Fire and Ice: The Echo Trail provides a corridor of travel from Ely to Buyck and Crane Lake through the Superior National Forest and between areas of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Every mile along has histories – physical, biological, cultural, and personal – that provide seemingly endless stories, events and memories.
The recent fires chronicle current weekly activities while spinning back to thoughts of previous experiences along the Ely-Buyck Road.
Reopening access along the road/trail has allowed investigation up to the LaCroix Ranger District portion of the trail. After traveling the road’s new look by removing understory vegetation along its north side to provide more protection against fire movements, the destination is the Fire and Ice Interpretive Trail.
Located past the Meander Lake Road and Moose Loop turnoffs, the trail indicated by a roadside sign is easily missed.
One of this year’s fires crossed the Echo Trail, reburning a place that burned 55 years ago in the Little Sioux Burn – 1971 to 1972. A journal of the Natural History Society published accounts from that fire and recent discussions with retired foresters provided details of that event.
The interpretive trail provides a short walk on site. After not seeing much from the road, a short walk to a massive granite erratic left by the last glacier welcomes you to the trail loop overlooking a landscape characterized by ancient glacial periods and more recent wildfires. Indigenous cultures, forest managers, and conditions like this year’s thunderstorms all factor into life in this biome.
How many of you remember traveling up the Echo Trail later in the 1970s to pick blueberries, see spruce grouse in the jackpine stands, visit Meander Lake, or look for moose sheds after the Moose Loop Road was plowed in spring?
Continued Next Week with a stop at Everett Lake to Fenske Lake Portage.
