Hidden Trail Gaps: Exploring Minnesota’s Unfinished Hiking Routes

Photo by Alexandra Novitskaya on Unsplash

The Pin Oak Where the Trail Ends: Finding Section 14’s Unbuilt Gap

The trail ends at a pin oak about forty yards from County Road 2, just east of the Wisconsin border. Not dramatically — no cliff edge or river crossing or obvious reason why the blazes just stop. There’s a faded surveyor’s ribbon tied to a low branch, a deer trail that continues another hundred feet, and then nothing but scrub alder and the kind of thick undergrowth that says nobody’s walked here in months. This is where Minnesota’s North Country Trail segment vanishes, leaving a thirteen-mile gap before the Wisconsin blazes pick up again near Solon Springs.

The North Country Trail, when complete, will run 4,800 miles from North Dakota to Vermont. In Minnesota, most of that route is finished — it threads through the Superior National Forest, skirts the BWCA boundary, and eventually connects to the Superior Hiking Trail near Duluth. But these unfinished sections, the gaps where volunteers haven’t yet cleared the corridor or built the tread, they tell the real story of how trails actually get made. The Duluth News Tribune called for volunteers in March to help close this Wisconsin-Minnesota gap. I showed up for a weekend work party that same month to see what trail building actually looks like when you’re the one holding the Pulaski.

What a North Country Trail Volunteer Weekend Actually Involves

The reality of trail building is more mundane and more satisfying than most people expect. There’s no ribbon-cutting ceremony waiting at the end of a Saturday morning. You’re not building something Instagram-worthy in four hours. What you’re doing is called “corridor clearing” or “tread work,” depending on where the segment sits in the development timeline. For this Wisconsin-Minnesota gap section, we were still at the corridor stage — which means chainsaws, brush clippers, and a lot of dragging cut branches into slash piles away from the marked route.

The work party met at the Finland Cooperative Park trailhead at 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday in late March. Snow still covered the north-facing slopes, but the trail bed itself had thawed enough to see what we were working with. Twelve volunteers showed up — a retired forester from Two Harbors, a couple from Duluth who’d thru-hiked the Superior Hiking Trail the previous summer, a Superior Hiking Trail Association crew leader who’d driven down to consult on tread design, and the rest of us who just wanted to see how trails get built.

The North Country Trail Association chapter coordinator handed out assignments. Half the group took brush clippers and started working east from the pin oak terminus, cutting back alder and hazel that had grown over the flagged route. The other half — my group — focused on a half-mile section that had been cleared the previous fall but needed tread work: removing roots, leveling the path, and defining the walking surface so it actually looked like a trail instead of a vague suggestion through the woods.

Why People Think Trail Building Is About Dirt and Why That’s Backwards

Myth 1: Trail building is mostly digging and moving dirt. The assumption makes sense — trails are paths through the ground, so building them must involve a lot of shoveling. But most of the work, at least in Minnesota’s hardwood and mixed conifer forests, is vegetation management and drainage design. You’re not excavating a path. You’re removing everything that will grow back and block the trail within two seasons, and you’re shaping the surface so water doesn’t pool or erode the tread.

We spent four hours on that half-mile section. Maybe twenty minutes involved actual digging. The rest was cutting roots flush with a Pulaski, scraping leaf duff to expose mineral soil, removing rocks that would become trip hazards, and using a McLeod rake to shape a subtle outslope — a 2–3% grade that sheds water off the trail instead of letting it run down the center and turn the path into a gully. The Superior Hiking Trail crew leader kept checking our work with a hand level, making sure the outslope was consistent. “If this pools water in May, it’ll be a mud pit by June and unusable by July,” he said. “Then someone walks around the mud, and now you’ve got a trail twice as wide as it should be.”

Myth 2: Volunteers just show up and start cutting trees. The romantic image is a group of people with axes and saws, clearing their own path through the wilderness. The reality involves permits, environmental assessments, route surveys, and coordination with the Superior National Forest office. The North Country Trail corridor through Minnesota crosses federal, state, county, and private land. Every segment requires permission, and most require an archaeological survey before any work begins to ensure the route doesn’t disturb cultural sites.

The section we worked on had been surveyed and flagged a year earlier. The route had been GPS-mapped and approved by the Forest Service. When we cut brush, we stayed within the flagged ten-foot corridor. When we encountered a large red oak that had fallen across the planned route, we couldn’t just cut it — the crew leader had to consult the work plan to see if it was marked as a “leave tree” for wildlife habitat. It was. We rerouted the trail fifteen feet north and re-flagged the corridor. That fifteen-foot detour took another forty-five minutes of brushing and an updated GPS file that would get uploaded to the chapter database.

Myth 3: Trail work is a summer activity. Most people assume trails get built in warm weather when the ground is dry and the bugs aren’t terrible. But in northern Minnesota, the ideal trail-building window is late March through May and again in September through early November. Summer is too wet — the ground stays soft, and you can’t compact tread properly. Black fly season in June makes corridor work miserable. Late fall and early spring offer frozen or firm ground, minimal foliage to cut through, and clear sightlines to plan the route.

We worked in 38-degree weather with patches of snow still visible under the spruce. The ground was firm enough to walk on without leaving deep boot prints, but thawed enough that we could dig out roots and rocks. The trees were still bare, which meant we could see the terrain clearly and plan for drainage issues that would be invisible under summer canopy. By June, this same section would be green and buggy and difficult to work in. By November, it would be frozen solid. March was exactly right.

What It Takes to Build a Half-Mile of Trail

Clearing the Corridor: More Than Just Cutting Brush

The first pass through any new trail section is corridor clearing — removing everything within a ten-foot-wide path so the route is walkable and maintainable. This doesn’t mean clearcutting. It means removing brush, saplings, low branches, and anything that would obstruct a hiker with a backpack. Large trees stay unless they’re directly in the walking path or pose a safety hazard.

The volunteers working east from the pin oak were using brush clippers and a chainsaw to cut back alder thickets that had grown six feet tall since the route was flagged the previous year. Alder grows fast in Minnesota’s wet soils, and it grows dense. Every ten feet of progress required cutting twenty or thirty stems, dragging them off the corridor, and piling them far enough away that they wouldn’t resprout and block the trail again. The work was repetitive and slow. By lunchtime, the crew had cleared about 400 feet — less than a tenth of a mile.

One of the volunteers, a retired forester named Jim, explained why this pace was normal. “You’re not just cutting what’s there now,” he said. “You’re cutting everything that’s going to try to reclaim this path for the next five years. If you leave stumps higher than two inches, they resprout. If you don’t pile the slash, it blocks drainage and rots across the trail. If you cut too wide, you’re creating unnecessary disturbance and the Forest Service will make you redo it.” Every cut had a reason. Nothing was arbitrary.

Building Tread: Why the Walking Surface Matters More Than You Think

Once the corridor is clear, the next step is tread work — creating the actual walking surface. On flat, well-drained terrain, this can be as simple as raking away leaf litter to expose the soil and define the path. On slopes, or in areas with poor drainage, it requires more: shaping the trail bed with an outslope, removing roots and rocks, sometimes adding gravel or crushed rock to create a durable surface.

Our group worked on a section that crossed a gentle slope about fifty feet above a seasonal creek. The flagged route followed the contour, but the original ground surface was uneven and covered with exposed roots from a large basswood tree. We spent an hour and a half on a thirty-foot section: cutting the roots flush with a Pulaski, scraping the trail bed to mineral soil, and using a rake to shape a consistent 3% outslope so water would sheet off the trail instead of pooling.

The Superior Hiking Trail crew leader checked our work with a hand level every few feet. “If the outslope is inconsistent, water finds the low spots and starts eroding channels,” he said. “Then you get ruts, then puddles, then people walk around the puddles and widen the trail. Good tread work now saves maintenance work later.” He was right — but it was tedious, repetitive work that required more precision than I’d expected. This wasn’t backcountry bushwhacking. This was construction.

Marking the Route: Why Blazes and Cairns Aren’t Arbitrary

Once the tread is built, the trail needs to be marked so hikers can follow it. On the North Country Trail, this means blue blazes — painted rectangles on trees, typically 2 inches by 6 inches, placed at eye level every hundred feet or so on well-defined sections and more frequently in areas where the route might be ambiguous.

We didn’t paint blazes on this trip — that would come later, after the section was complete and inspected. But the chapter coordinator walked us through the marking protocol. Blazes go on trees six inches or larger in diameter, never on birch or aspen that might die and fall within a few years. They’re placed on the right side of the trail as you hike north, following the standard direction of travel. Double blazes indicate a turn or junction. Three blazes indicate the start or end of a trail segment.

The protocol exists for a reason. A hiker lost in the woods doesn’t need artistic interpretation — they need consistent, predictable markers that work in fog, snow, and low light. The North Country Trail crosses 4,800 miles and eight states. The blazes look the same in Minnesota as they do in Pennsylvania because volunteers follow the same rules everywhere.

A Specific Day in March When the Work Became Real

Around 2:00 p.m., after six hours of cutting and raking and scraping, David Ohnstad stood at the pin oak where the trail ended and looked east at the section we’d cleared. It didn’t look like much — a narrow path through bare trees, barely distinguishable from a deer trail except for the slash piles and the faint outslope that shed water off the trail bed. But it was walkable. You could follow it without a GPS. And in a few months, after the next work party built the adjacent section, it would connect to something larger.

That gap — the thirteen miles between Minnesota and Wisconsin — represented maybe two hundred hours of volunteer work spread across a dozen weekends. Maybe more, depending on terrain and how much deadfall needed clearing. The North Country Trail has hundreds of miles of unfinished sections like this one, scattered across the route. Every finished mile exists because someone showed up with a Pulaski and spent a Saturday cutting alder.

David Ohnstad had hiked the Superior Hiking Trail twice and written about the Moose Lake BWCA entry point after a Father’s Day trip the previous June. He’d assumed trails just existed — that someone in the 1970s had built them and they’d been there ever since. But trails aren’t static. They erode, they get overgrown, they require constant maintenance. And new trails, like this North Country section, get built in increments by people who don’t get paid and don’t get much recognition. The work is slow, repetitive, and often invisible. But it compounds.

What You Should Know Before Joining a Trail Work Party

If you’re thinking about volunteering for a North Country Trail or Superior Hiking Trail work party, here’s what actually helps:

Physical fitness matters more than trail experience. You don’t need to know how to use a Pulaski or a McLeod rake — someone will show you. But you do need to be able to hike a few miles with tools, bend and kneel repeatedly, and lift branches and rocks. Most work parties involve four to six hours of continuous physical labor. If you can hike eight miles with a day pack, you can handle a trail work party. If you’re not sure, show up and tell the crew leader. There are always tasks that don’t require heavy lifting.

Bring real gloves. Not gardening gloves — leather work gloves or mechanics gloves with reinforced palms. You’ll be gripping tool handles, moving branches, and handling rocks all day. Blisters are common. Good gloves prevent most of them.

Dress for the conditions, not the forecast. In March, the temperature can swing from 30 degrees in the morning to 50 degrees by early afternoon. Layers work. So do wool or synthetic base layers that dry quickly if you sweat. Cotton doesn’t. Bring a rain jacket even if the forecast looks clear — weather changes fast in northern Minnesota, and you can’t leave a work site just because it starts raining.

Expect repetitive work, not dramatic scenery. Trail work isn’t a scenic hike with tools. You’re often working in dense brush or unfinished sections where the views are nonexistent. The satisfaction comes from making progress on a specific task — clearing a hundred feet of corridor, building thirty feet of tread, moving a slash pile. If you need dramatic landscapes to stay motivated, trail work might not be your thing. If you like tangible, measurable progress, it’s perfect.

Work parties need people year-round. The North Country Trail Association and the Superior Hiking Trail Association both run volunteer schedules online. Spring and fall are the busiest seasons, but maintenance work happens all summer. Most work parties run Saturday mornings, though some multi-day trips involve camping near the work site. Sign up early — popular trips fill fast, especially in the Superior Hiking Trail corridor near Duluth.

What the Unfinished Gap Says About Minnesota’s Trail Network

The thirteen-mile gap between Minnesota and Wisconsin isn’t an oversight. It’s just unfinished. The North Country Trail route was designated in 1980, but construction depends entirely on volunteer labor and land agreements that can take years to finalize. Some sections cross private land where easements need to be negotiated. Others require environmental reviews that take months. The Wisconsin-Minnesota gap involves both — a mix of county forest land, private parcels, and a wetland crossing that requires a boardwalk the chapter hasn’t yet funded.

This is normal. The Superior Hiking Trail took thirty years to complete its 310-mile route from Duluth to the Canadian border, and it’s still adding new sections and reroutes. The North Country Trail, at 4,800 miles, is maybe 75% complete nationally. In Minnesota, most of the route is done, but gaps like this one remain. They’ll get built when volunteers show up and do the work.

What’s striking is how invisible this work is to most hikers. David Ohnstad had walked hundreds of miles on Minnesota trails before he realized they were maintained almost entirely by volunteers. No paid crews. No state budget line item. Just people who show up on weekends with tools and build the infrastructure that makes wilderness accessible. The trails feel permanent, but they’re not. They’re sustained by repetition and patience — the same fifty people showing up every spring to clear blowdowns and rebuild washed-out sections and extend the unfinished corridors a few hundred feet at a time.

That pin oak at the end of Section 14 won’t be the terminus forever. Someday, maybe next year or maybe in five years, the trail will continue past it, and the gap will close. When it does, most hikers won’t notice. They’ll just walk through, following the blazes, unaware that this section didn’t exist a decade ago. That’s fine. Trails aren’t built for recognition. They’re built because the work needs doing and someone decided to show it up with a Pulaski.

Questions & Answers

Do I need trail-building experience to volunteer for a North Country Trail work party?

No. Most work parties welcome first-timers and provide on-site training. Crew leaders will show you how to use tools safely and explain the task before you start. What matters more is physical fitness and a willingness to spend several hours doing repetitive manual labor. If you can hike a few miles with a day pack and aren’t afraid of getting dirty, you’re qualified.

What should I bring to a trail work party in Minnesota?

Leather work gloves, sturdy boots with ankle support, layered clothing appropriate for the season, water (at least two liters), lunch and snacks, and a small backpack to carry everything. The organizing group typically provides tools — Pulaskis, McLeod rakes, clippers, and saws — but confirm when you register. Bug spray and sunscreen are essential in summer. In spring and fall, bring a rain jacket and an extra layer in case the temperature drops.

How often do the North Country Trail and Superior Hiking Trail organizations need volunteers?

Year-round, but the busiest seasons are late March through May and September through October. Summer work parties happen but are less common due to heat, bugs, and wet ground conditions. Check the North Country Trail Association and Superior Hiking Trail Association websites for current schedules. Most work parties are single-day commitments, though some involve weekend camping trips near remote work sites.

The next time you hike a trail in northern Minnesota — whether it’s a finished section of the Superior Hiking Trail or a newly cleared segment of the North Country Trail — pay attention to the tread. Notice the outslope, the way water sheets off the trail instead of pooling. Notice the blazes, consistent and predictable. Notice that the corridor is just wide enough to walk through without branches hitting your face. Someone spent a Saturday building that. Probably someone who didn’t get paid and didn’t get their name on a plaque. The trails exist because people show up.

For more on David Ohnstad’s work in product management and data strategy, see David Ohnstad’s data product management writing or his perspectives on enterprise technology at David Ohnstad on AI and enterprise SaaS.

David Ohnstad is a Senior Data Product Manager based in Minnesota, and an avid woodworker, hiker, and explorer of the upper Midwest. See more at davidohnstad.com.