commitment to land stewardship, and after being on the trail realize the importance of public lands and why we must preserve them for the next generation.

We're out here clearing trees off the trail for people, so they don't have to climb over them when they're hiking.

But also because we'll come through say the middle or end of June, first part of July, and we'll start mulling the trails.

I do a lot of maintenance on the Kek.

Go out every spring and remove trees, a lot of brush.

So I love to do the scouting trips.

Hike it as quick as you can and just count the number of trees and figure out where we're going to be working this next May.

We try to clear in May and be off the trail before the bugs really get out.

There are 27 miles of trail outside the Boundary Waters, and the Border Route Trail Association tries to clear those every year through what we call mechanized trips.

So you can use tools like chainsaws, powered weed whips, and powered brush cutters.

That remaining 38 miles of trail inside the Boundary Waters, because it's so difficult to access that, our goal is to try and clear each section once every three years.

You do have to like backpack into that or canoe into that Wilderness Area.

Some of the tools that you are allowed to use in the area are things like cross cut saws or loppers or manual brush cutters.

We are at Woods Creek.

We are working on a new reroute.

It's about a 300 foot long reroute of the trail.

We're moving the trail away from a place where it's falling into the creek.

The thing about trail work is that it is never-ending.

Trails are by nature, in nature, and dependent on nature.

When nature changes something for us, then we have to make sure that we make the most sustainable trail possible.

I would say anybody can be a hiker, even people with mobility issues.

There are sections of the North Country Trail that anybody can walk.

We got here while the light was still good.

Day hikers-that's the predominant use of the trail.

So we like to come up to either here, Devil's Kettle, or we do the, it's called Paradise Beach at the 123 mile marker.

We'll go for a walk there in the morning with our husky Odin.

So, yeah, it's just such a blessing to have all this natural beauty around us.

So we take advantage of it any opportunity we can.

The beauty of it is enjoying creation.

We're hearing the birds, we're seeing those first wildflowers.

So we just have an excitement about being outside and sharing that with our friends, with our family.

We get people who are bird watchers, who are mushroom enthusiasts.

You know they'll hike on our trail to see the mushrooms growing off to the side.

Nature photographers, hunters, fishermen, you know, they love using our trail because it provides kind of a long hunter walking trail or an opportunity to walk into a lake that doesn't have a public access, so they might be the only person fishing on that lake.

So it really does provide a unique experience for a lot of people.

So there are people that get out and hike the whole thing, thru-hike the trail, and we only have had about maybe 30 thru-hikers on the whole North Country Trail, but we're starting to see more.

And we're also starting to see more people do section hikes, which is where you're trying to bite it off in chunks over time.

I'm Joan Young.

I have a long association with this trail.

I discovered it in 1988 and started hiking.

I completed hiking the entire trail in 2010.

During that time I got involved as a volunteer as well as just a hiker, and I really fell in love with this trail.

By the time I finished hiking it the first time, things had already changed.

There were lots of miles that had been taken off-road and even more off-road now.

So almost as soon as I finished it the first time, I wanted wanted to do it again, but I couldn't figure out how to make that happen, and I had to earn some money in there, too.

So, about two years ago I woke up in the middle of the night and I went "Oh my gosh, I know how I could do this."

So I realized that if I started hiking from near where I live, at home in Michigan, which is about the middle of the trail, and hiked south, which is the trail East through Ohio in the winter, I could get to Vermont and then drive to North Dakota and hike back to Michigan and not hit the real severe winter at either end of the trail.

So once I figured out that that was actually possible, then I just had to do all the planning to make it happen, and now it's happening.

I started at Lake Sakakawea State Park in South Dakota or North Dakota on March 24th.

I plan on doing it completely throughout one year, not even one year, but in nine months is what my plan is.

I first originally had to figure out the route that I was going to take, but there's all sorts of other planning that went into it, too, such as I had to spend about two years building up my gear supply because I had to have different types of gear.

On top of that, I had to get my normal everyday life figured out, too, such as I resigned from my job, which took some time leading up to that.

I couldn't just quit on them.

I gave them a few months notice.

I had to save up money.

So, you know, so that was a quite a few year job in itself.

And then I also had to take all my belongings that were in my home and figure out what was going to happen with them since I was going to be gone for 11 months.

But that all took many years.

Back in 2018 is when that all mainly started, but the planning actually started about seven years ago.

It takes a different mindset to do what I'm doing, and I actually can't really believe that I actually did it, but here we are.

People are starting to realize I'm a little bit serious about it now.

You know this trail is a legacy for future generations and as more people get out and enjoy it now, hopefully some of them will be involved and will help us finish that legacy.

It's a place for us to stop, reflect on ourselves and our lives, connect with our family and friends.

I see it as a contribution to just maintaining nature or keeping a natural place as best as we can.

We want to finish this trail so that it's 5,000 miles from Vermont to North Dakota, and it's going to take a lot more people getting involved to help, you know, private landowners allowing the trail on their land, but also more volunteers, you know, getting out and making the trail happen through their blood, sweat, and tears.

See you later, Minnesota.

Thanks for watching.

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