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| | GORP - Skiing Minnesota's Gunflint Trail |
 | | The 52-mile paved Gunflint Trail (Cook County Road 12) begins in Grand Marais on the shore of Lake Superior, a picturesque town with a large resident-artist colony. |
 | | Used to be, the Gunflint was a major canoe- and foot-travel thoroughfare for Chippewa trappers, transplanted Scandinavian loggers, and frontier folks like Justine Kerfoot, who moved to the Gunflint Trail in 1927 and, at 94, has weathered 72 harsh Minnesota winters chopping wood, guiding all-male hunting parties, and harvesting ice from frozen lakes. |
 | | Antlered giants, seemly snows, and natural refrigeration aside, the real inspiration behind skiers' five-hour pilgrimage north from Minneapolis is the area's unencumbered northern-frontier ambience: cozy lodges nestled in snow drifts and birch groves, frozen wilderness lakes lined by jack pines and spruce-fir forest, and kilometers upon kilometers of pristine and hilly terrain. |
| gorp.away.com /gorp/location/mn/xc_gun.htm (651 words) |
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