Getting the Banadad Trails Ready for Skiing

Our trail maintenance  began this year in August when a crew of five people from the Minnesota Concervation Corp sent-up camp some four miles from the west end of the Banadad. Working from this camp land and from an another camp at the Bedew Lake Yurts the crew working ten hours days widen and clearied most of the western end of the Banadad. Eight days later the crew had logged 400 hours of labor widening two miles and clearing the down trees from a storm this past suimmer along five more miles of the trail.

Aided by Pete Harris, Ted and staff moved replacement bridge beams into the Croft Yurt on Sept 12 and 12 and opened the Moose Trail to the Croft yurt with chainsaws and using hand saws cleared from the Yurt to the Bridge site. unfortunately we will have to wait now until next spring to get the beams into the bridge.

Then is September the three mile section of the eastend of the trail outside of the BWCA was opened by Ted and staff using an ATV and Chainsaws.

October 22-25,  saw five members of the Northstars Ski Touring Club with the help of staff from Boundary Country Trekking clearing the first 1 1/2 mile of the western end of the Bananad and the removal oft many large trees along a 3 mile streatch of the trails west end.that had fallened in a storm earlier this summer. The following two days the North Stars cleared the Lace Lake Trail. In all the five member North Stars crew put-in some 128 hours of hand labor on the trail.

Two weekends later five members of Adventure Vacations, a Twin Cities travel company hiked 1 1/2 miles in along the old Winchell Lake Fire Trail, west of Poplar Lake and then cleared west about 1 1/2 miles almost to the Lodgging Camp The group logged about  35 hours.

Still more work to due so stay tuned!