The Itasca County High Point is located in Section 32, but of what township I do not know. Big Thunder Peak was a skiing mountain at one time, but is no longer in operation. My son Matthew and I climbed that on November 21, 2004 on our way home from Duluth.
I used Bob Schwab's trip report to access the trailhead. From the intersection of U.S. Highways 2 & 169 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, I took U.S. 169 south for 7.4 miles to a right turn onto Itasca County Road 17. I followed that for 2.2 miles to C.R. 449. I missed the turn for Shingle Mill Road by 0.8 miles and turned around (travel distance on C.R. 449 should be 1.2 miles). I got onto Shingle Mill Road and drove southwest for 2.8 miles just past an ATV trail going north.
Seeing that the road was being used by other vehicles, I parked the van in a treeless spot just off road .
There was no post for the trail head. We just started walking up.
I was concerned that Matthew could not handle such a long walk, but I decided that I could carry him if needed for short distances. In fact I did, but not as much as I expected.
There were lots of frozen water puddles on the trail, which, for most if not all of its length was driveable by narrow 4WD vehicles and ATVs. We liked stepping on the ice and breaking it--it sounded like breaking glass.
I had forgotten to take a printed copy of Schwab's report, so had to go from memory. I remembered that he mentioned a left/right fork shortly into the trail, so I followed his recommendation and went right. It took less than 5 minutes to get to that fork.
After 17 minutes on that part of the trail, it curved right, and we saw our first snow of the day.
8 minutes of that, and we turned left, descending on trail around a swamp (small deviation).
8 minutes on that trail and we hit the summit ridge from the east, passed the eastern area, and arrived at the western area, the one with a marker. Somehow during this part, I lost Schwab's route, but we got there anyway, without any bushwhacking (except for the eastern area).
There is no geological marker, just a 1752' spot elevation. The programmed position I set was for the spot elevation. It showed that we were in a saddle between two slightly higher areas. We posed at one of them, the western area, with the marker on its top.
I kept looking, thinking that the area we had passed on the way up was also high, so we walked up an incline, through the woods and stood over there, too.
As usual, I lost the return route shortly after summitting, even with the GPS on, but quickly got back to it. We returned to the van 36 minutes after completing our exploration of the summit ridge.
We got back onto U.S. 169, and headed south for the Aitkin County High Point.
| Family Member | Count |
|---|---|
| Mark | 70 |
| Matthew | 16 |
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http://www.topozone.com
Minnesota Atlas & Gazeteer by Delorme, 3rd Edition, 2001.
| File Name: | |
| Written by: | Mark Ness |
| Last Revised by: | Mark Ness |
| on: |