Magnetic Rock Hike

 Today (Wednesday) we hiked to Magnetic Rock. Magnetic Rock is one of those official destination hikes like Devil’s Kettle, where we had to get in the car and drive about twenty miles, nearly to the end of the Gunflint Trail.  

 

We were a little worried this one would be a dud, since a lot of the stuff on our little brochure has been.  When I run into Bob at the Lodge in the mornings, he always asks, “What are your plans for today?” When I told him that we were headed to Magnetic Rock, he nodded and said, in a very Minnesotan way, “People do that.”

 

Mason and I tried to parse this response because if you are not a native Minnesotan—as one of us started to say and then we repeated all trip long—"enthusiasm can often be mistaken for disappointment here in the Northwoods.” Even one of the people we passed on the trail had us worried because they said, “Oh, yeah, it’s all right.”  

 

But, while this one was with a lot of steep climbs, it was well worth it.

 

Image: A big magnetic rock looking like something straight out of the movie of Arthur C. Clarke's 2001.
 

 

I don’t know if you can get a sense of how HUGE this rock is. Besides, it also being legitimately magnetic, it is also sixty feet tall. We had also been joking on the trail about whether we’d be able to tell when we got to it. Would there be a sad label like at the Wildflower Sanctuary? Nope! But, wow, we could tell when we’d reached our destination. 

 

The hike itself takes you across Larch Creek and into the burned areas (there were at least three major fires that swept this area: 2007, 2003 and 1974.) The burn left a lot of exposed rock which formed our trail.  

 

Image: The path was kind of naturally paved, except where it wasn't at all, of course.
 

In places you travel over entirely exposed rock and there are little cairns of stones set up to guide you along the way.  We saw a bunch of nifty wildflowers including what seems to be a (native??) tiger lily and some kind of vetch, possibly. 

 

Images: A tiger lily (a native?) and a vetch of some kind.
 

 

We were very high up on a ridge at several points, and I’m not sure my pictures do the view justice.

 

All and all another fun one. The trail head is nicely marked and there is technically a latrine. We ran into a lot of people on the narrow trails, so, you know, pee BEFORE you start the hike. :-)