The Benton County High Point is close to being eaten away by gravel excavators. The operation there has expanded significantly over the last few years, and has reduced much of the eastern half of the 1310 contour line by about 20 feet to the gravel pit floor. When I was there, there were a few machines working, with an occasional vehicle coming and going.
I summitted there on September 4, 2004, after completing Sherburne County.
From the Minnesota State Highway 23 East exit off of U.S. Highway 10 east of Saint Cloud:
00.0 Took S.H. 23 exit
13.2 Turned left onto S.H. 25 in Foley.
16.7 Turned right onto Benton County Road 14, where S.H. 25 curves to the left
19.3 Stayed with C.R. 14 where it curves right, then left (north)
24.2 Stopped for stop sign--C.R. 14 ended, went straight (north) onto C.R. 70 (gravel road)
25.3 Turned right onto 175th Street NE (Morrison-Benton County Line road)
26.7 Turned right onto unsigned road, with blue marker 12934
26.0 Parked next to trailer in gravel pit.
One can go around the steep sides of the gravel pit to the left or right, or approach from the west on a private road that leads just south of the large 1310' contour area
I liken the "Restricted Area" sign to a trailhead, though, of course, it is not.
Looking around at the steep sides in front of me, I chose to go way around to the left, towards the edge of the pit.
Once up on the relatively undisturbed ground (there were bulldozer tracks there, possibly doing exploratory work), I backtracked toward the highest ground, staying away from the excavation site. It was mostly short grass, or cleared path, as shown here:
The path curved around to the left as it approached the top. Bulldozers had bucked the trees in this area down and pushed them further into the woods, making room to .
When my GPS showed that this was the middle of the 1310' contour area, I noticed two things--the gravel industry had encroached much farther than the last USGS survey, and I was using NAD27 coordinates. I try to use only WGS84/NAD83, but have missed some. I know how that can throw off a reading, such as the 0.6 mile difference on Red Hill in Maui County. I hoped that I had realized this during my preparation for this trip two weeks before, but wasn't sure. The coordinates I had set were only 1 second different than my printed map, but I decided to use terrain association to make sure that I didn't miss the highest ground. I found the gravel road the passes by the south side of the hill, following that back west to the building just off C.R. 70. Then I returned back to the newly-prepped area, and tramped all over the woods, hitting all the high areas, looking down to the surrounding low areas. I was confident that I hit the top at some point.
There was no Geological marker nor registration book that I could find. Some of the ground in this area is covered by this vegetaion:
The ground is so flat in this area, that I didn't try to take a summit photo, but this photo is in the highest contour.
I was planning to go around the north side of the pit to get a good view of the area, when I saw this sloped track northwest of my truck:
I took that down, and back to my improvised parking spot.
The time out of my vehicle was 30 minutes.
I got out of the gravel pit area, and back onto the county line road, then east 0.6 miles to a T-intersection, on my way to finish up Mille Lacs County.
| Family Member | Count |
|---|---|
| Mark | 26 |
Bob Packard (May 22, 2001)--first ascent
Dick Ellsworth
.
http://www.topozone.com
Minnesota Atlas & Gazeteer by Delorme, 3rd Edition, 2001.
| File Name: | |
| Written by: | Mark Ness |
| Last Revised by: | Mark Ness |
| on: |