MPR: Minnesota's Changed Wilderness

Minnesota's Changed Wilderness
By Bob Kelleher
July 4, 2000

A year ago, wilderness campers and vacationers in and around Northeast Minnesota's Superior National Forest were startled to see a looming black line of clouds darken the sky. It was a massive storm that over the next few hours flooded homes, blew out highways, and dropped millions of trees across the forest and the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Scores of people were injured, while the popular camping and canoe wilderness was forever changed.

Photographer Jim Brandenburg provides his thoughts, and his images, of the changed BWCAW. See slideshow of his images. Listen to a Morning Edition interview with Brandenburg.
For further pictures, see Brandenburg's Web site.

The storm first hit Minnesota's Iron Range communities, a deluge ripping through Hibbing and Virginia. Roads were washed out; some people were trapped in their homes for days; many buildings were severely damaged. By the time the storm rolled into the Superior National Forest, it was packing straight-line winds at speeds more typical of hurricanes.

Mickey Scott watched the green and black clouds roll over her Clearwater Lake home, just off the Gunflint Trail. "Within a matter of five minutes, a huge wind picked up, and the lake just became boiling," says Scott. "It was amazing, and we just couldn't see across the lake any longer. Trees just kept coming down. We lost every large tree on our property.

Scores of campers were injured in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Some of the worst damage struck the aging trees in the popular wilderness area, while 2,000 campers found whatever protection they could from the falling trees. Nineteen were airlifted with serious injuries, but incredibly, no one was killed. It was several days before portages were hacked open enough to let many people back out.

Resorts along the Gunflint Trail took a beating. Charlotte Eckroot Nelson found trees on the roof of her Windigo Lodge and water inside. "The rain came right in, we got them boarded up; trees everywhere are down."

St. Louis, Cook, and Lake Counties were in a disaster mode, struggling to reopen highways covered by trees or flooded by rainwater. But even in the days shortly after the storm, it was the word fire that became the biggest concern, as a result of the blowdown. Forest Service officials began talking in July about the fire danger from millions of trees snapped like chopsticks and drying in the sun. Plans were laid to begin removing downed timber, especially near the homes and resorts of the Gunflint Trail.

The Forest Service's Bill Swope was brought in this spring to manage the controlled burns intended to reduce the fuel available for wildfire. "I don't remember seeing anything that's this vast of area," he said. "It's incredible. There's stuff everywhere, and it's the worse I've ever seen."

But timber inside the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness cannot be cleared by law, and experts said it's not a question of whether there will be a huge conflagration; the question is: when? And if it began inside the BWCA - where it's been estimated there are 70 tons of timber drying on every acre - it would be hard to contain inside the wilderness.

The Forest Service prepared with aircraft - large payload helicopters, and two precision water bombers - stationed full-time in the Superior Forest. Any fires would be hit hard and fast. When fire did break out near Tower, an army of firefighters had it doused within days.

Home and resort owners began creating firebreaks, cutting back woods from their buildings. Hundreds ordered elaborate sprinkler systems that can keep property moist when wildfire approaches. Gunflint Assistant Fire Chief George Carlson says the sprinklers have been used for years in the Canadian wilderness.

"The temperature drops right away," he says. "It's like a rain shower."

And Mother Nature has been doing her bit so far this year; after a worrying dry spell in the spring, heavy rain has reduced the risk of fire for the short term.

Emergency officials are preparing for the inevitable. Large aircraft have been positioned at regional airfields, prescribed fires have been lit, and residents are installing sprinklers. Learn more in this slideshow. Read more in this story from our archives.

But the fear of fire may be hurting area outfitters and resorts as much as fire itself could. New figures show entries are down about 10 percent across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, but off as much as 30 percent on lakes near the blowdown at the upper end of the Gunflint Trail.

It's a paradox for Seagull Outfitter Roger Hahn. He has fewer customers, but they're having a wonderful time in the empty forest. "One woman sent me e-mail after a trip and said they joked that they were in the twilight zone; that there was no one else out there," says Hahn.

The Forest Service hopes to complete environmental studies late this year, before opening new fire breaks within the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Minnesota's congressional delegation is pushing a $9 million appropriation through Congress, to help the cleanup.

However, critics say the process is too slow. Senator Rod Grams holds a congressional Hearing in Grand Rapids Friday, to consider forest-management issues, including management of the Superior National Forest and BWCAW.

Meanwhile, locals says the Superior National Forest is as lush and green this summer as it has been in years. The streams are high and the lakes are full. But experts warn that when dry weather returns, so will the risk of a very big fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

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