It was a beautiful day so we decided to drive up to Grand Marais, Minnesota. Our eventual destination was Grand Portage State Park.
At Tettegouche State Park We decided to hike up to the High Falls on the Baptism River. There were quite a few cars along the road and in the parking lot but most of them were fishermen. The water flow was good although it was very dry with fire warnings all along the North Shore.
We stopped in Duluth overnight after our ski trip and intended to drive home the next morning. When we woke up we decided that it might be fun to drive up to Tettegouche State Park to do some hiking. The Minnesota North Shore has almost no snow so we didn’t need our snowshoes which we forgot at home.
As we were getting ready to leave for the day we noticed that it was snowing quite hard. This hadn’t been in the forecast and when we looked at the radar on our phone it look like a small band of snow extended from Duluth all the way north of Tettegouche.
We kept driving and reached Tettegoushe at mid morning. We decided to take the hike along the north side of the Baptism River to the High Falls. Although there wasn’t much snow we decided to use our ice cleats because the trail was icy in spots.
It continued to snow off and on during our trip to the falls. Our first stop was Two Step Falls. This was not very impressive since it was iced over and covered with some snow.
Our next stop was High Falls. This was very impressive with a lot of definition and color in the ice.
The river was frozen so we were able to walk up to the bottom of the Falls.
We noticed a couple of flags that someone had planted at the top of the falls. I forgot to ask the ranger if someone was ice climbing at the falls and planted the flags.
The fresh snowfall left some nice patterns on the ice and the rocks surrounding the falls. This trip was well worth the walk.
More photos from our hike can be found on my website.
Last week we drove up to Tettegouche State Park to do some hiking. It was a beautiful day but a little warm. Tettegouche had been a frequent stopping point on our northshore trips but we haven’t stopped in several years because a new visitors center has been under construction.
Our goal was to hike to some of the waterfalls. The first stop was High Falls. Since the sun was out in full force it was difficult to get a quality image of the falls but use of a variable neutral density filter helped.
We then made the hike down to Two Step Falls. As I recall someone mentioned that there were over 300 steps involved in visiting the two waterfalls.
On the hike back to the car I stopped to take a photo of the walking bridge across the Baptism River at the top of the high falls.
We then headed back to the visitors center to hike out to Shovel Point. There were several climbing parties out on the Point but it is difficult to get a photograph without hanging over the edge.
John G. Munson
Philip Schwarz Photography Blog 