Bikerafting the Root

Corrine and I made a weekend escape to the great north that is Minnesota. Almost nothing was planned except that we were bringing bikes and we were bringing the pack-rafts. I did call ahead to an outfitter/shuttle-service in Lanesboro to check on the river level and was told it was "navigable", but that would later be downgraded to "do not run that section" once we got there. No problem - that just means it'll be more interesting.

I don't have a hitch for this car yet so our bike-rack could not be used. The alternative is functional but time consuming to assemble/disassemble due to its puzzle-like nature. This worked for a short A-B run, but wouldn't cut it for a south-west odyssey-type trip.

About 250 miles later, somewhere on the Minnesota-side of the border, there's a good size windmill field . This is along a smaller highway off the interstate, they went on as far as you could see.

We made great time getting here and had plenty left to get setup and still do some riding and looking around before Saturday was over. Here's our campsite in town. The campground is inside the city's large park.

After setting up camp, we stopped for some food at a small sandwich/pizza shop.

Then we walked a block or so to check out the river.

Not a bad way to roll around if you've got an extra $140K to burn, this was parked out back behind one of the restaurants.

We drove a little ways to check out Preston, which would be our put-in location. 

Time to unpack the bikes and put in a few miles down-river from Lanesboro before it gets dark.

It's very obvious in spots that this is a rail-trail. Very easy grades and rarely much of a turn.

The sweet sweet taste of victory. We got to Whalan's world famous pie shop about 15minutes before it closed and snagged the last piece of cherry pie moments before the people behind us also tried to order cherry pie. Score for me, this almost makes up for the last time we were here two years ago when, after riding about 120 miles in two days searching various pie shops - I still got shut-out on pie.

A couple shots of town. Lots of old wood-sided buildings sitting on extremely slanted streets, one of which is called "Slant Street". 

Sunday morning, we got all our gear loaded up to ride from Lanesboro to Preston. I think it was about 15miles, which is nothing for a bike leg. That IS a long ways to be paddling back though. We were expecting to be on wheels for about an hour and on the water for six more after that....if nothing breaks. At some point the evening before, I realized I only forgot one piece of gear, and that would be the patch kits for the Alpackas. The part which made me think twice about the possibility of that being a real problem is that this river is loaded, with a capital L, with rocks. The outfitter who gave us the river report and told us not to run this section was mostly concerned about the quantity of rocks. I wasn't too worried about it due to the extremely high quality materials used in Alpackas, and the videos of people running extreme stuff in them which are nothing short of incredible.

Corrine and her gear, ready to go.

Due to rack fastener technical difficulties, I was working with no rack and only a large daypack.

Arrival in Preston, we put-in under the bridge over there on the right.

It rained for a good portion of the return leg, necessitating rain-gear. Thankfully the temp. stayed in the upper 50's, I didn't start to freeze until the last 20minutes before we pulled off in Lanesboro.

Super clear water the whole way, which was a nice change from the mud/garbage water at home. I noted at one point that I could stick my paddle all the way into the water until I was only holding the tip, and still read the logos on the other end. This also made for some optical illusions, thinking that the rocks were getting close to the surface but actually the water is still 3' deep. Some areas were a deep blue color, so that had to be incredibly deep, probably 15' or more.

GPS track from the paddle portion of the trip. 13.2miles of paddling, over 4hrs moving time= ouch. Everything went perfectly well and we had a great time. No breakdowns or issues, and my question was answered - what happens to an Alpacka raft after slamming/dragging over rocks for 5hrs? Nothing. I was impressed.

Laboring on Labor-Day

Today's water looked to be flatter and calmer in every way compared to the last multi-mile trip we did. A minor breeze from the N/E meant we'd plan to paddle against it on the way out and have a helping hand on the way back. 

We had planned to put-in inside the Painted-Rocks housing development but there has been a fair amount of construction in the last few years which consumed the vacant lots that used to allow water access. Next best was a level-B road ending in the water a couple miles away. We were hoping to go near the highway-14 bridge, so this tacked on well over a mile of paddling but it turned out to be a great put-in location inside a deep tail-water. 

Corrine rockin' her Alpacka.

The destination slowly but surely gets closer. The small cut in this bank on the left side of the picture (grassy looking area) is where we would have put-in if we could've gotten into Painted-Rocks. It looked like it would've been a slightly crappy hike down to the water while carrying gear, anyway.

Looking over to the opposite side of the lake, I realized that a natural beach we've camped on before really isn't too far away from here, maybe an extra 3/4-mile. May have to try and make use of that this year yet.

Nathan, Sarah, and Corrine making a break for shore, leaving me out here to fend for myself. I also noted that red boats are really popular.

Cody was out getting in some jet-ski action before the weather turns to freezing-to-death mode.

Making me some nice waves to tackle.

The lake is currently at normal pool, so the rocks really show off how much erosion they get from the water.

Red-boat group photo!

We found a couple areas where stone had been quarried out of the hills some time ago. I walked on some of the ledges and this whole thing would be pretty easy to climb around on with a rope. Each of the cuts is about 5'-6' high.

Nathan thinking about making a break for the bridge?

There's a small cave under this cliff. It kind of made me want to start looking for mud to build a pueblo city across it. I could almost stand up in the taller parts of it.

See? Basically the same thing, just needs to be scaled down a little. 

We made it back to the "ramp" and headed out. As is typical of the weather around here, about the time we wanted to turn around and paddle back, the wind had shifted to N/W so we got to run into a headwind the whole second half. It never got too bad but the 4-miles we did was plenty for me, only having a couple long paddles total under my vest.